From: Yaakov Akiva Mascetti [mascety@012.net.il] Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 5:04 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: R: Pubetenian This message uses a character set that is not supported by the Internet Service. To view the original message content, open the attached message. If the text doesn't display correctly, save the attachment to disk, and then open it using a viewer that can display the original character set. From: Dan Knauss [tiresias@juno.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 12:42 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: The Anti-Milton Controversy Chuck, That's no problem--email lists aren't a big priority and they do tend to fill up the old inbox. I'd love to hear what you have to say in response another time, or I can just wait for your article to come out. I recall that you had planned to have one out a few years ago (co-authored with someone else?) on the Magdalen Metaphysicals that made soem Lewis-Eliot connections. I haven't been able to find a citation for it in MLA, unfortunately. Is it available? -Dan On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:10:44 -0400 huttar writes: > [Moderator's Note: My apologies to Chuck that this message was > delayed. - KC] > > Dan, Sorry to be a bit late in responding. I got behind > in reading > e-mail, just saw your letter, and now (midnight Saturday) am on the > verge of > leaving for vacation and have no time to give your comments the > attention they > deserve (I mean that in a very positive way!). I will try to respond > more > fully ASAP. Thanks for your patience. > > Chuck ________________________________________________________________ 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: Yaakov Akiva Mascetti [mascety@012.net.il] Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 12:16 PM To: Milton List Subject: Pubetenian Greetings to all. I have lately been reading texts printed in the late 1680s and early 1690s, and have bumped into a word that does not appear in the OED, nor in any remote corner of the WWW: "pubetenian". The context is monetary: the adjective is used in relation to a "George." A "pubetenian George". Can anyone help me understand the meaning of this word? Regards, Yaakov Mascetti From: Dr. Carol Barton [cbartonphd@earthlink.net] Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 8:20 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Mysterious sex and turning <3.0.5.32.20010723120535.00b34100@facstaff.richmond.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu This response to Louis Schwartz will be difficult to follow without at least part of the original, so I am including an excerpted copy below. Yes, Louis, it is certainly true that Adam didn't fall (solely) because of lust; like Eve, he fell ultimately because of his lack of faith in God. I have argued previously (defending Milton against charges of misogyny) that Adam has three opportunities to engage in imitatio Christi: he could intercede on Eve's behalf ("aw, Dad, go easy on her"), trusting that God knows and understands how much he loves her, and will forgive her her trespasses. He could offer to die in her place. Or he could say "thy will be done," in full faith that God would find an equitable resolution that wouldn't punish him for Eve's transgression by depriving him of her sweet converse. He does none of the three. Driven by terrestrial needs (sexual, pyschological, mortal) rather than spiritual ones (and by this I mean the whole gamut of human needs, vs. the soul's need for union with God), he is transported by an outside, a "seems" rather than an "is," a shadow on the cave wall called amor that is merely a reflection of caritas, itself a reflection of agape. His eyes turn earthward instead of heavenward, self-ward rather than God-ward. For a unique millisecond, so do Christ's--just once, when he is still the very human Jesus, in Gethsemane: "Father, let this cup pass from me . . . ." But Christ trusts in the Lord to see him through his trial; like his errant spouse, Adam demonstrates no faith in God's love for him, no trust in God to "make it right"--both see a problem, and a facile solution, and grab at it without thinking about it. Compare their actions to Jesus's in the wilderness in _PR_ (please see my article in EMLS for a more cogent discussion): "we are starving," says the devil: "there can be no wrong in feeding us." Persuasive, except that Jesus knows that to do the devil's bidding in any form is wrong, and a betrayal of his heavenly father--so there must be something wrong about this, too. That is the point of the temptations, all of the temptations, in the desert as well as the Garden: the one thing all three of God's progeny know is that God said not to do that. We don't want our children (particularly those who are still too naive to understand the reasoning behind the prohibition) questioning dicta like "don't take candy from strangers": we want them to trust us enough to take it on faith that if we say something is wrong, or bad for them, we have their best interests at heart, whether they can see the harm in the prohibition or not. Both Eve and Adam demonstrate a consummate lack of trust in the Father's benevolence, and an absolute primacy of self, when they sin. The malus is only symbolic of that "one