From: Derek Wood [dwood@stfx.ca] Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 5:55 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Inner light Carol Barton, PhD wrote: ....I think all of us, when puzzled or troubled by a particularly thorny problem, have experienced a sense of illumination (the sort that makes one shout "Eureka!") at least once in our lives..... With apologies for an anecdote, down innumerable intellectual notches from the current level of discourse, perhaps not even to the point....When I had more or less finished drafting my book on Samson, I realised uncomfortably that there was still an inexcusable lacuna. I would have to write a chapter on structure. As some of you might guess, my views on the current accepted readings were of the "you're all wrong" variety, so it had to be done. But I had no idea what to say that would fit my reading of the play, except that I had a hunch that Dr. Johnson was partly right and partly wrong i.e. right that the episodes in the "middle" were not causally connected, wrong that the play lacked unity. The chapter came to me in the kind of flash Carol describes and it came more or less complete. The irony was that I was attending a Roman Catholic Mass at the time and my Roman Catholic conscience was telling me furiously that I should be following the service, not thinking about Milton. So, to compare small things to great, I suspect that Milton's "Heav'nly Muse" and his "rousing motions" were different kinds of illumination. Best wishes, Derek Wood. From: Carol Barton [cbartonphd@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 7:32 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Milton, Toleration, and Catholicism Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 08:02:06 -0500 Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu By way of responding to Margaret Thickstun's comments on Rose Williams' recent post, and the implications of Steve Fallon's "whose intolerance is it, anyway?" rejoinder below, I would also like to point out that, as Hawthorne's "Maypole of the Merrymount" and "My Kinsman, Major Molineaux" make acutely clear, the first thing the "persecuted" Puritans who (we were told as children) "fled to America for religious freedom" did was persecute the Quakers. In the reigns of Mary, Elizabeth, and to a lesser extent, James, one could be burnt at the stake for not believing or believing in transubtantiation; the lines between church and state were by no means as distinct as they are today (so that the *political* plot to oust Good Queen Bess and put her scheming Scottish cousin -- likely an accomplice in the murder of her own husband -- on the English throne was conducted with the clear support of the Vatican, rather than Italy's political leader, and called a "popish plot"). Milton's hatred of the Catholics is as political as it is doctrinal (if not considerably moreso), and thus has no analogy to what we think of as "religious intolerance" today (unless, perhaps, one considers American antipathy to followers of the Ayotollah Khomeni -- an ostensibly "religious sect" whose politics are far more abhorrent to us than their form of worship -- or the war between the Israelis and Palestinians: religious in appearance, but fundamentally political). One cannot extrapolate from one to the other, as several people have argued at this point. Best to all, Carol Barton > I take Robert Appelbaum's point. In my parenthetical "most" I was > acknowledging that there are countries where religious toleration is not > the law. I probably should have said "by almost all Western Hempisphere > and European nations." I'm not sure how the count would go if one were to > include Asian and African nations. I agree that legal intolerance and > persecution are serious and living human rights questions. > > Steve Fallon From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 10:05 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Rose Williams' most recent comment I didn't originally respond to Rose William's comments because they seemed off the point of the discussion I was interested in (and it wasn't one about the American colonists at this point). However, now I'm going to respond :) I would never question that American colonists had a very difficult time once they came over here, nor question that many died trying to start colonies. For that matter, I don't doubt they didn't have their political difficulties as well (course, they were political difficulties they themselves created). But it's a bit shallow to read my comments outside of the context of the discussion about Milton we've been having. Translated into the discussion, they mean, "American colonists (largely puritan at one point) could afford toleration of Catholics more than Puritans (and other likeminded Brits) in Britian because they were removed from **those** political pressures." Feel free to disagree from this point :) If you want to know the my opinion about the colonists as a whole, my feelings are just as mixed about them as they are about Milton. But, to be honest, I really don't care :) Jim > I recently heard a conference paper about why Oliver Cromwell did not > emigrate (and how close he was to people who did). Wouldn't that have > changed history? > > Our perception of "us"/"them" or "here"/"there" is a 20th (21st?) century > misunderstanding that we need to work harder to correct. > > > From: Rose Williams [rwill627@camalott.com] Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 7:51 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: The grand experiment Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 09:30:08 -0000 Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu >the Massachusetts Bay experiment intended to establish a model state to >show the old world how a Christian state should be conducted and, ideally, to >effect the reform of Europe through its example. And many who did emigrate >returned to England when the wars broke out--it looked as if their experiment >was bearing fruit. I have always been fascinated by enterprises started for a high ideal, even though they usually get a prompt infusion of ideals less noble. The religious leaders who came to the New World intended to establish the New Jerusalem-- nothing less than the perfect society. Consider the third stanza of the American patriotic hymn "America the Beautiful" (no, British friends, this is not the remake of "God Save the Queen') "Oh beautiful for patriot's dream, which sees beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam UNDIMMED BY HUMAN TEARS." It is small wonder that some of our most idealistic citizens were disappointed with our resulting society, which has proved to be dismayingly human. We can understand why Robinson Jeffers in 1925 said "Meteors are needed not less needed than mountains: shine, perishing republic." Of course, our republic's death, like that of Paul McCartney, appears to have been announced prematurely, and the efforts of Milton and company on one side of the Atlantic and the colonists on the other did bear fruit, if not as much as they had hoped. At least they were not utterly swamped, as was the wonderful republic the Jesuits started in South America. The Jesuits built that republic with and for the native peoples, and its loss was a tragedy for the world. We should be glad the British-led experiments had a better fate. Rose Williams From: Dan Knauss [tiresias@juno.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 10:41 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Straw-men Yaakov, I don't disagree with the theoretical aproach you are interested in--far from it. What I disagree with is the way you describe the historical-contextual approach as a correction to a massive oversight in New Criticism. I said that oversight is self-evidently mythical, a construct of post-structualists, which does not stand up if you return to the sources. In spite of that, you still say now that your "intention was to ignite a discussion on the problematic aspects underlying in the comments of literary critics who prefer to concentrate more on the 'text in-and-of-itself' than on the 'context.'" I'm still seeing a straw man here. What literary critics are you referring to? Brooks? His point (and Wellek's) is that it's necessary for pragmatic, especially pedagogical, reasons to have some scholars focusing on "the text itself" and others on context and/or theory, all with the understanding that no approach is autonomous and none can be ignorant of the others. -Dan Knauss On Mon, 26 Feb 2001 23:28:41 +0200 "Yaakov Akiva Mascetti" writes: > Greeting to all. > > I would like to relate to the challenging reply received from Dan, > after my > long "introduction" to Skinnerian methodology. > > Dan's criticism is a powerful and erudite one, but there are still > many > indications of critical positions I truly do not agree with. Despite > my > email, or "remark," may be interpretable as "little more than an > illocutionary performance," ça va sans dire that my intention was to > ignite > a discussion on the problematic aspects underlying in the comments > of > literary critics who prefer to concentrate more on the "text > in-and-of-itself" than on the "context." > > The historical labor of reconstruction of the contextual > "language-games" > (and I use the Wittgensteinian expression on purpose) in the midst > of which > the author made his or her "move" is not the same as reconstructing > a > vaguely conceived zeitgeist, a "whole cultural context." I do agree > with > Dan's powerful reply, that we must not discard concepts like > "world-picture" > or "historical moment"; but I am also quite dubious of the utility > of these > conceptual monoliths. > > This said, it seems to me clear that my long email was more of an > argumentation in favor of Skinnerean contextualization, than a > "demagogic" > attack on New-Criticism. Despite the fact that, alas, I am not the > "assiduous student of history" which Dan generously defined me as, I > see > myself as one of those "tardy" scholars which T.S. Eliot referred to > in > Tradition and the Individual Talent, whose work is destined to be > founded on > the study of the discourses in which the text was written. The work > of an > historian like Natalie Zemon Davis, is surely not as "hopelessly > subjective" > as the nostalgic overtones of the passage quoted from Brooks. There > is > scarse probability that Brooks was giving voice a post-Derridean > skepticism > with respect to the critic's interpretation of the text: as he says, > he is > talking about the adoption of qualifications as "good" and "bad". > The > critic, and here I respectfully retire out of this dispute (which I > leave to > you, my collegues), in order to construct a more compelling > understanding of > the possible intentions of the author in making a specific textual > move, is > required to