As a reinterpretation of Milton, this study engages the ideas of Freud, Nietzsche, and Derrida. However, the author derives her thesis from Milton's own debt to ancient Biblical sources. The Bible, says Schwartz, offers Milton a pattern of repeated beginnings that informs his depiction of the universe and characterizes his poetic and interpretative processes. This original reading of the Bible enables a powerful rereading of Paradise Lost.