This lecture examines Book Four's depiction of Adam and Eve and the sexual politics of life in Eden. Seventeenth-century political theory, particularly the work of Thomas Hobbes, is considered with a focus on then-contemporary theories of the structure and government of the first human societies. Critical perspectives on what have variously been proposed as sexist and feminist elements of Milton's Eden are surveyed. Milton's struggle with the problem of depicting an unfallen world to a fallen audience is closely detailed. The lecture concludes with a study of Rembrandt's 1638 drawing, "Adam and Eve."

1. Introduction: Milton, Power, and the Power of Milton
2. The Infant Cry of God
3. Credible Employment
4. Poetry and Virginity
5. Poetry and Marriage
6. Lycidas
7. Lycidas (cont.)
8. Areopagitica
9. Paradise Lost, Book I
10. God and Mammon: The Wealth of Literary Memory
11. The Miltonic Smile
12. The Blind Prophet
13. Paradise Lost, Book III
14. Paradise Lost, Book IV
15. Paradise Lost, Books V-VI
16. Paradise Lost, Books VII-VIII
17. Paradise Lost, Book IX
18. Paradise Lost, Books IX-X
19. Paradise Lost, Books XI-XII
20. Paradise Lost, Books XI-XII (cont.)
21. Paradise Regained, Books I-II
22. Paradise Regained, Books III-IV
23. Samson Agonistes
24. Samson Agonistes (cont.)

A study of Milton's poetry, with some attention to his literary sources, his contemporaries, his controversial prose, and his decisive influence on the course of English poetry.