SOURCE: “Adam Unparadised,” in The Living Milton: Essays by Various Hands, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960, pp. 122-42.

In the following essay, Kermode contends that the basic theme of Paradise Lost is the recognition of lost possibilities and says that to embody this theme Milton exhibits life in a “great symbolic attitude” and not through explanations of how and why.

Miss Rosemond Tuve, in her magnificent and too brief book, has persuasively expounded Milton's treatment in the minor poems of certain great central themes. They lie at the heart of each poem and govern its secondary characteristics of imagery and diction; given the theme, the poet thinks in the figures appropriate to it, and in every case the theme and the figures have a long and rich history. ‘The subject of L'Allegro is every man's Mirth, our Mirth, the very Grace herself with all she can include’;¹ the Hymn...