Paradise Lost Essay

Paradise Lost Essay 1 Instructions

For this assignment you will write a 3–4 page paper (a minimum of 3 full pages of original written work) in response to ONE of the prompts below. Use Times New Roman, 12 pt. font, double spaced. Be sure to include the cover sheet at the beginning of your uploaded document (but don’t count it as one of your pages). At the end of your essay there must be a Works Cited page with entries for King Lear and Paradise Lost in MLA format (also not counted toward the minimum length of your essay). Do not use and do not quote from any other texts besides these two works of literature. For Paradise Lost, you will only be expected to use and be familiar with the first half of the poem (books 1–6 as assigned in Module 2), but if you so desire you may read ahead and include other passages from the second half of the poem.

Option 1:

Compare and contrast the character of Edmund and the character of Satan. You may consider their personal qualities, their motivations, their arguments, their emotions, their self-opinions, etc. Use relevant supporting quotations from anywhere in the readings, but pay particular attention to Edmund’s soliloquies in King Lear 1.2.1–22 and 1.2.128–144 and Satan’s monologues in Paradise Lost 84–124, 1.157–191, and 1.242–270 and his soliloquy in 4.32–113. You may also want to contrast changes to Edmund’s character in Act 5 of Lear with Satan’s resolution not to change in PL 4.79–113). Be sure to use a range of quotations from both literary works.

Option 2:

Compare and contrast how forgiveness, redemption, and/or second chances are depicted in Act 4 of King Lear and how these concepts are presented in Book 3 of Paradise Lost. Be sure to use a range of quotations from both literary works, but limit your analysis to the sections mentioned above.

Option 3:

Compare and contrast how King Lear and Paradise Lost reflect upon the theme of gratitude/ingratitude. You may want to use the search and find functions in online texts of the play and poem to look for the words gratitude, ingratitude, grateful, ungrateful, ingrate, thank, thankless, etc., but be sure to double check that the line numbers you cite correctly correspond to the printed editions of the texts required for this course. Be sure to use a range of quotations from both literary works.

Submit your Essay 1 as a Word document by 11:59 p.m. (CT) on Sunday of Module/Week 2.