Just what it meant to write an epic poem in an age of civil war and rising empiricism is a question that we will engage through the epic efforts of Milton’s contemporaries, such as Abraham Cowley, William Davenant, and Lucy Hutchinson. All of these poetic engagements will be brought into conversation with recent critical work on Milton’s poetry.
HUMS 468: Milton’s Paradise Lost
Tuesday 1:30-3:20
In this advanced seminar on Paradise Lost, we will focus on live critical issues and on Milton’s engagements of key predecessors. To that end, we will read Milton’s epic alongside relevant portions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid, Lucan’s Pharsalia, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Luís Vas de Camões’s Lusíads, and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Long classical poems on the outskirts of the epic tradition will also fall within our ken, such as Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
