The expansion of vision from tragedy to spiritual comedy. Numerical symbolism of the 12 books. From law to gospel, the letter to the spirit, type to antitype: the vision of Biblical history as one of progressive internalization. The internalization of paradise for Adam and Eve—and also for us.

Michael takes Adam to a high mountain and gives him a panoramic view of both space and time. The continuing aftermath of the Fall. Death: the murder of Abel by Cain. Sickness: the vision of the Lazar House. The mysterious episode of the sons of God mating with the daughters of men. The coming of war, and God’s eventual decision to wipe out all but a saving remnant in the Deluge, the end of the first cycle of history.

The question of why Paradise Lost does not end with Book 9, the fall, or at least with Book 10, the aftermath.  The story of Adam and Eve is a tragedy—but the vision of Christianity is a divine comedy, and the poem’s last two books, 11 and 12, will turn the perspective inside out. But that reversal begins with Adam and Eve hitting rock bottom emotionally. Adam’s dark soliloquy and the painful conversation between Adam and Eve, the ultimate question being, why go on living? Why not suicide?

The fall of Adam and the Corruption of Human Nature. Scenes from a marriage: Adam and Eve’s lust and subsequent marital brawl. Book 10: the Son of God confronts Adam and Eve. Satan returns to hell, triumphant—he thinks. The humiliation of the devils, changed into serpents.

Book 9, the climax of Paradise Lost, an epic without a true epic hero, which is why Milton will have to go on to Paradise Regained. Satan returns, no longer the titanic rebel, reduced to animal disguise and low cunning. A scene of marital discord as Eve insists in going off alone. She is accosted by the talking serpent, beguiled, and eats the fruit. The immediate corruption of her nature.

The unexpectedly jarring end of Adam’s conversation with Raphael, where he confesses an emotional dependency upon Eve and is sharply criticized for it. It is this hidden weakness that brings about the Fall. The superior sex life of angels, with their spiritual bodies. The Invocation of Book 9, the moment of the Fall. Milton’s methods of composing poetry. The old conundrum: who is the hero of Paradise Lost?

Book 8 falls into symmetrical halves, one concerned with unanswered questions about cosmology, the other with the creation of Adam and his relationship with Eve. These are unified by the theme of education, a primary theme in all Milton’s work. Raphael tells Adam that what matters is not speculative learning but life learning. Adam tells Raphael of his creation, but, strikingly, what it felt like from the inside. His naming of the animals: names as the essential identity of what is named.

Books 7 and 8 were originally one book, divided in the poem’s second edition. Book 7 is what we know, from Scripture. The first half of Book 8 is what was still speculative and up for grabs. “Saving the appearances”: the term used by scholars of that time to salvage the old geocentric model. God’s refusal to make known the answer to certain questions—really because Milton doesn’t know the answers. The distinction between theoretical knowledge and the practical life knowledge that is what we really need.

Milton does not just paraphrase Genesis.  While faithful to it, he recreates it in the light of his own vision of the upward metamorphosis, matter leaping up the vertical axis of being towards spirit.  He also gives or implies his own answers to questions about the Creation that have arisen of the centuries.

Following both the Odyssey and the Aeneid, the epic falls into two halves, one wandering and one stationary. Here, we are halfway, and the poem returns to earth. Another invocation to the Muse, and a reference to Milton’s personal circumstances, dark in every way. The Son as the traditional active agent of the Creation, Michelangelo notwithstanding. God’s insistence that at the end of time, earth will be changed to heaven and vice versa, “one Kingdom.”