Major Authors: Rewriting Genesis: Paradise Lost and Twentieth-Century Fantasy
John Milton's Paradise Lost anchors this MIT literature course, which traces how the Genesis story of creation, temptation, and rebellion gets rewritten across twentieth-century fantasy fiction. Students read Milton's epic alongside later authors who borrow and transform its cosmology, examining questions Milton himself raised: the nature of God and evil, when authority is legitimate, when rebellion is justified, and how the poem frames gender and desire. The course includes a full syllabus, reading assignments, and writing exercises drawn from MIT's OpenCourseWare materials, with instructor commentary on how modern fantasy writers reinterpret biblical and Miltonic material for new audiences. Materials are free to access under MIT's OpenCourseWare license, with no certificate offered. The focus stays literary and historical, tracking a single myth's afterlife through centuries of English writing rather than treating gender or identity as the course's organizing subject.