"Unspeakable desire to see, and know": Paradise Regained and the Political Theology of Privacy.

In this essay, Eric B. Song considers the artistic, religious, and political value of privacy in Paradise Regained. The topic of privacy condenses Milton's thinking about gender and sexuality, domesticity, the fraught work of publishing intimate truths, and the relationship between Christian and Hebraic modes of religious polity. The depiction of privacy in Paradise Regained relates not only to Milton's earlier poetry and prose but also to twentieth-century theories of private and public life that contrast classical and modern societies. The productive friction between Milton's religious convictions and his advocacy for personal liberty speaks to controversies that persist in present-day American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]