easie Prohibition" ("God said not to do this") that is all they need to know. Like Faustus, the worldly-wiser they become, the less enlightened they are spiritually. In Milton's version of the story, it is Eve who saves humankind first, by offering to die for Adam, though her sacrifice is incomplete, because that death is already her sentence, and part of her atonement for her own sin. It moves them both toward faith in Christ's mercy, and magnifies the full import of his willingness to die for all of us on the Cross. Milton thus makes Eve the first hero of _Paradise Lost_. Not bad, for an old Puritan misogynist with a "canned" story line to contend with! Please forgive my lack of direct citation for the moment: I am over my head in cardboard boxes, attempting to restore order to the moving company's unique recreation of Chaos. Best to all, Carol Barton Excerpts from precedent posts: > At 08:54 PM 7/20/01 -0400, Carol Barton wrote: > > > > >I think Milton's point is that sexual appetite elevated to primacy over all > >other delights and appetites (particularly the proper desire for wisdom > >about God and his universe) is a dangerous thing, even in one as innocent as > >Adam is at the moment of Raphael's admonishment. Recall that what the angel > >counters is "What transports thee--an outside?"--suggesting that Adam's > >genitals are in danger of ruling his head (which we all know will be the > >basis of his downfall, and, uh, the curse of fallen masculinity ever > >thereafter). Adam and Eve know desire, but not lust; amorous dalliance, > >sexual coyness, but not manipulation; the mystery of a union to which the > >conjunction of body parts and stimulation of the libido are but ancillary, > >not the be-all and end-all of the experience. Adam's desire for Eve in > >totality, in body, mind, and spirit, as the physical expression of his > >all-encompassing love for her, is a healthy thing. Adam's worship of Eve > >(such that he places his need for her companionship over his duty to God) is > >a very unhealthy thing, and it is foreshadowed by this scene, in which he > >tells Raphael that when he is overwhelmed by her beauty, nothing else > >matters to him. > > > > But for Adam to be overwhelmed by her "beauty" is not the same as his being > overwhelmed by her "outside," or by "lust," as he tactfully tries to > explain to the angel a few lines later. It isn't "lust" that makes him sin > with Eve in taking the fruit from her and eating it. I agree with Carol > that he and Eve do not experience "lust" before the fall. I also think > that there's nothing fallen in their desire for each other. There is, > however, in that desire a trial of their obedience, and the trial works > because of the bewildering force of desire itself. This trial is part of > the larger trial of edenic life. If all they had to do was refrain from > eating a fruit there would be no trial (or not enough of one). There are > all sorts of things in edenic experience that make of that one prohibition > trying. One of those things is sexual desire (not lust and not confined to > the genitals or the "outside" of one's partner--the distinction is > important, and it's one Milton would make regarding proper and improper > post-lapsarian sex as well). Other things that conspire to make a trial of > Eden include the fact that Satan doesn't really have all that much trouble > getting in, the wandering overabundance of the place itself, the > instability of the hierarchies that govern the place, the business about > eating fruit and rising up the material ladder, the fact that they have a > thirst for knowledge and are confronted with various mysteries (the motion > of the stars, each other, angelic sexuality, etc.). All of these things in > one way or another affect the way they ultimately relate to the fruit, its > name, its nature, and the prohibition surrounding it. > > Adam doesn't fall because of lust. He never says to himself, "I better eat > it too or no more nookie." Carol puts it just right at the end of the > above post: "he places his need for her *companionship* above his duty to > God [my emphasis]." The companionship includes the pleasurable and the > procreative aspects of sexual activity along with a bunch of other things. > He does not want to do with out the two things I've listed. He can't *do* > one of the main things he's supposed to do (father a race) without the > latter of them, but what he can't stand losing his *her*, and there's more > to her than those things. > > I'd add that he puts his need for her before his duty to *her* as well. > Had he turned to God at that point and said "Take me instead" the story > would have come out quite differently. According to the logic of what God > declares in Book III, he would have, in choosing to die in her place, > satisfied the "rigid satisfaction, death for death." This would have made > the Son's sacrafice unnecessary. An odd point, perhaps, for a Christian > poem to make, but I think it follows inevitably from the way Milton sets up > the story. In Book III God already knows he won't succeed in figuring this > out and doing it, but that doesn't mean he wasn't free to, nor did he lack > the capacity, the moral imagination, as it were (all this, of course, only > makes sense if we accept the logic of the rest of God's speech in Book > III). He just didn't exercise his full capacities in the moment. He > acted, instead, in a panic, a fear of loss grown out of his powerful and > desirous love for the whole of her. He desire befuddled him, made him > conclude on the simplest way to remain attached to her, or at least the > first one that occurs to him. I also think Milton means us to compare > Adam's failure to make a sacraficial gesture with Eve's offer to do so in > Book 10.930-36. The circumstances differ. Eve, already herself culpable, > couldn't atone for both her sin and Adam's, but it's this offer that > "wrought/ Commisseration" (939-40) in Adam and allowed the reconciliation > that let them begin to care for each other again. > > > Louis > > ======================================= > Louis Schwartz > English Department > University of Richmond > Richmond, VA 23173 > > (804) 289-8315 > lschwart@richmond.edu From: Tom Bishop [tgb2@po.cwru.edu] Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 2:04 PM Gecko/20010131 Netscape6/6.01 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Mysterious sex and turning References: <3.0.5.32.20010723120535.00b34100@facstaff.richmond.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu This seems an appropriate juncture to remind Miltonists of A.D. Hope's contribution to the debate on the mysteries of sex and companionship in Paradise: Paradise Saved (another version of the Fall) Adam, indignant, would not eat with Eve, They say, and she was driven from his side. Watching the gates close on her tears, his pride Upheld him, though he could not help but grieve And climbed the wall, because his loneliness Pined for her lonely figure in the dust: Lo, there were two! God who is more than just Sent her a helpmeet in that wilderness. Day after day he watched them in the waste Grow old, breaking the harsh unfriendly ground, Bearing their children, till at last they died; While Adam, whose fellow God had not replaced, Lived on immortal, young, with virtue crowned, Sterile and impotent and justified. From: huttar [huttar@hope.edu] Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2001 12:11 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: RE: The Anti-Milton Controversy [Moderator's Note: My apologies to Chuck that this message was delayed. - KC] Dan, Sorry to be a bit late in responding. I got behind in reading e-mail, just saw your letter, and now (midnight Saturday) am on the verge of leaving for vacation and have no time to give your comments the attention they deserve (I mean that in a very positive way!). I will try to respond more fully ASAP. Thanks for your patience. Chuck >===== Original Message From milton-l@richmond.edu ===== >Chuck, >Are you suggesting that Lewis's conversion (ca. 1929-1931) led him to be >more friendly with Eliot (who had joined the Church of England in 1927)? >I don't see how that can possibly be the case. The May 23, 1935 letter to >Paul Elmer More that I referred to earlier is positively livid about >Eliot's part in dealing a "death-wound" to European civilization. > >(In it, Lewis says he regards "Eliot's work as a very great evil;" he [and much more (which I've saved, for later response)] From: Duncan Kinder [duncan@neoclassicists.net] Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 2:50 PM To: Milton List Subject: Milton and Islam This message uses a character set that is not supported by the Internet Service. To view the original message content, open the attached message. If the text doesn't display correctly, save the attachment to disk, and then open it using a viewer that can display the original character set. From: Harvey Wheeler [verulan@mindspring.com] Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 12:13 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Cc: carlb@shore.net Subject: Re: Latin "verse style?" Thank you Carl; The question of Bacon's various encoding devices has been much debated. Remember that he completed his education in France and was a member of Elizabeth's intelligence operation. Some at least of his encoding experiments date from that experience and the intelligence reports he sent back to Elizabeth (see Lisa Jardine, Hostage to Fortune for quotations from Court letters). I think this "intelligence" attitude was one of the factors - or rather attitudes - Bacon carried over into his investigations of the secrets of nature and his search for a way of expresssing them that avoided the misrepresentation involved in using vernacular English to express the laws of nature. I have tried to explore this in an article on Bacon's semiotics in the current SEMIOTICA. Bacon was more of a deist than is often recognized. Valerius Terminus tried to explain this, though it is characteristically obscure. He believed that it was permissible to use science to investigate God's physical creations: (in effect use his new "logic machine" to decipher the laws God wrote for nature. He said it is not permissible to use science to investigate God's spiritual secrets (a la the First Tree of Eden) The dualism of British empiricism followed. Milton explains in his writings on pedagogy he is a Baconian. I do not know whether his Baconianism, and the above distincitions, help explain his approach in Paradise Lost. I've assumed they do. This raises the question: what was Milton's audience? I have assumed it