delve into the discourses active in his or her context, > and to > train his or her ear to detect the author's "parole" as a response > to the > contextual "langue". > > The supposed "inauspicious ci[r]cumstances" which led me to stress > the point > of Skinnerean methodologies are the priorities of a scholar whose > interpretational effort is directed towards the understanding of the > text in > its context. Not the text as the product of a zeitgeist, or spirit > of the > age, but the text as a response to specific and contingent > problematics > which the author addressed, and to which he or she reacted to. > > Best, > > Yaakov ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. From: huttar [huttar@hope.edu] Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 12:16 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: RE: Inner light When I read Benjamin Whichcote's aphorism as quoted by Robin Hamilton on 22 Feb.: The _Spirit of a Man is the Candle of the lord_; Lighted _by_ God, and Lightening us _to_ God. _Res illuminata, illuminans_. and then Carl Bellinger's request on 24 Feb. for an explication, these associations came to my mind (none of them mentioned so far in the replies that have ensued): First, the anonymous 19th-century hymn that begins, "I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew / He drew my soul to seek Him, seeking me." This is not unrelated to Jameela Lares's comment on 26 Feb. "that a human must first be convicted of sin before being willing to accept God's free offer of forgiveness of sin through Christ's propitiatory death. It would thus be the conscience's role . . . ," but it addresses a different dimension than that of conviction of sin. It portrays God as a divine wooer. Cf. the roughly contemporaneous metaphor used by Francis Thompson, "the Hound of heaven." Second, an earlier and more abstract version of (I think, subject to correction) much the same thing: the concept of prevenient grace, that grace of God which (to quote the OED) "precedes repentance and conversion, _predisposing the heart to seek God_, previously to any desire or motion on the part of the recipient" (emphasis mine). Though often associated with Calvinism (and thus one might immediately question relating it to B. Whichcote), it is really a more generally Christian idea - of the sort that Richard Baxter (quoted in a different thread current on this List) would call "mere Christianity." It is, by the way, a term that Milton used in PL 11. Third, I wonder whether, in the first part of his aphorism ("lighted _by_ God"), Whichcote is alluding to John 1:9, "That [the Word] was the true light, which lighteth every (man) that cometh into the world." Charles A. Huttar Hope College, Holland, MI huttar@hope.edu 616/396-2260 From: Rose Williams [rwill627@camalott.com] Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 3:46 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Larger Perspective There are serious scholars who prefer to isolate one person or one facet of history for study and ignore the world around him/it. To me this seems a shallow thing to do, as no person and no incident exists in a vacuum. However, if this is the method desired, I apologize for lugging in the bigger picture. Rose Williams From: Cobelli@aol.com Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 12:13 AM To: Milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Milton and antiCatholicism The last sentence in Eamon Duffy's magisterial The Stripping of the Altars, as far as I am concerned, says it all: "By the end of the 1570s, whatever the instincts and nostalgia of their seniors, a generation was growing up which had nothing known else [e.g, Foxe's Acts and Monuments] which believed the Pope to be Antichrist, the Mass a mummery, which did not look back to the Catholic past as their own, but another country, another world." [Bracketed materials is my interpolation.] Scott Grunow Editor-in-Chief Office of Publications Services University of Illinois at Chicago scottgr@uic.edu From: Norman Burns [nburns@binghamton.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 9:25 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: RE: Inner light 'I wonder whether, in the first part of his aphorism ("lighted _by_ God"), Whichcote is alluding to John 1:9, "That [the Word] was the true light, which lighteth every (man) that cometh into the world."' I might add to Chuck Huttar's proposed allusion that John 1:9 was commonly cited by Friends when they were challenged to show the scriptural basis for their assertion of the centrality of "the Inner Light." In a culture that believed salvation by Christ was reserved to those who first heard the literal word of the gospel preached to them, Friends urged this text to show that the "light of Christ" was not tied to a text of ink and paper and that their universalism (that included the Turk who had never heard the evidences of Holy Scripture) was a truth divinely taught. Aided by Michael Bauman's wonderful _A Scripture Index to John Milton's De Doctrina Christiana_ (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghamton, NY, 1989), I find that there the verse is used as proof-text to support this universalism and also the idea of the primacy of the Spirit over all other guides. The relevant pages in _CPW_ VI are 126, 193, 432, 455, 457. --Norm Burns From: Jameela Lares [jlares@ocean.otr.usm.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 10:54 AM To: Milton-List; huttar Subject: RE: Inner light A couple of responses to Prof. Huttar's post: 1. According to Douglas Bush, "the main Platonist movement [which I assume would include Whichcote] was strongly Christian and to a large degree Puritan" (_English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century_, Oxford, 358), so a relation to Calvinism is not necessarily unthinkable. 2. This thread has been quite diffuse, suggestive, and congenial. It strikes me as odd that no one--me included--has actually gone to look up Whichcote's aphorism in its larger original context. Maybe it's just that W's isn't central enough to what Milton might have been thinking. But I'm enjoying the calm tone of the discussion--perhaps invoked by the very words "inner light"--and thank Roy Flannagan for bringing it up. Jameela Lares Associate Professor of English University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5037 +(601) 266-6214 ofc +(601) 266-5757 fax From: Carrol Cox [cbcox@ilstu.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 9:47 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: ["British-led experiments"] Rose Williams wrote: > > > We should be glad the British-led experiments had a better fate. > Rose Williams What! Those experiments incorporated the two greatest genocides in human history -- black slavery and the destruction of the Indians. "Born in the blood of Indians, built on the bones of slaves, fattened on the riches of the entire earth, the American Experiment should be declared a failure and destroyed to make room for humanity." (Source forgotten, quoted from memory) Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria, You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane And all they will call you will be deportee. Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards . . . . (W Guthrie, Deportee) Carrol Cox From: Rose Williams [rwill627@camalott.com] Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 3:28 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: ["British-led experiments"] The British-led experiments in the New World, like the ancient invader-led experiments in Britain, produced both positive and negative results. To make the suggestion that everything that has been done now be undone is a waste of time because it cannot be implemented without the large-scale cooperation of the powerful. Good luck on that one! Rose Williams From: Derek Wood [dwood@stfx.ca] Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 3:36 PM To: Roy Flannagan Cc: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: [METAVIEWS] 012: Galileo's Troubles, by Aritgas, Martivez,and Roy Flannagan wrote: > Shea > Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > Precedence: bulk > Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > So, Galileo was also in trouble for saying that sense impressions are = > subjective! > > Roy Flannagan > I was on sabbatical in 1984 when I read a review in, I think, TLS of a book which argued that Galileo was in trouble not so much because of his astronomy but because his physics interfered with the doctrine of transubstantiation. Presumably, the document Roy mentions in his letter was not then available. I have long lost the review. Does any one know the book? Derek Wood. From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 9:36 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Larger Perspective We can only seriously study a limited number of things, Rose, so we have to pick our interests. Studying **everything** is what makes for shallow scholarship. I would never be a Milton scholar simply because I don't feel I could do him credit without a strong background in Greek and Latin (I know other Milton scholars probably feel otherwise, that's just me). I'm more interested in Donne than in Milton, more interested in Milton than in the American colonists, and certainly more interested in the current discussion about toleration in England than in the struggles of the American colonists. Yes, it did come to bear on our discussion at one point, but just for the record I **never** said the American colonists had it easy -- I just implied that they were removed from the political pressures that came to bear on Milton. The Catholic Church was probably not seen as quite the threat to the American colonists that it was to Puritans in England. So comparing Milton's attitude toward Catholics with the attitude of any of the colonists is a bit inappropriate to me, that's all. Jim << There are serious scholars who prefer to isolate one person or one facet of history for study and ignore the world around him/it. To me this seems a shallow thing to do, as no person and no incident exists in a vacuum. However, if this is the method desired, I apologize for lugging in the bigger picture. Rose Williams >> From: Rose Williams [rwill627@camalott.com] Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 7:48 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re:"British Led Experiments I was very interested in the sentiments expressed in this context. Surely those who feel so strongly should form a Committee for the Eradication of the American Experiment (henceforth called CEAE). First, they should consider their personal positions. If in the Western Hemisphere, they will need to relocate to the country of their ethnic origin (if they can figure out what it is). If in their land of ethnic origin, they will need to be