The seminar will focus on the ability of literary texts to pose difficult questions, and to explore possible answers to these questions. We will also consider how to ask questions about literary texts. Our work will focus on themes raised by John Milton and some of his contemporaries in the seventeenth-century, many of which are still relevant to modern culture, such as religious fundamentalism, marriage and divorce, Christian Hebraism, religious violence and the allocation of rights in democratic societies. Readings for this course will be drawn from texts by Milton (including Paradise Lost, Areopagitica, and Samson Agonistes), by other seventeenth-century English writers (including George Herbert, John Donne, Rachel Speght, and John Selden), and from current writing on these subjects (by Robert Alter, Tariq Ali, Hirsan Ali, and others).