was the intelligencia - mainly to cleanse the dogmas of the Protestantian world from its Augustinian residues - he was in part attempting to liberate Biblical interpretation from the Augustinian paradigm. But as I've said in an earlier post, I come to Milton from Verulamia and I would appreciate comments from others here. I'd be especially grateful for criticisms of my earlier post on Milton's Anti-Theodicy Theology, which attempts an application of the above to the theological structure of Paradise Lost. Many thanks, HW -----Original Message----- From: Carl Bellinger To: milton-l@richmond.edu Date: Monday, July 23, 2001 4:27 AM Subject: Re: Latin "verse style?" >Very grateful for the discussions of Bacon. How about Bacon's "acroamatic" >style? any connection with Milton's plea that his Muse might "fit audience >find though few?" > >If the original question, "I'd like to know if i'm correct why Milton wrote >Paradise Lost in Latin Verse Style" was headed more in the direction of the >reputed Latinity of the language of Paradise Lost, Alastair Fowler's >discussion, p 15 ff, in his edition of PL would be one place to start. >Others on this list could provide many other references. > >I'm not sure if the metrical/rhythmical character of the unrhymed verse of >PL, its prosody, has ever itself been labeled as specifically Latinate... >Does >anyone recall? > >-Carl Bellinger > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Harvey Wheeler" >To: >Cc: >Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 11:40 AM >Subject: Latin > > > > I can't say about Milton personally but it was common to have one's >serious > > and advanced writings published in Latin. Bacon explained further that > > demotic English could not do justice to his theoretical writings, but >would > > lead readers to assume they understood his thought though it was >completely > > beyond the comprension of the ordinary English reader. > > > > Now this may not apply to Milton (I think it does; I've found his inner > > thought very difficult to plumb) but it does apply to Bacon. The first > > English translator of Novum Organum (Robert Ellis) misunderstood Bacon's > > deeper ur-phenomenology because his own understanding was faulty, and he > > made some crucial translation errors that have misled scholars using only > > the English. > > > > Bacon was right; Milton was an avowed Baconian. > > > > HW > > -----Original Message----- > > From: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > > Date: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 3:39 AM > > > > > > >2001 05:22:00 PDT > > >Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 05:22:00 -0700 (PDT) > > >From: Washington Wanvvar > > >Subject: Why Milton Wrote Paradise Lost in latin Verse Style? > > >To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > >In-Reply-To: > > >MIME-Version: 1.0 > > >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > >Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > > >Precedence: bulk > > >Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > > > > >I'd like to know if i'm correct why Milton wrote > > >Paradise Lost in Latin Verse Style. It would be > > >because of the sonority or because of the time he > > >lived whose people could understand better latin?? > > >Please Help me!!! > > > > > >__________________________________________________ > > >Do You Yahoo!? > > >Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail > > >http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > > > > > > > > From: Louis Schwartz [lschwart@richmond.edu] Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 12:06 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Mysterious sex and turning At 08:54 PM 7/20/01 -0400, Carol Barton wrote: > >I think Milton's point is that sexual appetite elevated to primacy over all >other delights and appetites (particularly the proper desire for wisdom >about God and his universe) is a dangerous thing, even in one as innocent as >Adam is at the moment of Raphael's admonishment. Recall that what the angel >counters is "What transports thee--an outside?"--suggesting that Adam's >genitals are in danger of ruling his head (which we all know will be the >basis of his downfall, and, uh, the curse of fallen masculinity ever >thereafter). Adam and Eve know desire, but not lust; amorous dalliance, >sexual coyness, but not manipulation; the mystery of a union to which the >conjunction of body parts and stimulation of the libido are but ancillary, >not the be-all and end-all of the experience. Adam's desire for Eve in >totality, in body, mind, and spirit, as the physical expression of his >all-encompassing love for her, is a healthy thing. Adam's worship of Eve >(such that he places his need for her companionship over his duty to God) is >a very unhealthy thing, and it is foreshadowed by this scene, in which he >tells Raphael that when he is overwhelmed by her beauty, nothing else >matters to him. > But for Adam to be overwhelmed by her "beauty" is not the same as his being overwhelmed by her "outside," or by "lust," as he tactfully tries to explain to the angel a few lines later. It isn't "lust" that makes him sin with Eve in taking the fruit from her and eating it. I agree with Carol that he and Eve do not experience "lust" before the fall. I also think that there's nothing