prepared for an influx from the West of people who share their origin (some places may get rather crowded). Second, Americans of African origin will need to be transported back to Africa -- an Africa cleansed of the schools, hospitals and other pernicious imports brought by European imperialists. (Some of this and other groups will perhaps not be in favor of relocation, but philosophical considerations must override all objections --surely the CEAE can convince them of this). Third, all buildings and changes which are a result of European imperialism and its descendants must be flattened and the land returned to wilderness. (Some owners of these edifices may use machine guns and TNT to reinforce their objections to the plan, but the CEAE must overcome them.) Fourth, all changes on Indian(Native American) lands which have resulted from European imperialism must be eradicated. This includes the hospitals which have been treating the Indians(Native Americans) of the Southwest for hantavirus and other diseases. Tribal medicine will no doubt suffice. Fifth, the Native Americans will need to make some plan for dealing with peoples of many parts of the world who may want to move into the now empty and wide open land. That, however, is their problem. When can the CEAE get started? Rose Williams From: Dan Knauss [tiresias@juno.com] Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 9:52 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Milton and antiCatholicism That's probably true in general Scott, especially for less educated Puritans, but such a total act of historical self-denial does not represent all English opinion. Another 16th century protestant historical model (E.g., John Bale's Image of the Two Churches.) conceives of all church history as Tyconius did--in terms of a corpus mixum with a pars Domini and a pars diaboli. In this view, the pars domini has always been effectively protestant, or proto-protestant. Spenser thinks this way; Milton probably did too. It's not necessarily a step toward greater tolerance, but perhaps one's capacity for tolerance is enhanced if the catholic past is not entirely condemned in one broad stroke. -Dan Knauss On Fri, 2 Mar 2001 00:13:19 EST Cobelli@aol.com writes: > > The last sentence in Eamon Duffy's magisterial The Stripping of the > Altars, > as far as I am concerned, says it all: > > "By the end of the 1570s, whatever the instincts and nostalgia of > their > seniors, a generation was growing up which had nothing known else > [e.g, > Foxe's Acts and Monuments] which believed the Pope to be Antichrist, > the Mass > a mummery, which did not look back to the Catholic past as their > own, but > another country, another world." > > [Bracketed materials is my interpolation.] > > Scott Grunow > Editor-in-Chief > Office of Publications Services > University of Illinois at Chicago > scottgr@uic.edu > > ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. From: Rose Williams [rwill627@camalott.com] Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 4:18 AM To: AntiUtopia@aol.com Cc: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Perspective Dear AntiUtopia, I appreciate your nice letter, and I appreciate your attitude. There is always a tug of war between studies vying for our attention, and we cannot do all things. I am not really a Milton scholar either, as I have mentioned on the list. My field is Latin literature, although I have an undergrad degree in English literature. I love Milton's writings in several languages, and like you I love Donne. I have only a tiny knowledge of Donne, but he has taught me much. One of my minor interests is the reinvention of societies, so that what the British attempted on both continents in that area intrigues me. As I indicated, the Jesuits (by the way, I am a Baptist, but I like excellence in anyone) in South America started to my mind a more noble experiment which centered around the talents of the native peoples. They had developed everything from tea plantations to symphony orchestras, employing Native Americans in every aspect of performance and management, when the commercial imperialists killed them and put their talented natives to work in the mines. To me this is one of the greatest tragedies of modern history; if allowed to survive, this Lost Republic could have dispelled many myths about ethnic abilities. Rose Williams From: durocher@stolaf.edu Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 12:14 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: [METAVIEWS] 012: Galileo's Troubles, by Aritgas, Martivez,and > > > > Roy Flannagan wrote: > > > Shea > > Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > > Precedence: bulk > > Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > > > So, Galileo was also in trouble for saying that sense impressions are = > > subjective! > > > > Roy Flannagan > > > > I was on sabbatical in 1984 when I read a review in, I think, TLS of a book > which argued that Galileo was in trouble not so much because of his astronomy > but because his physics interfered with the doctrine of transubstantiation. > Presumably, the document Roy mentions in his letter was not then available. I > have long lost the review. Does any one know the book? > Derek Wood. > > Dear Derek, Many of us know the book as _Galileo Heretic_ by Pietro Redondi (Princeton, 1987). Scholar that you are, Derek, you no doubt read the Italian original _Galileo eretico_ published by Giulio Einaudi in 1983. Ciao, Rich DuRocher From: Kate Narveson [narveska@martin.luther.edu] Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 7:29 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: RE: Inner light I suspect that Norm Burns is right to focus on attitudes toward universalism in this context. As I noted earlier, the phrase "inner light" was used regularly by conservative Calvinists after the Restoration to refer to the infallible witness of the Spirit. John Owen, for instance, used the concept to reject the arguments of a latitudinarian like John Wilkins, who held that faith offered at best "moral certainty." Owen allowed that faith is a kind of belief based on testimony, but argued that the certainty of knowledge based on testimony derives from the authority of the witness, and if the witness is infallible, then the certainty is infallible. True, a person might respond to arguments based on logic or historical scholarship, but "whatever persuation these reasons may beget in the minds of men that the things which they profess to believe are true, yet if they are alone, it is not divine faith whereby they do believe, but that which is merely human, as being resolved into human testimony only." Not good enough to ground one's salvation on, for Owen. To establish the possibility of an infallible faith, Owen argued that Scripture offers the testimony of an infallible authority (God), and then had to address the problem of how fallen and fallible human faculties could recognize infallible testimony. For Owen, that ability came through the aid of the Holy Spirit: "The work of the Holy Ghost unto this purpose consists in the saving illumination of the mind; and the effect of it is a supernatural light, whereby the mind is renewed.... Hereby we are enabled to discern the evidences of the divine original and authority of the Scripture that are in itself, as well as assent unto the truth contained in it." Given his focus on Scripture as infallible testimony, Owen not only attacked latitudinarians like Wilkins but Quakers who argued for an internal illumination---in fact, as I noted before, Owen had to defend himself from those who accused him of enthusiasm and lumped him together with the Quakers. Owen insisted that the Spirit's "internal revelation" was "of that which is outward and antecedent to it" i.e. scripture, and declared "if any pretend unto immediate revelations of things not before revealed, we have no concernment in their pretences." The work of the Spirit was never independent of Scripture, for Owen. In assessing Milton's relation to/ reaction against Calvinism, his use of the term "inner light" should be placed in the context of the specific framing of the debate over the status of reason, the claims to probability and certainty, and the question of what the "inner light" illuminated. Assuming that Cudworth & Co and George Fox would not have seen eye to eye, which would Milton have felt more inclined to side with? --Kate Narveson In a culture that >believed salvation by Christ was reserved to those who first heard the >literal word of the gospel preached to them, Friends urged this text to >show that the "light of Christ" was not tied to a text of ink and paper and >that their universalism (that included the Turk who had never heard the >evidences of Holy Scripture) was a truth divinely taught. > Aided by Michael Bauman's wonderful _A Scripture Index to John Milton's De >Doctrina Christiana_ (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghamton, >NY, 1989), I find that there the verse is used as proof-text to support >this universalism and also the idea of the primacy of the Spirit over all >other guides. The relevant pages in _CPW_ VI are 126, 193, 432, 455, 457. > --Norm Burns > > From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 11:39 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies Dan -- Just a little bit in defense of the post-structuralists and their misrepresentation of the New Critical project -- I have had two or three professors -- from different institutions in different parts of the country -- tell me that it was common practice in their grad/undergrad days (these people are in their 40s-50s now) for a professor to pass out a poem and ask for a reading without offering any background information at all. The author's name would be removed so that the readers wouldn't even know if it was written by a male or a female. This practice seems along the lines of the representation of New Criticism Yaakov posted. But I think in practice and in published criticism it wasn't uncommon for New Critics to take a bow to historical or even biographical pressures behind a text as you observed. I think a close look at some more criticism in action could reveal what was really going on here. Monroe Beardsley, to take one example, in "Textual Meaning and Authorial Meaning" (1968) affirms that, "The point of the slogan, 'Back to the text' is that there is where the gold is." Needless to say, for Beardsley to refer to "Back to the text" as a slogan it must have been bounced around for quite some time already. But the context of Beardsley's "back to the text" is a refutation of the "identity theory," namely, the identification of textual meaning with authorial intent. Beardsley's target was E.D. Hirsch, who identified himself as a historicist critic. This identification of textual meaning with authorial intent represented the specific misuse of