Engl 2283 - Winter term - 2022
John Milton's Paradise Lost

Acknowledgement of Traditional Territory

We are in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship” which Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi’kmaq peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognized Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and established the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations.

We are all treaty people -- because the treaties signed do not apply to only indigenous people, but to the off-spring of the settlers, too. And that means all of us.

Accessible Learning Services

If you are a student with documentation for accommodations or if you anticipate needing supports or accommodations, please contact Ian Ford, Accessibility Resource Facilitator at 902-585-1520, disability.access@acadiau.ca or Marissa McIsaac, Manager, disability.access@acadiau.ca. Accessible Learning Services is located in Rhodes Hall, rooms 111-115.

Teams

Sadly, we're going to have to start the term using Teams. I suspect Acadia's administration intends for us to settle for this inadequate model of education for the whole term, but maybe they'll prove me wrong. In any event, on Acorn I've posted a link to the class Teams interface. I don't want to put that link out here on the web, where everyone and anyone can see it and potentially abuse it.

Course Description

This is a course devoted to reading the 1674 edition of John Milton's Christian epic, Paradise Lost.

It appears we must at least start the term in an on-line environment. I apologize for that, and do think you (and your parents, if they are contributing to the cost of your education) should agitate for a reduction in what you're required to pay when such models obtain, but given the current state of viral infection in Nova Scotia, I think it's understandable that we'd be forced to make some sort of accommodation.

The course is designed to allow us to shift to and from an on-line model, and I hope we get the chance to shift from on-line to in person. But for reasons I'll share in our first class, I suspect the injudicious carbuncles who administer Acadia University have no intention of ending the suspension of in person learning--you know, the education you're paying for--this term.

Either way, your attendance in every class is required, and this is reflected in the grading scheme. So don't miss any classes unless you absolutely must.

If we get back into the classroom, you may want to have your computer with you for every class so you can move independently through your classmates comments, but I will project on screen--when we're on-line and if we should be so lucky as to meet in class--the lines of the poem being addressed by the student speaking. On the topic of Comments, see Commentaries, below.

In the classroom, you must turn your phone off and put it away. This is the professor's rule, but it is not merely a capricious rule. It's intended to ensure you actually give yourself a chance to learn, to get the education you're paying for. So do yourself a favour and turn your f&*$%@g phone off even if you're at home with your microphone muted.

You will want to, and you ought to, make use of the Oxford English Dictionary as you make your way through Paradise Lost. To access the OED from off-campus, you'll need to install your university’s VPN (Virtual Private Network). For Acadia students, click here: Acadia VPN.

You will need a gmail account, an email account ending in @gmail.com, in order to access the shared Google© docs into which you will regularly contribute your commentaries on the poem. Once you know what your gmail address is email it to me at ParLost@protonmail.com. I need to authorize your access to our shared Google© docs, and I'll need your gmail address to do so. And you need to access those docs to earn your grade.

Course Texts

Read this first. It's the relevant passages from the Book of Genesis, KJV.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes. Hackett Publishing: 2003.

The Oxford English Dictionary, a.k.a. the OED.

To access the OED from off-campus, you'll need to install the Acadia University VPN.

Supplemental

Ramm, Benjamin. "Why You Should Re-Read Paradise Lost." BBC Culture, April 19, 2017.

Neil Thomas. Excerpt fromDarwin and Milton: From Paradise Lost to the Origin of Species, in Evolution News & Science Today, Oct. 27, 2021.


"Sympathy for the devil: Milton's Satan as political rebel," CBC Radio, Ideas, Mar 13, 2020.

"Milton's Paradise Lost: a survival guide for a fractured world," CBC Radio, Ideas, Apr 20, 2020.

And . . .

Grading

Attendance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5%

Commentaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80%

Final Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15%

Attendance:

Required.
Each student should expect to be called on to speak during every class period.

Commentaries

As for the comments:
Generally . . .

1. Your written comments are due on Sunday, for Tuesday classes, and by 10:00 AM on Wednesday for Thursday classes.
2. In class, you will be called on to orally paraphrase, expand upon, or riff off of your written comments. In no circumstances should you merely read in class what you've already posted for us to read ourselves.
3. Once the basics of who and where have been addressed, then you might turn your attention to more thematic issues or to more literary qualities.
4. Remember that more than half your grade is dependent on this assignment. Submitting your written comments on time and being present in class to comment on the poem are both significant components of this assignment.

And specifically . . .

How to make comments:

• Start by skimming down the page to find the lines on which you are expected to comment.
• Read the entire book, in your course text (the Hughes edition, hopefully).
• Read and study the examples I’ve provided for the first seven groups of lines. Use them as examples for your own responses.
• Compose your comment in the space beneath your name.
• ATTENTION: you’ll be expected to paraphrase your comment in class. You ARE NOT permitted to read your comment to the rest of us. Your grade for commenting will be based on a rough apportionment of some for the written comment and some for what you say in class. Failure to significantly differ one from the other will lead to a low overall grade.

What to say in your comments:

• Comments must inform your reader who is speaking and to whom they are speaking in the section of poem on which you are commenting; and they must also contribute something to our understanding of the passage under examination.
• Comments might make connections to things outside the poem (you might explain Classical or Biblical references, for example, or suggest that the passage reminds you of something else you have read or experienced [don't get too far from what's accessible to the rest of us, though).
• Comments might make connections to other parts of the poem (this is likely to happen more often in the latter parts of the poem [when you can look back with familiarity] than in the earlier parts).
• Comments might question anything that is unclear (either to you personally, or more generally).
• And of course comments can offer any relevant thought(s) that enlighten(s).

Final Arguments - Due April 20, via Acorn (or emailed, in Nicholas's case only)

Answer all questions. In every answer, include quotations from the poem. All questions must be answered or the assignment mark will be zero. Each question will count as much as all others toward your mark.

No submissions longer than seven pages will be graded; this doesn't mean I'm expecting seven pages, just that that's the upper limit. Use 12-point Times New Roman font, and margins on all four sides of ~ 2.5cm.

1. The thesis of Paradise Lost is an attempt to “justify the ways of God to men.” Argue that the poem succeeds.
2. The thesis of Paradise Lost is an attempt to “justify the ways of God to men.” Argue that the poem fails.

3. Argue in favour of the assertion that Eve is most culpable for humanity’s Fall in Paradise Lost.
4. Argue against the assertion that Eve is most culpable for humanity’s Fall in Paradise Lost.

5. Argue that God can foreknow and humans can have free will.
6. Argue that if God foreknows, humanity does not have free will.

7. What did you learn from reading Paradise Lost?

THE PRINTER TO THE READER

Curious Reader, There was no argument at first intended to the Book, but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem Rimes not.

The Verse

The measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem’d an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover’d to Heroic Poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of Riming.

The Arguments

Revised Paradise Lost course