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The article presents revised versions of papers presented at the International Milton Symposium that convened in Toronto, Ontario in July 2023 with the panel entitled "Is Paradise Lost a Christian Poem," organized by Richard Strier. Topics discussed include Milton's supposed championship of orthodox Christianity in "Paradise Lost" and how Milton's last poems correlate with Christianity and religion more broadly.

This paper contributes to the reassessment of the role of Lucretius' De rerum natura and Epicurean philosophy in early Christian writings by conducting a close study of Carmen 23 composed by the poet Paulinus of Nola. While previous scholarship has examined classical influences on Paulinus' poetry, especially from Vergil, no existing study has attended to Paulinus' incorporation of Epicurean elements. This paper argues that in Carmen 23 Paulinus incorporates Epicurean doctrines and Lucretius' poetic imagery to appeal to an audience familiar with Epicurean ideas. Through the creative fusion of Epicurean physics with Christian metaphysics, Paulinus conjures up a poetic world in which the natural and spiritual realms constantly interact. While using Lucretian imagery to direct his audience's gaze toward the natural world, Paulinus nevertheless reveals a higher reality in which the invisible operation of God's spirit governs and perfects the mechanism of nature. In thus stretching his poetic imagination to encompass the working of nature and spirit, Paulinus invents a new eclectic literary form and a kind of physiological miracle account that blends naturalism and mysticism. As such, Carmen 23 attests to Paulinus' literary achievement in repurposing a classic of Epicurean philosophy and Latin poetry for Christian panegyric and hagiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Theopoetics" is a term that refers loosely to the aesthetic theories and poetics of using poetry to regain participatory access to the divine. Though the exact definition of theopoetics is somewhat contested, there seems to be overall agreement within the field defined by the term that it has something to do with recovering the experience of the presence of God as a poetic complement to theological rigor. What remains elusive, however, is a practical definition of theopoetical poetry: how would we recognize a theopoetical poem when we saw one? This article moves toward clarity on all three of these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might a Christian poetics of care open up new ground for formations of Christianity more attuned to material care for others, including nonhuman animals and the world? I argue that the openness afforded by a Christian poesis , where one is free to form various ways of being Christian through the aesthetic acts of unmaking, remaking, and making, unbeholden to a narrow presumption of authorized "truth," offers the chance to create variations of and on the Christian, variations that should be finally evaluated by the care they create in and for the world. Because some parts of the Christian past and some parts of the profession of literary studies have been and continue to be so careless, I suggest that such a Christian poetics might help shift Christianity and literary studies into more caring forms of being in the world and the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tries to draw this forum together in three ways. First, a Christian poetics has to do with hermeneutics, informed by a long tradition of biblical interpretation. Second, a Christian poetics takes up the discipline of wonder, which remains crucial to the scholarly work of research and teaching. Finally, a Christian poetics combines a sense of wonder with an emphasis on care. It asks how awe and action relate, seeking to understand the many ways texts not just transcend this world, but also transform it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A unique consultation took place in May 2021 that assembled literary scholars and theologians from across the U.S. and U.K. to reconsider the shape of a Christian poetics for the 21st century. This introduction highlights the goals and insights that arose from our three-day session, and then considers how the vision of Wendell Berry sheds light on our calling as scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay approaches the topic of Christian poetics via a postcritical reading of the figure of Father Brown. I look to Chesterton's literary creation as an opportunity for thinking about Christian charity and its importance for the way in which literary critics practice critique. Along the way, the essay explores the meaning of the postcritical, plays with the conventions of the detective genre, and focuses on some of the recent contributions to the so-called method wars by scholars such as Bruce Robbins and Rita Felski. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The miscell offers the explanation for a verse that has always been misunderstood: Prud. perist. 10.845. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Peristephanon 14, Prudentius creates an inventive verse rendering of the martyrdom of Agnes. Interestingly, in this poem, the portrayal of Agnes shares many features with the elegiac puellae of Roman love elegy. Prudentius' classicising poetry is characterised by the mixture of genres and literary traditions, one of them being Roman love elegy. The affinities, however, between Prudentius and the latter tradition deserve closer attention. In this paper, by identifying vocabulary, themes and motifs of Roman elegy in Peristephanon 14, I will illustrate ways in which Prudentius' Agnes can be read as a Christianised elegiac puella. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]