This lecture on Books Seven and Eight of Paradise Lost focuses on Milton's account of the Creation. The poet's persistent interest in the imagery of digestion is explored with help from the proto-scientific theories of the seventeenth-century philosopher Paracelsus. The moment at which Milton names and assigns a gender to his muse is examined. Finally, Milton's use of gender in the Creation account is explored in light of previous discussions of the poem's complex sexual hierarchy; particular emphasis is placed on Raphael's similarly gendered account of celestial hierarchy in Book Eight.

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.