Books by Regina M. Schwartz

Regina Schwartz examines the story of Cain and Abel, as she sees it; that is, emblematic of a tragic biblical influence over Western secular notions of identity - notions often violently exclusionary, negatively defining "us" against "them" in ethnic, religious, racial, nationalistic terms.

While Milton's inability to discover a privileged origin allies him with postmodernism - and so this study, originally published in 1988, engages thinkers like Freud, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Lacan - that insight is far more ancient. According to Regina Schwartz, the Bible offers Milton his pattern of repeated beginnings.