Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the fourth in a four-week sequence on the works of John Milton. It concerns his two final works, the brief epic Paradise Regained and the closet tragedy Samson Agonistes. I describe both as Miltonic rewritings, though Classical forms, of the Biblical Book of Job, the former focused on Job’s temptation and the latter on his suffering. I also argue that the two final poems point in the opposite directions of Milton’s legacy: Paradise Regained toward the “home epic” of the realist novel culminating in Middlemarch, Samson Agonistes toward revolutionary poetry and romance culminating in Moby-Dick (until Joyce resynthesizes the realist novel and the revolutionary poem as Ulysses). The episode begins with a brief consideration of cinematic Christs. In conclusion, I characterize Milton’s critical reception from Samuel Johnson to C. S. Lewis, with a focus on Milton’s God by William Empson and its controversial case against Christianity tout court. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! Note that The Invisible College is on vacation next week before resuming with the modern American novel. The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:
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