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Abstract

In teaching such a difficult poem as Milton's Paradise Lost to the undergraduates, one possible way to make the poem "approachable" even to students with insufficient literary training is to focuss our attention to the human pair. The way Milton depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden may well be approached in the tradition of Renaissance love-lyric and romance literature. Given the limited time and the students' ability to cope with Miltonic language, the instructor may choose to go directly to Bk IV, and go on to Bks V, VIII, and IX. Reading through those books allows the students to have the "key" experience of the epic, provided that the reading is supplemented by adequate explanations from the instructor.Of most importance is to let the students understand how Adam's love for Eve functions both as a psychological necessity for Adam to choose to eat from the forbidden tree and, thus, as a narratological necessity that makes the fall inevitably come to pass to the first parents of mankind. In doing this Milton radically redefines human subjectivity in relation to eros. Although Milton brings in the perplexing issue about physical love in Paradise, our task still remains to interpret how human sexuality is related to the primordial human experience of "the Fall."