fallen in their desire for each other. There is, however, in that desire a trial of their obedience, and the trial works because of the bewildering force of desire itself. This trial is part of the larger trial of edenic life. If all they had to do was refrain from eating a fruit there would be no trial (or not enough of one). There are all sorts of things in edenic experience that make of that one prohibition trying. One of those things is sexual desire (not lust and not confined to the genitals or the "outside" of one's partner--the distinction is important, and it's one Milton would make regarding proper and improper post-lapsarian sex as well). Other things that conspire to make a trial of Eden include the fact that Satan doesn't really have all that much trouble getting in, the wandering overabundance of the place itself, the instability of the hierarchies that govern the place, the business about eating fruit and rising up the material ladder, the fact that they have a thirst for knowledge and are confronted with various mysteries (the motion of the stars, each other, angelic sexuality, etc.). All of these things in one way or another affect the way they ultimately relate to the fruit, its name, its nature, and the prohibition surrounding it. Adam doesn't fall because of lust. He never says to himself, "I better eat it too or no more nookie." Carol puts it just right at the end of the above post: "he places his need for her *companionship* above his duty to God [my emphasis]." The companionship includes the pleasurable and the procreative aspects of sexual activity along with a bunch of other things. He does not want to do with out the two things I've listed. He can't *do* one of the main things he's supposed to do (father a race) without the latter of them, but what he can't stand losing his *her*, and there's more to her than those things. I'd add that he puts his need for her before his duty to *her* as well. Had he turned to God at that point and said "Take me instead" the story would have come out quite differently. According to the logic of what God declares in Book III, he would have, in choosing to die in her place, satisfied the "rigid satisfaction, death for death." This would have made the Son's sacrafice unnecessary. An odd point, perhaps, for a Christian poem to make, but I think it follows inevitably from the way Milton sets up the story. In Book III God already knows he won't succeed in figuring this out and doing it, but that doesn't mean he wasn't free to, nor did he lack the capacity, the moral imagination, as it were (all this, of course, only makes sense if we accept the logic of the rest of God's speech in Book III). He just didn't exercise his full capacities in the moment. He acted, instead, in a panic, a fear of loss grown out of his powerful and desirous love for the whole of her. He desire befuddled him, made him conclude on the simplest way to remain attached to her, or at least the first one that occurs to him. I also think Milton means us to compare Adam's failure to make a sacraficial gesture with Eve's offer to do so in Book 10.930-36. The circumstances differ. Eve, already herself culpable, couldn't atone for both her sin and Adam's, but it's this offer that "wrought/ Commisseration" (939-40) in Adam and allowed the reconciliation that let them begin to care for each other again. Also, to respond, in part, to Boyd Berry's brief remark about "turning," it is Adam's turning *away* from Eve after her first gesture of care towards him that inspires Eve's imitatio Christi. After he responds to her gesture at 863 with his awful "Out of my sight, thou serpent" speech (the invention of misogyny), the narrator tells us that "he added not, and from her turned" (909). But she refused to be repulsed, and her words turn him back. The enjambment of "wrought/ Commisseration" gives us that turning very beautifully. And it's emphasized by the next enjmabment as well: "his heart relents/ Towards her." Louis ======================================= Louis Schwartz English Department University of Richmond Richmond, VA 23173 (804) 289-8315 lschwart@richmond.edu From: Carl Bellinger [carlb@shore.net] Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 11:34 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Latin "verse style?" Very grateful for the discussions of Bacon. How about Bacon's "acroamatic" style? any connection with Milton's plea that his Muse might "fit audience find though few?" If the original question, "I'd like to know if i'm correct why Milton wrote Paradise Lost in Latin Verse Style" was headed more in the direction of the reputed Latinity of the language of Paradise Lost, Alastair Fowler's discussion, p 15 ff, in his edition of PL would be one place to start. Others on this list could provide many other references. I'm not sure if the metrical/rhythmical character of the unrhymed verse of PL, its prosody, has ever itself been labeled as specifically Latinate... Does anyone recall? -Carl Bellinger ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harvey Wheeler" To: Cc: Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 11:40 AM Subject: Latin > I can't say about Milton personally but it was common to have one's serious > and advanced writings published in Latin. Bacon explained further that > demotic English could not do