biographical/historical information that Beardsley took issue with. I see no hint in this article that he was opposed to all reference to historical context at all, just that authorial intent shouldn't be what we're after when we interpret a text. Now let me appeal to another example: Robert Ornstein's "Historical Criticism and the Interpretation of Shakespeare." (1959) Ornstein's complains about historical contextualizing in this article too, but again of a very specific kind. He seems to be complaining about readings of Shakespeare that rely too much upon theological, philosophical, or psychological frames of reference to produce a "moral" reading of Shakespeare. It's not that we don't attain some apprehension of a moral truth via Shakespeare (at least at times), it's that this experience is communicated aesthetically because we're dealing with a work of art. The moral judgments we form when experiencing a Shakespeare play are the result, then, of "a specific emotional response," not Shakespeare's conformity to a specific theological or philosophical frame of reference. I know I've only provided two examples, but we can see what's going on in these two examples. Historical referents aren't being thrown out the window in either case, just a specific misuse of historical referents. In addition, the Cleanth Brooks article you mentioned does seem to complain about the can of worms you open up whenever you invoke history and biography -- if he didn't say it in that one, he said it somewhere else, I have the article in a collection on my shelf and I'm too lazy to get up and pull the book off my shelf at the moment. This is just a freaking listseve post anyhow ;) I'm not writing this for publication in an MLA journal. :) At any rate, it seems a very small step to me for a future reader to reductively say, "They just didn't like historical referents, all they wanted was the text text text." It's a poor reading of the New Critics, I think, and a careless one, but I understand it. I think the NCs understood the problems with historical contextualization we're still struggling with today and simply sought to avoid them by taking a different route. I think an effective and complete rejection of the New Critical project can only proceed from a resolution of the problems they sidestepped...and I don't see that happening soon. Jim From: John Leonard [jleonard@uwo.ca] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 8:22 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: [METAVIEWS] 012: Galileo's Troubles, by Aritgas, Martivez,and Follow Up Flag: Follow up Due By: Monday, March 12, 2001 11:00 AM Flag Status: Flagged > > > > I was on sabbatical in 1984 when I read a review in, I think, TLS of a book > > which argued that Galileo was in trouble not so much because of his >astronomy > > but because his physics interfered with the doctrine of transubstantiation. This is interesting. I once read something similar about Bruno. Does anyone know why he was burnt in 1600? Was it really because he argued for an infinite universe? John Leonard From: Carol Barton [cbartonphd@earthlink.net] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 8:46 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Inner light Kate Narveson writes, in part: > I suspect that Norm Burns is right to focus on attitudes toward universalism > in this context. As I noted earlier, the phrase "inner light" was used > regularly by conservative Calvinists after the Restoration to refer to the > infallible witness of the Spirit. Here are a few examples from the prose of Miltonic references or allusions to the doctrine of "inner light." There are of course many more ("illumine what in me is dark," etc.) in _Paradise Lost_, but Milton clearly holds the exegesis of "th'upright heart and pure" as guided by the Holy Spirit second only to scripture itself (and well above even the learned interpretations of eccesiastical authorities) in terms of revealing the will of God; in the absence of scripture, as Norm Burns and Kate point out, the inner light is the only -- if not infallible, then most unfailingly reliable -- authority. As the third excerpt below indicates, all men have been given "priestly unction and clergy-right" according to this doctrine: the key for Milton, as it is for Owen, is that the individual must be "himself a true poem": Animadversions: In matters of religion, there is not anything more intolerable than a learned fool, or a learned hypocrite: the one is ever cooped up at his empty speculations, a sot, an idiot for any use that mankind can make of him, or else saving the world with nice and idle questions [how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?], and with much toil and difficulty wading to his auditors up to the eyebrows in deep shallows that wet not the instep: a plain unlearned man that lives well by that light which he has, is better and wiser and edifies others more towards a godly and happy life than he. Of Prelatical Episcopacy: Seeing . . . some men, deeply conversant in books, have had so little care of late to give the world a better account of their reading, than by divulging needless tractates stuffed with the specious names of Ignatius and Polycarpus; with fragments of old martyrologies and legends [Foxe's Acts and Monuments], to distract and stagger the multitude of credulous readers, and mislead them from their strong guards and places of safety, under the tuition of holy writ; it came to my thoughts . . . that I could do religion and my country no better service for the time, than doing my utmost endeavour to recall the people of God from this vain foraging after straw, and to reduce them to their firm stations under the standard of the gospel; by making appear to them, first the insufficiency, next the inconvenience, and lastly the impiety of these gay testimonies, that their great doctors would bring them to dote on. Reason of Church Government (2.1): The subordination of the laiety symbolized by altar railings tells them that "the priest esteems their layships unhallowed and unclean," as a result of which "they fear religion with such a fear as loves not, and think the purity of the gospel too pure for them, and that any uncleanness is more suitable to their unconsecrated state. But when every good Christian thoroughly acquainted with all those glorious privileges of sanctification and adoption which renders him more sacred than any dedicated altar or element, shall be restored to his right in the church and not excluded from such place of spiritual government, as his Christian abilities, and his approved good life in the eye and testimony of the church shall prefer him to, this and nothing sooner will open his eyes to a wise and true valuation of himself . . . and will stir him up to walk worthy the honorable and grave employment wherewith God and the church hath dignified him; not fearing lest he should meet with some outward holy thing in religion which his lay-touch or presence might profane; but lest something unholy from within his own heart should dishonor and profane in himself that priestly unction and clergy-right whereto Christ hath entitled him. Then would the congregation of the Lord soon recover the true likeness and visage of what she is indeed, a holy generation, a royal priesthood, a saintly communion, the house and city of God. Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: Let not other men think their conscience bound to search continually after truth, to pray for enlightening from above, to publish what they think they have so obtained, and debar me from conceiving myself tied by the same duties. Best to all, Carol Barton From: Mario DiCesare [dicesare1@mindspring.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 12:29 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies Jim, Just a brief correction. The practice of having students read a poem sans author and sans historical background, etc., originated in I. A. Richards. You might have a look at his book Practical Criticism to see just why he thought this kind of activity important. And anti-NCs might do well to try it out themselves; one of the worst postmodernist flaws is paying no attention to the text iself. As for the rest of your comment, one could easily find as many examples of good New Critics attending to the non-text; what do your examples or these others prove? Cheers, and keep arguing, Mario Di Cesare AntiUtopia@aol.com wrote: > > Dan -- Just a little bit in defense of the post-structuralists and their > misrepresentation of the New Critical project -- > > I have had two or three professors -- from different institutions in > different parts of the country -- tell me that it was common practice in > their grad/undergrad days (these people are in their 40s-50s now) for a > professor to pass out a poem and ask for a reading without offering any > background information at all. The author's name would be removed so that > the readers wouldn't even know if it was written by a male or a female. This > practice seems along the lines of the representation of New Criticism Yaakov > posted. > > But I think in practice and in published criticism it wasn't uncommon for New > Critics to take a bow to historical or even biographical pressures behind a > text as you observed. I think a close look at some more criticism in action > could reveal what was really going on here. > > Monroe Beardsley, to take one example, in "Textual Meaning and Authorial > Meaning" (1968) affirms that, "The point of the slogan, 'Back to the text' > is that there is where the gold is." Needless to say, for Beardsley to refer > to "Back to the text" as a slogan it must have been bounced around for quite > some time already. But the context of Beardsley's "back to the text" is a > refutation of the "identity theory," namely, the identification of textual > meaning with authorial intent. Beardsley's target was E.D. Hirsch, who > identified himself as a historicist critic. > > This identification of textual meaning with authorial intent represented the > specific misuse of biographical/historical information that Beardsley took > issue with. I see no hint in this article that he was opposed to all > reference to historical context at all, just that authorial intent shouldn't > be what we're after when we interpret a text. > > Now let me appeal to another example: Robert Ornstein's "Historical Criticism > and the Interpretation of Shakespeare." (1959) Ornstein's complains about > historical contextualizing in this article too, but again of a very specific > kind. He seems to be complaining about readings of Shakespeare that rely too > much upon theological, philosophical, or psychological frames of reference to > produce a "moral" reading of Shakespeare. It's not that we don't attain some > apprehension of a moral truth via Shakespeare (at least at times), it's that > this experience is