Critical Readings

The panel discusses the ninth book of Paradise Lost, with a special focus on Milton’s depictions of gender roles, guilt and innocence, division of labour, and free will, to determine how the balance of Original Sin is divided amongst Adam and Eve.

The panel considers whether the Garden of Eden required a robust space exploration programme (yes), whether Angels are real (yes), whether human beings turn into angels when they die (no), whether Dr. Cooper is an Anglophile (no)… oh, and Milton, too!

The panel examines the moment of creation, the etymological development of atheism and chaos, divine warnings against transgressing the proper bounds of intellectual curiosity, and the potentially physical nature of Creation’s hymn of praise to its Maker.

The panel welcomes Zac Watson as special guest to discuss questions about Paradise Lost, before examining the War in Heaven, Classical cosmogeny, Satan’s parodic inventiveness, angelic biology, and an unlikely connexion to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.

Clinton and Dr. Cooper examine the fifth book of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with a particular focus on Milton’s Arian Christology and whether Satan is a reactionary against a revolutionary God who is rhizomatic in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari.

The panel examines John Milton’s prosody (particularly in the light of Dr. Johnson’s comments) and reflects upon his troublesome Christology and potentially Arian leanings, before proffering the merest hint of a speculation about Milton’s Mariology.

The panel discusses the third book of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with special attention on aspects including the ambiguously diabolical imagery of the opening, and Milton’s philosophical approaches to the problem of evil, free will, and predestination.

The panel discusses Book II of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, with a focus on the fallen angels as an inversion of divine imagery, the politics and plots of Pandaemonium, the natures of Sin and Death, and a possible instance of Miltonian heresy.

In the first episode of Critical Readings, the panel begins a twelve-week discussion of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with discussion focused on the poem’s nature as an epic and the apparent ideological conflict between Milton’s politics and his protagonist. and