Rhetoric Commons^™

"Betwixt The World Destroyed And World Restored": Subjectivity And Paradisal Recovery In John Milton's Late Poems, Chihping Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study focuses on the discovery of subjectivity through the recovery of lost paradise in Milton’s late poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. This theme revolves around the tension between the affective and the empirical, which also configure the spheres of the sacred and the profane. I explore how the irresistibly emancipatory impulse of recovering lost paradise compels Miltonic subjects to seek ways to return to their originary state or the divine ensemble. During this process, the subject is engaged with his own incapacity or privation while reaching into the sphere of unknown potentiality. In …