communicated aesthetically because we're dealing with a > work of art. The moral judgments we form when experiencing a Shakespeare > play are the result, then, of "a specific emotional response," not > Shakespeare's conformity to a specific theological or philosophical frame of > reference. > > I know I've only provided two examples, but we can see what's going on in > these two examples. Historical referents aren't being thrown out the window > in either case, just a specific misuse of historical referents. In addition, > the Cleanth Brooks article you mentioned does seem to complain about the can > of worms you open up whenever you invoke history and biography -- if he > didn't say it in that one, he said it somewhere else, I have the article in a > collection on my shelf and I'm too lazy to get up and pull the book off my > shelf at the moment. > > This is just a freaking listseve post anyhow ;) I'm not writing this for > publication in an MLA journal. :) > > At any rate, it seems a very small step to me for a future reader to > reductively say, "They just didn't like historical referents, all they wanted > was the text text text." It's a poor reading of the New Critics, I think, > and a careless one, but I understand it. I think the NCs understood the > problems with historical contextualization we're still struggling with today > and simply sought to avoid them by taking a different route. > > I think an effective and complete rejection of the New Critical project can > only proceed from a resolution of the problems they sidestepped...and I don't > see that happening soon. > > Jim From: Jameela Lares [jlares@ocean.otr.usm.edu] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 10:29 AM To: Milton-List Subject: Query: evaluating Rost on orthography I have a pretty specialized query, and so apologize to those who might not be interested. Off-list replies are fine; I'll be happy to post a report if anyone is interested. Query: I am reviewing, for the Milton Variorum Project, a late-19th century German dissertation--much of it lists--on Milton's spelling in the first edition of _Paradise Lost_. I am interested in any information as to how important or influential this text has been to subsequent Milton criticism: Woldemar Rost, "Die Orthographie der ersten Quartoausgabe von Milton's [sic] Paradise Lost" (Leipzig, 1892). (I've already checked a few usual suspects, such as the Milton Encyclopedia.) Thanks. Jameela Lares Associate Professor of English University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS 39406-5037 +(601) 266-6214 ofc +(601) 266-5757 fax From: Tmsandefur@aol.com Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 11:38 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies I had a high school English teacher with whom I would frequently debate the importance of knowing an author's intentions, or biographical details, in understanding a work of literature. I visited him again when I graduated from college, and again brought up the subject. He turned around to his desk where he has a copy of the Bible, and holding it turned and said, "You know, New Criticism is not that new. It's exactly the way we read the Bible in this country. It's sola scriptora, and nothing else." Strange to say, he's a Catholic himself.... Timothy Sandefur From: Dan Knauss [tiresias@juno.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 11:30 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies On Mon, 5 Mar 2001 11:39:04 EST AntiUtopia@aol.com writes: > Dan -- Just a little bit in defense of the post-structuralists and > their > misrepresentation of the New Critical project -- [much snipped] > At any rate, it seems a very small step to me for a future reader > to > reductively say, "They just didn't like historical referents, all > they wanted > was the text text text." It's a poor reading of the New Critics, I > think, > and a careless one, but I understand it. I think the NCs understood > the > problems with historical contextualization we're still struggling > with today > and simply sought to avoid them by taking a different route. > > I think an effective and complete rejection of the New Critical > project can > only proceed from a resolution of the problems they > sidestepped...and I don't > see that happening soon. > > Jim I've also heard of many negative examples concerning the actual practice of New Criticism in schools. Whatever their faults were, I think one of their strongest points is the ideal of a division of labor between theory, close-reading exegesis, and historical analysis. Students new to a discipline can't perform all those things at once; they must be learn the major skills in relative isolation and then practice them together. But in actual practice, an over-emphasis on primary text-based exegesis may well have been how NCism really developed in schools, thus giving rise to a legitimate reaction in post-structualism. Yet post-structuralism's work in the classroom seems no better. Typically students are presented with a smorgasbord of theories they are not equipped to evaluate. Close-reading/rhetorical analysis is commonly underemphasized if not ignored, and historical analysis can't be done without a good deal of prior knowledge students generally don't have. You are being generous to say that "a poor reading" of NCism has been common in English departments. I'd say it's often a willful, if not entirely conscious, misreading -- a Bloomian "misprision" that serves as an excellent device for pacifying and coralling senior faculty who are representative of the oldthink (doubleplusungood). What gave the poststructuralist revisionary charge its force was the implicit, sometimes explicit, message that "ignoring history" means being part of a "false consciousness," the "dominant ideology," etc. Put in its post-60s historical context, the situation in English departments appears to be a particular manifestation of American politics in general, with the radical (Marxist-materialist) left achieving dominance in the democratic party over against comparatively conservative and "humanistic" old-style liberalism. In my experience antipathy toward NCism or Post-Struct. is almost uniformly an expression of this political division with conservatives and neoconservatives/disgruntled old-style liberals hanging on to NCism and "60s liberals" rejecting it for the Marxist-inflected Post-structuralist options. So instead of dealing with real problems of theory and method, academics drew lines in the sand and defended positions for political and polemical goals rather than open inquiry. As this culture warring cools off, maybe some real progress will be made, but I tend to agree with you--it's not happening anytime soon. -Dan ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. From: huttar [huttar@hope.edu] Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 9:31 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: RE: New Critical Mythologies I'm not sure that what "Jim" said was really "in defense of the post-structuralists and their >misrepresentation of the New Critical project --" that is, I would make the distinction between a defense and an excuse. I agree with him that >At any rate, it seems a very small step to me for a future reader to >reductively say, "They just didn't like historical referents, all they wanted >was the text text text." It's a poor reading of the New Critics, I think, >and a careless one, but I understand it. My reason for entering the discussion is simply to make one further point about the anecdote he related: > >I have had two or three professors -- from different institutions in >different parts of the country -- tell me that it was common practice in >their grad/undergrad days (these people are in their 40s-50s now) for a >professor to pass out a poem and ask for a reading without offering any >background information at all. The author's name would be removed so that >the readers wouldn't even know if it was written by a male or a female. This >practice seems along the lines of the representation of New Criticism Yaakov >posted. Yes. But isn't this more a matter of pedagogical theory (or pedagogical practice) than of critical theory? The teacher thinks it is important for students to learn to look closely at what is actually before them, to observe (hopefully in a systematic way), and knows that if given a chance they'll likely start talking about anything else that seems to them relevant except the text itself. (I think that's a probable judgment about students of that era; I suspect it's still the case today, but now it's encouraged rather than discouraged, as often as not; am I right?) Let's hope, too, that this was just the beginning of the class's work on the poem -- to be followed in due course by biographical, historical, and other contextual information (including information on genre traditions, which were an aspect of "history" indisputably important to the New Critics) that would be useful and even necessary. But it's a question of teaching-strategy, I think. Chuck Huttar Hope College From: Cynthia Gilliatt [gilliaca@jmu.edu] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 8:43 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies In my department, we've initiated a gateway course to the major, which students will take, ideally, as freshmen or sophomores. One goal of the course is to introduce them to college level research expectations and skills - something they are unlikely to get in their writing courses, which are now part of our general education program [another sad story]. Another goal is to improve their writing skills in general. The third is to introduce them to literary terminology and critical theories. They all buy the MLA guide to research writing and they all buy a handbook of literary terms, and then each instructor specifies primary texts in critical or cultural editions, most often from the Bedford series. We piloted the course last year and are now in our first full year. New Critical or Formalist critical stances are presented in the Bedford editions with varying degrees of accuracy/fairness - this term I'm using their The Tempest, Secret Sharer, and David Copperfield. The Tempest is a case study, and the others are critical editions. The first task, I find, as has been noted here, is to have the students read the actual text closely and carefully, simply at the levels of plot, language, and historical setting {I asked students before we started Secret Sharer when steam power was first used for ships - most guessed the 1920s - then someone said but the Titanic was earlier than that wasn't it? one student said no, much earlier, the Civil War). These students find many of the critical articles incomprehensible - this is for two reasons: many students simply have very limited general vocabularies - I asked the same class to define the word 'rheortic,' and got