justice to his theoretical writings, but would > lead readers to assume they understood his thought though it was completely > beyond the comprension of the ordinary English reader. > > Now this may not apply to Milton (I think it does; I've found his inner > thought very difficult to plumb) but it does apply to Bacon. The first > English translator of Novum Organum (Robert Ellis) misunderstood Bacon's > deeper ur-phenomenology because his own understanding was faulty, and he > made some crucial translation errors that have misled scholars using only > the English. > > Bacon was right; Milton was an avowed Baconian. > > HW > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > Date: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 3:39 AM > > > >2001 05:22:00 PDT > >Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 05:22:00 -0700 (PDT) > >From: Washington Wanvvar > >Subject: Why Milton Wrote Paradise Lost in latin Verse Style? > >To: milton-l@richmond.edu > >In-Reply-To: > >MIME-Version: 1.0 > >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > >Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > >Precedence: bulk > >Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > > >I'd like to know if i'm correct why Milton wrote > >Paradise Lost in Latin Verse Style. It would be > >because of the sonority or because of the time he > >lived whose people could understand better latin?? > >Please Help me!!! > > > >__________________________________________________ > >Do You Yahoo!? > >Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail > >http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > > > > From: Carol Barton [cbartonphd@earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 8:54 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Mysterious sex I found the following comment from Roy Flannagan both interesting and telling, and I think it strikes closer to home than some of the earlier ruminations on sexuality in Eden: "we also need," says Roy, " to look at that prelapsarian desire or commotion strange (8.531) that Adam feels before the Fall, the same thing that causes Wisdom in Eve's presence as Adam perceives it to lose "discountenanced" (8.533). That looks pretty sinful to me, even before the Fall, and it causes the angel to frown at Adam. There is danger in sex from the beginning, even though Adam has not acted on his lust, yet." "Sex before the Fall may be dangerous," he continues, "though, if we do picture it, it > should be better than what we purchase from a harlot or write insincere > sonnets about, and it should be better than something that just causes a > commotion in our loins. It has to be better than fallen sexuality. Just > look at how horrible Adam and Eve's first sexual encounter after the Fall > is (more like seizure and mutual rape than love-making)." I think Milton's point is that sexual appetite elevated to primacy over all other delights and appetites (particularly the proper desire for wisdom about God and his universe) is a dangerous thing, even in one as innocent as Adam is at the moment of Raphael's admonishment. Recall that what the angel counters is "What transports thee--an outside?"--suggesting that Adam's genitals are in danger of ruling his head (which we all know will be the basis of his downfall, and, uh, the curse of fallen masculinity ever thereafter). Adam and Eve know desire, but not lust; amorous dalliance, sexual coyness, but not manipulation; the mystery of a union to which the conjunction of body parts and stimulation of the libido are but ancillary, not the be-all and end-all of the experience. Adam's desire for Eve in totality, in body, mind, and spirit, as the physical expression of his all-encompassing love for her, is a healthy thing. Adam's worship of Eve (such that he places his need for her companionship over his duty to God) is a very unhealthy thing, and it is foreshadowed by this scene, in which he tells Raphael that when he is overwhelmed by her beauty, nothing else matters to him. Therein lies the danger. Ask Samson. Best to all, Carol Barton From: Boyd M Berry [bberry@mail1.vcu.edu] Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 10:29 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Cc: Gardner Campbell Subject: Re: Sex in PL I may have missed it, but I don't recall any comment in this string on what the voice weens, that Adam didn't turn. I've always wondered what sort of person would ween that he did turn. This odd weening, together with the four "no" "know's" at the conclusion of the passage suggest a kind of male reticence not commonly commented upon. Boyd Berry From: Carl Bellinger [carlb@shore.net] Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 12:24 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Re: Latin... oops Appologies: I didn't notice in responding to the "Latin" thread that the posts from Mario DiCesare and Eugene Hill and DiCesare were part of that thread. (Catching up on my email I was using the subject field rather than the date to sequence my reading.) Carl ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eugene D Hill" To: Cc: Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 8:23 AM Subject: Re: > Dear Colleagues, > > Professor Di Cesare is correct. One commentator who questions the > alleged hyper-Latinity of Milton's style would be