Your final essay for this course may revise and build from the first paper if you wish. Whereas the first paper tasked you with executing a close reading of a literary term and its use in world building, the final essay will ask you to ponder the Miltonic “multi-verse” with an emphasis on the more-than-human entities and worlds with which it communicates.
Final suggested paper topic areas are below. Choose one. If you want to propose your own, you may do so, but must get permission in writing from your TA or Professor two weeks in advance of the due date (May 13th).
1) Your introduction to Paradise Lost by David Scott Kastan cites early modern critic William Kolbrener to argue that Milton’s philosophical monism “undoes the ‘conventional distinctions between soul and body, matter and spirit’ even we might add, between Heaven and earth, angel and human. All these pairs exist not as binaries but as points on an ontological continuum or spectrum of being of ‘various degrees / Of substance’ (5.473-74 qtd. xxxviii). Choose one of these conventional binaries to study (you may choose your own, but please be sure to get permission in writing from either your TA or myself two weeks in advance of due date, May 13th). Make an argument that either agrees or disagrees with this statement through a close reading of Milton’s corpus. You may find that a good place to begin is with one of the worlding tropes (such as metaphor, simile, metonymy, or synecdoche). From there, choose one or two passages that illustrate your position. You will need to consult 2-3 peer reviewed secondary sources to help support your case, cited in MLA format. You will also need a full works cited page for all sources.
You need 2-3 secondary, academic, vetted, peer-reviewed sources that can be found by database searching via the MLA International Bibliography, JSTOR, and other relevant databases found through the UC Davis library database home page.