replies ranging from 'political' to 'shallow' to 'I don't know'. They are then ill-equipped to untangle critical terminology in the articles themselves. Sometimes I too am baffled by critical terminology derived from puns in French, and think that Humpty-Dumpty was perhaps a proto-deconstructionist. We think this course is a good idea, but it is turning out to be very hard to teach. No big polemical point to make - just my 2cents. Cynthia ------------------- Cynthia Gilliatt Member JMU Safe Zones English Department James Madison University MSC 1801 Harrisonburg VA 22807 gilliaca@jmu.edu * This e-mail message was sent with Execmail V5.0 * From: Norman Burns [nburns@binghamton.edu] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 9:27 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Inner light Well done, Carol, and how refreshing that you took the trouble to treat us with goodly samples of our man's prose, reminding us of the cause of all our mumblings. --Norm Burns At 08:46 AM 3/6/01 -0500, you wrote: >Kate Narveson writes, in part: > > I suspect that Norm Burns is right to focus on attitudes toward >universalism > > in this context. As I noted earlier, the phrase "inner light" was used > > regularly by conservative Calvinists after the Restoration to refer to the > > infallible witness of the Spirit. > > >Here are a few examples from the prose of Miltonic references or allusions >to the doctrine of "inner light." There are of course many more ("illumine >what in me is dark," etc.) in _Paradise Lost_, but Milton clearly holds the From: John Leonard [jleonard@uwo.ca] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 8:13 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies Mario writes: >Jim, > >Just a brief correction. The practice of having students read a poem >sans author and sans historical background, etc., originated in I. A. >Richards. You might have a look at his book Practical Criticism to see >just why he thought this kind of activity important. And anti-NCs might >do well to try it out themselves; one of the worst postmodernist flaws >is paying no attention to the text iself. > Well said, Mario. I would only add that practical criticism of the Richards tradition did not remove the name and date permanently. The usual practice, when I was a student, was to talk about the text sans author, then, at the end of the class, to hazard a reasoned conjecture as to who the author might me, and what the period. I. A. Richards was not, strictly speaking, a New Critic. It was the Americans Wimsatt and Beardsley who turned a pedagogical exercise into a critical dogma. John Leonard From: Dennis Danielson [danielso@interchange.ubc.ca] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 3:39 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Galileo's Troubles (and Bruno's) When I was writing a headnote for my Bruno chapter in The Book of the Cosmos, I sent proof to Professor Arielle Saiber of Bowdoin College, a Bruno specialist, to get her critique. Where I had written, "Bruno ... pursued an itinerant philosophical career in Switzerland, France, England, and Germany, apparently finding trouble and provoking polemics wherever he went, principally as a result of his outspoken views on various topics, especially cosmology," Prof. Saiber stroked out "apparently," and wrote in large letters in my margin: NOT APPARENTLY!! However, we "apparently" don't have the documentation of the Bruno trial the way we have it for much of Galileo's. My own sense is that he caused trouble more on account of his thoroughgoing anti-Aristotelianim generally than on account specifically of his teaching about infinitude, though the latter was clearly part of the former. Also, personality played a role! Best wishes, Dennis Danielson > ...Does anyone know why he was burnt in 1600? Was it really because he > argued for an infinite universe? >John Leonard ____________ Dennis R. Danielson Editor, The Book of the Cosmos Professor and Associate Head Department of English University of British Columbia #397 - 1873 East Mall Vancouver, BC CANADA V6T 1Z1 Phone: 604-822-9569; Fax: 604-822-6906 Email: danielso@interchange.ubc.ca Home: http://www.english.ubc.ca/~ddaniels/ From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 10:45 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies > Let's hope, too, that this was just the beginning of the class's work on the > poem -- to be followed in due course by biographical, historical, and other > contextual information (including information on genre traditions, which > were > an aspect of "history" indisputably important to the New Critics) that would > be useful and even necessary. But it's a question of teaching-strategy, I > think. > > Chuck Huttar > Yes, Chuck, you're right, I did write more of an excuse than a defense. It even reads that way to Me. Almost like I'm apologizing for the poststructuralists getting it wrong. But I think the pedagogy and the theory in some cases, at least, weren't all that separable. The impression I was under was that the biographical and historical information you hoped would be provided later wasn't -- that the focus was primarily on the text as it stood alone before the student. I'm just saying this advocacy of isolated readings is (maybe not so much anymore, if at all) and was out there at one time, perhaps even widespread for a little while. Dan -- Again I find it hard to argue with you, all I can do is throw in my two cents based upon my own experience. I would say some professors I've had were every bit as politically motivated as you describe, were possibly even consciously and purposively misrepresenting the New Critical project as you said. And some weren't. I just argued with a prof. in a Carib Lit class over his claim that Rousseau's social theories empowered English Imperialists to subordinate and enslave Africans and Native Americans. I just couldn't buy it in the light of what I'd read of Rousseau. It's a bit like saying, I said, that Nietzsche was responsible for the genocide in Nazi Germany. I mention this because it is parallel to the claims made about the New Critical methodology. But on the other hand I've heard other professors provide examples of New Critical articles that did seem motivated by a specific cultural ideology while it was claiming to be working from an objective, language centered approach. So I would lend some credit to the post structuralist critique of the New Criticism, while not completely buying it. What you deserve here, Dan, is a good example, and I have one, if you'd like me to go into the time -- that I don't mind doing if you'd like to hear it. <> I wasn't so much trying to develop an argument or offer a proof, but was more trying to suggest a possibility. And I don't think I meant to imply that this practice started in America in the 40s -- but I must have sounded that way. A real argument or proof would require the consumption of volumes upon volumes of criticism over a period of about 40 years....even just sticking to the major figures. But the possibility I was suggesting was that post structuralists are presenting a caricature of New Critical rejections of biographical and historical contexts rather than a well developed picture...perhaps a decent caricature, a reasonable caricature, an understandable caricature, but still a caricature... I've read Richard's Principles of Literary Criticism, and the amount of space he devoted to the structure of the human brain (I really, really should browse through the book again before I make comments about it, but I won't :) ) somewhat drove me completely nuts. But it could point in a specific direction for reading strategies, no? You know what I think the problem is? We're literary critics. We study texts. We don't study history, philosophy, structuralism, anthropology, linguistics, the philosophy of language, the biology of the brain, or history, with the depth that people devoted to these fields study them. But we still rely on all these disciplines in practice. For example, I haven't had a single English professor, to this day, talk to me about Derrida favorably or unfavorably that really understood -- or even partially understood -- Martin Heidegger. How can you talk about Derrida without having read Heidegger? And how can you understand Heidegger without having read Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc.? In both published criticism and lectures I'm getting McDerrida, prepackaged, nicely wrapped, and spewed out for mass consumption. I know there are exceptions out there, I just haven't run into too many of them. I guess that's why I call them, "exceptions." :) Again, one escape is "back to the text," a New Critical choice that allows literary critics their own field of expertise while still allowing them to draw from these fields. Now that literary studies has abandoned that tactic, what are we going to become? A subdivision of our college's history and anthropology departments? I think we need to reinvent New Criticism and figure out who we are and what we're doing here... Jim From: [ghmcloone@earthlink.net] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 5:47 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Margaret Thickstun on transatlantic Puritans Margaret Thickstun's post of Feb. 27 on the significance of New England divines has put me in mind of Milton's first Cambridge tutor, William Chappell, who recommended them as reading for divinity students. In his Art of Preaching (1656), Chappell lists works by Thomas Shepard, Thomas Hooker and John Cotton under the heading, "On True Conversion." These famous New Englanders are the only authors he lists under the conversion heading, although his bibliography as a whole ("A Nomenclator of sundry Tracts, . . .) is dominated by English authors. (Both Perry Miller in The New England Mind and Daniel Shea in Spiritual Autobiography in Early America mention Chappell in this regard.) Milton could have known Thomas Shepard as well at Cambridge, whose attendance at Emmanuel partly coincided with Milton's years at Christ's. Shepard surely knew Stephen Basset, who was at Christ's with Milton, and in his autobiography cites Basset by name. The context is one of backsliding, drunkenness, and such "beastly carriage" as to rival that of the most prestigious American schools. George McLoone --- --- ghmcloone@earthlink.net --- EarthLink: It's your Internet. From: Cobelli@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 7:39 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: [METAVIEWS] 012: Galileo's Troubles, by Aritgas, Martivez,and In a message dated 3/7/2001 6:33:55 AM Central Standard Time, jleonard@uwo.ca writes: This is interesting. I once read something similar about Bruno. Does anyone know why he was burnt in 1600? Was it really because he argued for an infinite universe? Bruno did believe in an infinite universe, but I don't