Fowler in the > Introduction to his Longman edition of PL. > > With good wishes . . . > > Eugene Hill > S. Hadley, Mass. > > On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Mario DiCesare wrote: > > > Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 07:33:13 -0700 > > From: Mario DiCesare > > Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > To: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > > Subject: Re: > > > > Dear Washington Wanvvar, > > > > I assume you mean a Latinate style. In any case, I did an investigation > > years ago into the allegedly Latinate style of PL -- *Adventrous Song* > > in Shawcross and Emma, *Language and Style in Milton* (published in the > > late 1960s, for the tercentenary -- and concluded that it is not so much > > dominant in the poem as it is a means of enhancing meaning at crucial > > points. These conclusions were not major in my essay; I reached them > > while considering John Shawcross's invitation to contribute to the > > tercentenary volume. Others have agreed, I think but don't have > > references at hand, that Milton's style is not predominatly Latinate. > > > > M. Di Cesare > > > > owner-milton-l@richmond.edu wrote: > > > > > > 2001 05:22:00 PDT > > > Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 05:22:00 -0700 (PDT) > > > From: Washington Wanvvar > > > Subject: Why Milton Wrote Paradise Lost in latin Verse Style? > > > To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > > In-Reply-To: > > > MIME-Version: 1.0 > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > > Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu > > > Precedence: bulk > > > Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu > > > > > > I'd like to know if i'm correct why Milton wrote > > > Paradise Lost in Latin Verse Style. It would be > > > because of the sonority or because of the time he > > > lived whose people could understand better latin?? > > > Please Help me!!! > > > > > > __________________________________________________ > > > Do You Yahoo!? > > > Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail > > > http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ > > > > > > From: Dan Knauss [tiresias@juno.com] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 3:02 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: The Anti-Milton Controversy Chuck, Are you suggesting that Lewis's conversion (ca. 1929-1931) led him to be more friendly with Eliot (who had joined the Church of England in 1927)? I don't see how that can possibly be the case. The May 23, 1935 letter to Paul Elmer More that I referred to earlier is positively livid about Eliot's part in dealing a "death-wound" to European civilization. (In it, Lewis says he regards "Eliot's work as a very great evil;" he rejects Eliot's claims of humanism and classicism; he calls Eliot, with his "poems of disintegration," one of the great "literary traitors to humanity" who uses the same excuses as Juvenal, Wycherly, and Byron to excuse Joyce's and his own "pornography." Most men who read The Waste Land are "infected with chaos;" it is "infernal poetry," and Eliot's criticism reflects all the same vices because he has "sympathy with depraved poets (Marlowe, Jonson, Webster)." Most "assuredly he is one of the enemy: and all the more dangerous because he is sometimes disguised as a friend." Then Lewis complains of how, as an Englishman, it is especially hard to think well of Eliot since he "stole upon us, a foreigner and a neutral, while we were at war--obtained, I have my wonders how, a job in the Bank of England--and became (am I wrong) the advance guard of the invasion since carried out by his natural friends and allies, the Steins and Pounds and hoc genus omne, the Parisian riff-raff of denationalized Irishmen and Americans who have perhaps given Western Europe her death wound." George Sayer--a former student and friend of Lewis's for 29 years--writes that these opinions in the letter to More were consistently aired by Lewis at Oxford. He recalls in his biography that Lewis thought "Eliot had done more than any other writer of free verse to corrupt other poets and to lead the British poetry-reading public astray." Sayer also connects this attitude with Lewis's anti-American bias.) It seems clear enough that after Eliot's profession of royalism, classicism, and anglo-catholicism, and despite their common faith, Lewis saw Eliot as part of a faction in the church that he rejected. Lewis was consistent in this view, and he was deeply invested in it. His first book, A Pilgrim's Regress (1934), satirizes Eliot as "Mr. Angular," one of "three pale men" who want to make Christianity into a "high-brow, Chelsea . . . fad." This is what Lewis apparently thought Eliot, Jacques Maritain and others connected with Neo-Scholasticism were up to. In a 1934 letter to a Cistercian nun, he warned her that Neo-Scholasticism was a "fad" that Eliot and Maritain were "running." The idea that Lewis was hostile to Eliot up to the 40s-50s is not contradicted, to my knowledge, by any witnesses, biographers, etc. Rather, there is overwhelming evidence that Lewis was consistently hostile to Eliot, at least through the 30s. My guess is that what kept Lewis going was Eliot's abiding public esteem and Lewis's frustration over failing to provoke Eliot into a public debate that