Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Dodds, Lara

Committee Member

Raymond, Richard

Committee Member

Anderson, Thomas

Date of Degree

5-3-2008

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of English

Abstract

Renaissance England was a period of tremendous flux; ideas about science, gender and knowledge or how we come to knowledge come under examination. These areas of flux intersect with the text examined here in their relationship to the key concept of nature. In John Milton’s, Paradise Lost, nature appears in various forms over sixty times. By first examining the word nature in relation to the ideas in flux during the period and next examining Milton’s use of the word in the epic, an overlooked yet significant aspect of his epic emerges. Milton uses the mutability of nature to further “justify the ways of God to man.” How his use of nature develops an association between nature and Eve is of even greater significance. In a carnivalesque inversion of the convention of the period, Milton’s development of nature in the poem and his development of the association of Eve with nature reveal an association of Eve with human nature.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/17874

Comments

nature and gender in Paradise Lost

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