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Abstract

When Adam and Eve disobey God in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, it is a disaster. Not only will the couple now die, as God warned them, but the whole cosmos is made worse: God creates calamitous weather and recasts the sea and land to produce earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanoes. This essay addresses Milton’s depiction of disaster and the first couple’s ways of coping with their calamity, in conversation with disaster films. Milton’s epic did not directly influence any of these movies. Instead, following Eric Mallin’s recent work on Shakespeare, I argue that disaster movies represent important “non-adaptations.” They help to reveal Milton’s vision of persistence and renewal after the Fall, and Milton’s poem in turn helps us better understand secular, cinematic depictions of survival, heroism, and community.