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"In this study, Kristin A. Pruitt offers a close reading of pivotal passages and critical concerns in Paradise Lost and examines Milton's presentation of Adam and Eve's relationship through the intersections of theology and gender in the poem. Pruitt demonstrates the Milton "marriage" of theme and structure through an emphasis on the dynamic and restorative power of relationships." "By delving into eight seventeenth century commentaries on Genesis, Pruitt examines the various depictions of Eve and presents Milton's Eve and her relationship with Adam. She reveals how Milton rejects, adopts, adapts, and interrogates those interpretations so that what emerges is a remarkably positive characterization of woman in what is, before the Fall at least, a remarkably egalitarian marriage. So while one can find, without much difficulty, patriarchal and misogynistic statements in Paradise Lost, such statements run counter to Milton's portrayal of first woman, as though his imagined Eve breaks out of the limitations imposed upon her by most seventeenth century biblical exegesis." "Milton's extensive use of dialectic results in a text in which ideologies related to gender and hierarchy collide, compete and unsettle. However, Pruitt avers, Milton also encodes the potential for resolution, for dialectic as synthesis, through his focus on the power of relationship between Father and Son, between divine and human, and between male and female."--BOOK JACKET.
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