ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the (for John Milton) context of political disappointment in which Paradise Lost was completed and suggestions that the failure of the republican experiment into which he had invested so much hope and energy led to his comprehensive disillusionment with worldly affairs and the course of human history or to a retreat into faith and 'eternal verities'. It explores that John Milton's outlook on human affairs and the earthly future of human society contained more optimism than these imply, and it will do discourses of republicanism and monarchy by giving a central place to Adam in the interpretation of the poem and of its intent. In Paradise Lost Milton was not just reading off Adam's story from Genesis, so he could not ground his argument on a close and exact exegesis of the Biblical text as did Filmer and Locke; his telling involved ornamentation of the original, filling in the narrative gaps as a kind of Christian midrash.