think that was one of the really specific reasons for which he was burned. In the trial transcripts there is no mention of his cosmological viewsm but rather his heretical views on the Incarnation and the Trinity. He also posited the existence of multiple inhabited worlds, which seems to prefigure Galilean cosmology in many respects. Bruno was heckled at Oxford and questioned by the Inquisition or saying that the new Copernican cosmology was a certainty, not a hypothesis. Scott Grunow Editor-in-Chief Office of Publications Services University of Illinois at Chicago scottgr@uic.edu ----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from rly-yh05.mx.aol.com (rly-yh05.mail.aol.com [172.18.147.37]) by air-yh02.mail.aol.com (v77_r1.21) with ESMTP; Wed, 07 Mar 2001 07:33:54 -0500 Received: from argyle.richmond.edu (argyle.richmond.edu [141.166.188.18]) by rly-yh05.mx.aol.com (v77_r1.21) with ESMTP; Wed, 07 Mar 2001 07:33:34 -0500 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by argyle.richmond.edu (8.11.2/8.11.2) id f27CSCj17122; Wed, 7 Mar 2001 07:28:12 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <001c01c0a640$625aa7c0$a69a6481@j.leonard> From: "John Leonard" To: Subject: Re: Fwd: [METAVIEWS] 012: Galileo's Troubles, by Aritgas, Martivez,and Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 08:21:41 -0500 Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu >> From: Robert Appelbaum [r_appel@yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 3:24 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies Attention to the text: of course. Even we non-traditionalists need to remember that. (And what good new historicist criticism doesn't pay attention to the text?) In a current cultural studies class, I have students reading, among other things, the February issue of Cosmopolitan. I am finding it a great challenge to get my students to focus on the text--on what the magazine is actually saying, and how it is saying it. It might even have helped to hand out the copy of an article without the magazine's trappings, and see what the students made of the article as a pure piece of writing. In any case, I am very sure that the difference between now and then isn't the prevalence of "context" these days. The difference is in our purposes with the text. Robert Appelbaum English Department University of San Diego San Diego, CA 92110-2492 Visit my home page: www.geocities.com/r_appel/Robert.html And please forgive the commercial intrusion below: --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Personal Address - Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. From: Cobelli@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 7:42 PM To: Milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: critical mythologies A New Critic can start with the text and discover context in the text, such as, an obvious example, Biblical and mythological allusions. A text does not exist in a vacuum, of course, but then you can't force a context or an ideology on a text if there isn't any material in the text to support such context or ideology. Scott Grunow, old-fashioned New Critic Editor-in-Chief Office of Publications Services University of Illinois at Chicago scottgr@uic.edu From: Carol Barton [cbartonphd@earthlink.net] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 6:05 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Intolerance? We have been discussing Milton and toleration. Though he has often been accused as bitterly of misogyny as he has of religious intolerance, I wonder what those who see him as a self-righteous and narrow-minded old crank pushing his own exclusionary agenda make of a statement like this (from _Tetrachordon_)? Citing Paul (that the head of the woman is the man, "he the image and glory of God, she the glory of the man" -- "hee for God onlie, she for God in him" --), Milton argues that "nevertheless, man is not to hold her as a servant, but receives her into a part of that empire which God proclaims him to, though not equally, yet largely, as his own image and glory: for it is no small glory to him, that a creature so like him should be made subject to him. Not but that particular exceptions may have place, if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield: for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or female . . ." And then he goes and makes Dalila in Samson's image, so that one is interchangeable with the other, in word, deed, and infidelity to their marriage vows, as well as fidelity to their respective gods and people! Might we not view his tolerance as extending only to those who have with "upright heart and pure" seen and heeded the inner light? That would also explain how he could in good conscience reject those who still followed (by contemporary local standards) the antichrist. Best to all, Carol Barton From: Dan Knauss [tiresias@juno.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 4:02 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Cc: tiresias@juno.com Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies Timothy--Yes, New Criticism is pretty traditional in seeing the results of sound rhetorical/formal exegesis as indicative of authorial intention. This view is common to Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian thought as Kathy Eden shows in her excellent little book in the Yale series on hermeneutics. Despite this continuity, there is a big difference between ancient and modern hermeneutics stemming from the different ontological status they assume texts to have. Augustine's methods of exegesis resemble the New Critics', but when he talks about textuality and meaning, he sounds very post-structualist. Lately I have ebeen thinking that this difference can be attributed to two sets of assumptions about texts dominant under modern, Protestant, print culture and medieval, Catholic, manuscript culture. We moderns are all wedded to modern textual criticism, which develops out of print culture and Protestantism, especially sola scriptura. Over the past 500 years, textual criticism developed ahead of literary interpretation as a discipline, and as a quasi-scientific practice it aimed to "fix" texts in critical editions that reconstructed "the author's final intentions." Having received these "fixed" texts to work with, literary exegetes initially imitated the same reductive pursuit of objective conclusions. Poststructuralist reactions against this sort of exegesis argue for a reconceptualization of texts as socialized, historical entities. This actually seems like a bit of a throwback to the medieval view of texts and interpretation in manuscript culture, going back to Augustine and the early fathers. While they are quite concerned with the integrity of scripture and other important texts, their texts are (by modern standards) very open and prone to change. Understandably, meaning was not seen as inhering in and depending on a literally "accurate" text to quite the extent that it is now. -Dan Knauss On Tue, 06 Mar 2001 11:38:01 EST Tmsandefur@aol.com writes: > I had a high school English teacher with whom I would frequently > debate the > importance of knowing an author's intentions, or biographical > details, in > understanding a work of literature. I visited him again when I > graduated > from college, and again brought up the subject. He turned around to > his > desk where he has a copy of the Bible, and holding it turned and > said, "You > know, New Criticism is not that new. It's exactly the way we read > the Bible > in this country. It's sola scriptora, and nothing else." > > Strange to say, he's a Catholic himself.... > > Timothy Sandefur > > From: Carol Barton [cbartonphd@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 9:48 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Footnotes to previous discussions Two things that may be of interest, in terms of the injudiciousness of trying to affix a permanent label to any sectarian in our period (let alone Milton himself), and a very useful passage from _Bucer_ on Milton and the concept of "inner light": 1. In _Reason of Church Government (1.6)_, Milton himself says "For the word Puritan seems to be quashed, and all that heretofore were counted such, are now Brownists." A little later in the same section, ("as for those terrible names of sectaries and schismatics . . ."), he refers the prelates to God's "best disciples in the reformation, as at first by those of your tribe they were called Lollards and Hussites, so now by you be termed Puritans and Brownists . . ." 2. From _The Judgment of Martin Bucer_: Certainly if it be in man's discerning to sever providence from chance, I could allege many instances wherein there would appear cause to esteem of me no other than a passive instrument under some power and counsel higher and better than can be human, working to a general good in the whole course of this matter. For that I owe no light or leading received from any man in the discovery of this truth, what time I first undertook it in "the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," and had only the infallible grounds of scripture to be my guide. He who tries the inmost heart and saw with what severe industry and examination of myself I set down every period will be my witness . . . for God it seems intended to prove me, whether I durst alone [and Abdiel-like] take up a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst . . . . (And thank you, Norm, for the kind words.) Best to all, Carol Barton From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 1:21 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies In a message dated Thu, 8 Mar 2001 7:36:13 AM Eastern Standard Time, Dan Knauss writes: << Timothy--Yes, New Criticism is pretty traditional in seeing the results of sound rhetorical/formal exegesis as indicative of authorial intention.>> I'll have to disagree with you there. I think there's some confusion -- a confusion propogated by contemporary critical theory discourse -- about who and what the New Critics are. For example, Richards and Eliot are often cited as examples of New Criticism. As an earlier post pointed out, Richards isn't properly a New Critic. The term "New Critic" derived from a book entitled _The New Criticism_ which came out in 1941, I believe. The author of this book, along with Wimsatt and Beardsley, are the real inheritors of the title "New Critic." It's been applied to others retroactively, but I think this is inaccurate. See, I agree that Eliot and Richards may have defined textual meaning, ultimately, in relationship to the author's intent (the conclusion of Eliot's essay on Hamlet certainly implies this), but the association of authorial intent with textual meaning is Exactly what guys like Wimsatt and Beardsley were against. I actually had a nice undergrad Critical Theory course that maintained these nice distinctions in the early 1990s, and called criticism prior to the 1940s as largely being "Old Historicism," saying it followed methodologies similar to those of the New Critics but defined meaning in terms of authorial intent, etc. The label New Criticism was specifically applied to the authors mentioned above. I think the separation of textual meaning from authorial intent was a good move -- intent is only communicated via text on any level (until we learn telepathy :) ), so textual meaning always boils down to working with a text -- words on a page. But I don't think this move was made with any degree of clarity or deliberation until sometime in the 1940s. Jim From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 3:32 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Rilke Query This may not be the best place to ask, but it's a start... does anyone know of a good, active Rilke listserve? I've gone to some of the obvious list searches and no luck so far... Jim From: Gardner Campbell [gcampbel@mwc.