My final paper: A reflection

Before I go off on explaining my process for finally getting my act together and completing this final essay, I do just want to make it clear that I really did learn a lot in this class.  I greatly enjoyed the class discussions, and I feel that I gained a better understanding of how to read and analyze poetry.  I think I understand a little better just why so many Romantic poets absolutely loved Milton.

This is the story of how I finally completed my final paper the hard way.  As many in the class may have noticed, I missed a number of classes, which certainly didn’t help my ability to keep up with the reading and writing load.  I fell way behind in completing this essay, which is why it was turned in late.  Truth be told, I felt kind of swamped by the material—I mean, how do you come up with anything remotely original to say about an author who people have been debating for nearly 400 years?  As such, I felt like I was at a bit of a loss to come up with anything.  I was, however, drawn to the idea of looking first at Milton and Oliver Cromwell, specifically at the idea of Cromwell as inspiration for Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost.  I even wrote a short essay on that subject, which you might now recognize as forming a portion of my final essay.

Looking Back and Moving Forward

Well, as the semester comes to a close, I wanted to talk a little bit about my research process for the paper that I finished last week on the humanity of John Milton's Satan figure in Paradise Lost. They say that sometimes looking back on where you've been can be one of the most important things in helping you to move forward, and Heaven knows well enough that with graduation soon approaching, I could use some perspective.

All in the all, I really enjoyed researching the topic. It's one of the most fundamental concepts in understanding Paradise Lost, and I felt like there was a little place cut out for me in terms of being able to contribute to the overall conversation. My research really began with Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin, one of the most influential works of criticism for PL. I started reading it about a month into the semester and got through most of it by the time that I needed to start actually drafting, so it was really influential in terms of helping me to form my research question. I build my question around a question that I felt Fish had neglected to some extent, that Satan can in some sense be seen as a regular human character with regular human vices. As a result, my paper was largely a response to his criticism. I got some really valuable feedback along the way, though, and that really helped to shape my research.