Kursinformation

To read Milton´s Paradise Lost is to embark on an extraordinary adventure. You will meet a wonderful cast of characters including Adam, Eve, God, Satan (who might perhaps even be the true hero of this text), a whole crowd of bizarre devils, Death, Sin and large numbers of well-meaning but sometimes not terribly intelligent angels. Be prepared to think about a wide range of intriguing and bewildering issues: How can a successful and popular angel end up with a new career as a senior devil? Are angels vegetarians? What are this text’s implications in terms of politics and gender roles? Is our planet the centre of the universe, and does it matter? Why does Milton’s poem still fascinate readers, why can it be enjoyed by both deeply religious people of all persuasions and by sceptics and atheists? How and why did evil come into the world? How can devils stand hell’s hellish heat? What are the typical conventions of epic poetry, and how does Milton play with them? Is there such a thing as sex in heaven?

Please buy one the following editions (and none other): John Milton (ed. Alastair Fowler), Paradise Lost. Longman Annotated English Poets (recommended!) or John Milton (ed. Gordon Teskey), Paradise Lost. Norton Critical Editions. As always: think, enjoy (!), annotate, and look things up if necessary.

Requirements: thorough preparation for each session, active participation, and, if applicable, written work/exam according to your particular Studienordnung.

The seminar will probably be conducted entirely online and entirely in real time - it all depends on the conditions imposed by the pandemic which are not really predictable right now. In this case, we will meet via Zoom each week of the semester at the time of the seminar. You will receive further information concerning the Moodle room and the Zoom link for this course once you have registered. Please make sure to use and check your official university e-mail addresses at all times. Do not use any other addresses, and do not have e-mails sent to your university address forwarded to other addresses. Our experience in the last semester has shown that using non-university addresses / forwarding mails will lead to our messages bouncing back in very many cases.

Just in case your application is rejected by the LSF system: If you want to do this course because you are genuinely interested, you will be most welcome, no matter what LSF says. Please get in touch with claudia.hausmann@uni-due.de who will enrol you manually. The worst that might happen to you is that you cannot do a Leistungsnachweis if you lack the formal requirements.