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 11:25 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: New Critical Mythologies Robert Appelbaum writes: "In any case, I am very sure that the difference between now and then isn't the prevalence of 'context' these days. The difference is in our purposes with the text." At first I was tempted to disagree with the first statement, since my own experience in the contemporary academy is that some of my colleagues do regard the text as a necessary evil that allows them more or less free rein to talk about "context," which usually amounts to ideology or politics. No doubt I'm being somewhat reductive, but that's been my experience. I keep hearing the voice of a colleague who informed me, with impressive vigor, that we (meaning English professors) were certainly NOT in this business because we liked stories. To hear her tell it, we're in this business because literary texts give us an especially interesting way (though she did not specify what this was) to discover and talk about the culture of the time in which the text was written. But then it seemed to me that her statement led very naturally to a consideration of Bob's second certainty, that "the difference between now and then ... is in our purposes with the text." So I'll grant Bob his first certainty for the sake of argument and move to the idea of our purposes with the text, and to some questions. What were the pre-structuralists' purposes with the text, and what are the post-structuralists' purposes with the text? Then these follow-up questions: what purposes with the text has post-structuralism (a very slippery term, I know, but again I'm using Bob's certainty as a starting point, unless I'm wrong that "our" means "those of us working in the tradition of post-structuralism") ignored, rejected, or otherwise excluded? What are its reasons for doing so? I don't suppose the following passage is the whole truth about reading or writing, but I think it is a partial truth, and a partial truth that much (but certainly not all) of the post-structuralist tradition overlooks, conveniently or otherwise: "For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, the do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them." Bracketing for a moment the political context in which those words appear, consider them as a proposition about textuality. Is there a place, today, to include such a proposition among the many others we entertain? Writing as someone who was once publicly derided for offering a theological argument at an MLA Milton Society session--and, I should add, accused of scholarly irresponsibility in "limiting my research," although afterward the respondent could not offer me any more sources for my bibliography besides saying "I assume you've read the Civil War pamphlets"--my biggest concern with the many post-structural traditions, some of which I work within, is not so much with what they propose as with what they exclude, often without argument. Gardner Campbell Mary Washington College From: Steve Fallon [fallon.1@nd.edu] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 12:09 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Theory, Practice, and Milton It may be so obvious that no one thinks it needs mentioning, but the "blind" reading of unattributed poems as a pedagogical practice is valuable in large part because it removes a crutch. Does one find a poem successful because one finds it successful or because Shakespeare wrote it? Does one find themes in a poem because they are there or because that is what was thought, according to digests and lecture generalization, in that time and place. On the few occasions that I faced this task as an undergraduate, I felt the nervousness of a person with a blindfolded wine or beer taster whose judgments were stronger than the fineness of palate warranted. Would I really be able to evaluate a poem on its merits without the imprimatur of the poet's reputation? Would I really be able to distinguish a good poem by Keats from a bad one (he did write a good number)? Almost all of us on literature faculties can do this, but I think most of us would admit that there was a time when we couldn't (that skill is one of the crucial components of undergraduate literary education). My experience as a student, like the oft-noted experience of many, is that the New Criticism, already old by my undergraduate years, provided the foundation of classroom practice even if the professor favored historical (or intellectual historical) approaches, as many of mine did. But we did not neglect context, and we did not stay inside the poem. In sum, New Criticism became an almost inevitable component of a salutary ceclecticism in pedagogy. Many have pointed out that New Critical close reading has affinities with deconstructive reading in practice, if not in theory. Jim laments the prevalence of, e.g, the reading of Derrida (or, worse, the packaging of unread Derrida) without a knowledge of his antecedents. It's always better to know more, and one can't finally understand anything without understanding everything (the hermeneutic circle writ large), but I think that Jim would agree that the state of affairs regarding Derrida is less alarming than would be the failure to read the poems. While theory can make us reflective about our reading practices, it can also (probably because of the kind of reading in isolation that Jim laments) lead students, in my limited observation, to miss the text in the rush to have it exemplify what the theory predicts it will exemplify. I have unfortunately seen students after an immersion in theory move from agile and perceptive readers of complex texts to programmatic and predictable readers. (Of course I realize that an overreliance on, e.g., a limited background in intellectual history can also lead to programmatic readings.) I used to be a bit sheepish about coming from the last generation of Ph.D.'s not required to take theory courses and not asked to devote a great deal of time to critical and theoretical reading in weekly syllabus assignments (as opposed to rigorous standards for contextual and critical reading for term papers). But now I'm not so sure. I think that I was well served by the extra time on the texts. One last point--it might give one pause in considering Derrida to note that his writing is not taken as seriously in philosophy departments as it is in literature departments. This may be owing to his concentration on texts rather than arguments--philosophy depts. are far more interested in the latter than the former, often to their disadvantage--but it may also have something to do with the viability of the arguments. The problem that Jim mentions (we poach what we want from phil., history, anthro., etc.) is real but it is inevitable and shared. I often envy those with advanced degrees in philosophy their ability to break down, lay out, and evaluate arguments--as a discipline, we lag far behind there. At the same time, I'm often dismayed by philosophers' tin ears when they read, their failure to note the presence (and implications) of irony and indirection in philosophical texts in a rush to reduce them to the language of formal logic. I realize that I am something of a dinosaur, but it no longer bothers me as much as it once did; I tell my graduate students up front in a nod to truth-in-advertising. As Kerrigan has pointed out, along with others I believe, Milton may have attracted fewer post-structuralist readings than other figures of his stature in large part because Milton was there first; Miltonists have long seen in Milton the kinds of aporia, self-cancelling, and contradiction that poststructuralist theory points us toward. More recent theory may make us more attentive to some of these effects, but it is a matter, I think, of difference in degree of things in kind the same. Steve Fallon From: John Hale [john.hale@stonebow.otago.ac.nz] Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 8:50 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Milton and the weather Has anyone noticed references in Milton himself or among his correspondents and associates to the English weather - not as being its *usual* beastly cold / dark / wet self, but as being even *worse than usual.* I've been reading a book on climate-change over recorded-history time, from which I learn that 1550-1680 was *unusually cold on several mainlands and certainly in western Europe. It is known as the "Little Ice-Age," because during it the glaciers expanded once more. I am keen to hear whether Milton or people he knew had any sense of the longer-term weather patterns, and especially whether Milton knew people who were systematically recording temperatures and so forth. Is this an activity of Hartlib's network? John Hale From: durocher@stolaf.edu Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 12:14 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: [METAVIEWS] 012: Galileo's Troubles, by Aritgas, Martivez,and > > > > Roy Flannagan wrote: > > > Shea > > Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > > Precedence: bulk > > Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > > > So, Galileo was also in trouble for saying that sense impressions are = > > subjective! > > > > Roy Flannagan > > > > I was on sabbatical in 1984 when I read a review in, I think, TLS of a book > which argued that Galileo was in trouble not so much because of his astronomy > but because his physics interfered with the doctrine of transubstantiation. > Presumably, the document Roy mentions in his letter was not then available. I > have long lost the review. Does any one know the book? > Derek Wood. > > Dear Derek, Many of us know the book as _Galileo Heretic_ by Pietro Redondi (Princeton, 1987). Scholar that you are, Derek, you no doubt read the Italian original _Galileo eretico_ published by Giulio Einaudi in 1983. Ciao, Rich DuRocher