THE LENS THROUGH WHICH I HAVE VIEWED PARADISE LOST is shaped by three assumptions about the function and process of narrative. The first is that the subjects of a narrative are defined by what may be predicated of them. If I ask someone to define his subjectivity – that is, to explain who he is – he will inevitably tell me a story. This story will necessarily be structured by a series of predications: I was born in the city of …, I attended school at …, and so on. My sense of this person (and his of himself) will be determined by the attributes and actions of which he can be conceived to be the subject. If he attempts to be exhaustive, his story will eventually include an account of my question and an attempt to narrate his narration of its answer. Walter Benjamin appreciates this parabolic conundrum in an essay entitled “The Storyteller,” where he remarks that