Professor of English Margaret Thickstun presented a lecture titled "Moral Education in Paradise Lost" on Nov. 12 as part of the Faculty Lecture Series. Dean of the Faculty David Paris called the lecture series "an opportunity to hear about and celebrate the work of our teacher-scholars." He introduced Thickstun, calling her "both an educator and a thoughtful student of education."
Thickstun discussed what she has learned about Milton's Paradise Lost from teaching it to college students. She said that she has recently come to the realization that she works not only with a subject matter, but with an age group, specifically 19-year old college sophomores. Teaching the poem to this age group has influenced which aspects of the poem she focuses on and how she sees its meaning.
Her current work centers around the fact that the poem's characters all face some of the problems of adolescence, including newfound independence, peer pressure, sexual desire, pursuit of happiness and choice of life work. They tackle with the transition to "moral adulthood," which has been defined by cognitive psychologists as "the experience of making and living with irreversible moral choices and sustained responsibility for the welfare of others." Thickstun talked about places she finds this struggle throughout the text.
In his retelling of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Milton casts God as a nurturing father figure who desires to create being with whom he can have a meaningful and voluntary relationship. This means giving Adam and Eve free will, as well as limiting his omnipotence to allow them opportunties to make moral decisions. Thickstun made the analogy to a parent asking their 3-year-old child to help set the table. The parent doesn't need their help, and the child won't do as good of a job at it as the adult would, but asking the child to do it will give them opportunity to learn and grow. However, Milton's God does set up the universe with natural consequences for bad and immoral decisions, which ultimately leads to Adam and Eve's downfall. This also applies to the other child-like characters in the text, Satan and the angels who rebel against God in heaven.
In Thickstun's opinion, Milton portrays Adam, Eve, and Satan as adolescents, eager to test their independence and eager to reach adulthood. Pointing to Satan's soliloquy after he escapes hell to gaze on the Garden of Eden, Thickstun described how is a complex character with a conscience who claims compulsion to excuse his actions. Adam also rationalizes his behavior, she said, making up excuses after he has already decided to partake of the forbidden fruit Eve brings him. After the Fall, Adam and Eve face mutual embarassment and shame for their behavior - a feeling Thickstun said college students have an easy time understanding. They recognize their responsibility for each other's suffering and see the irreversible consequences of their actions, which brings them closer to the moral adulthood they have been striving for.
Clearly, Thickstun said, Milton is trying to convey several moral and pedagogical messages through this text. A major lesson is that smart does not always equal good. As Thickstun put it, Satan is the smartest character in the text, but he still makes the wrong decisions because he does not use his intelligence in a morally responsibile way. Milton did have a belief in the moral nature of education, and would have thought of this text partly as a way to import moral messages to the adolescents to whom Thickstun teaches it, she said.
-- by Caroline O'Shea '07