would take him down a few pegs. At Oxford and Cambridge there are unpublished letters between the two men that show Lewis did request a debate in 1930, and it was rejected. In 1931 Lewis sent an ms. criticizing the critics (Eliot and Tillyard) to Eliot at the Criterion. Eliot sat on it for months, and Lewis wrote to ask about it after 6 months. Eliot continued to sit on the article for a while longer before officially rejecting it. For 30 years, Lewis was pursuing the opportunity to take Eliot on, but Eliot never gave him the chance. I think it is a safe bet that Lewis had a hard time not attributing Eliot's disengagement to the kinds of personal vices outlines in the letter to More. I'm not so sure about the 40s--Lewis may have been cooling off by then. A 22 Feb. 1943 letter to Eliot cuts both ways: "I hope the fact that I find myself often contradicting you in print gives no offence; it is a kind of tribute to you -- whenever I fall foul of some wide-spread contemporary view about literature I always seem to find that you have expressed it most clearly. One aims at the officers first in meeting an attack!" I do not know that larger context of this quote, however. I think it may come from a 1943 series of letters between Lewis and Eliot regarding Lewis's reference to Eliot in A Preface to Paradise Lost. I have not seen these letters, and I wonder if they might establish some clarifying context to the meeting between Lewis and Eliot in 1945. Dan Knauss On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:16:12 -0400 huttar writes: > Yes, in broad terms, it is true; more precisely, (a) it happened > after the two > met for the first time, a meeting that was arranged by Charles > Williams; (b) > it had already begun happening much earlier, even before Lewis met > Williams in > the mid-1930s. There is abundant evidence in what Lewis says in > print about > Eliot from about 1930 on -- if it's read carefully (i.e., without > the > preconception of "hostility." Hostility certainly did exist in the > 20s, before > either became Christian. All of this is covered in greater detail > in an > article I have forthcoming in TSLL. Meanwhile, take a look at my > "Lewis's > Prufrockian Vision in The Great Divorce," published in _Mythlore_ a > couple of > years ago. > > Best regards, > > Chuck Huttar ________________________________________________________________ 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: Gardner Campbell [gcampbel@mwc.edu] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:26 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Sex (again) id f6JISg728511 Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu I sure don't want to hold up anyone's progress on the dissertation, but I must leap (or fall) in one more time in response to this assertion of Kent's: Gardner Campbell, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English Department of English, Linguistics, and Speech Mary Washington College 1301 College Avenue Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401 (540) 654-1542 >>> krl3@duke.edu 07/18/01 03:47PM >>> In their purity, Adam and Eve cannot withhold or reserve a part of themselves from their partner. GC: This is a strong assumption that Milton's wayfaring text does not support, as is clear from the prelapsarian colloquy (argument, really) in the separation scene, as well as from Eve's departure during the astronomy discussion in Book 8. To withhold or reserve part of oneself, without deceit or rancor or cunning, can help (or perhaps is necessary to) *constitute* relationships in Paradise, as well as where we wander today. It's at least a chief ingredient of fruitful conversation, in the sense that I am perfectly candid but not professing all of me all at once in lieu of listening and considering what my partner is saying. Again, I think one of the problems here, as many have noted, is the *a priori* assumption of what purity must be, and therefore "is," in *Paradise Lost*. I think Milton teaches us to enlarge our sense of purity, alterity, love. What else is sweet reluctant amorous delay, if not a certain withholding or reservation? Having said that, I should also (and paradoxically) reiterate that there's no reason sexual desire cannot be understood as a particular manifestation of total desiring. All best, Gardner Campbell From: Louis Schwartz [lschwart@richmond.edu] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 1:26 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Cain as "Bad Seed" Roy Flannagan wrote: >I liked Louis Schwartz's argument, "Don't blame it on Cain," and >his corresponding argument that Abel does not seem to be tainted by sin >because he's a good guy. But I won't give up completely on the theology of >the transmission of original sin, that carrying it is something like >carrying the bad seed (the good seed, in Miltonic terms, is always Christ). I'm glad my little speculation fell on receptive ears, and I'm enjoying this exchange of ideas immensely. A bit of clarification: I didn't mean to say (and I apologize if my language was unclear in the first place) that Abel was untainted by O.S. He was tainted by it, certainly, according to any Christian reading of the scripture. That, however, didn't make him act evilly (at least not in the instance Genesis tells us of). He either had "special grace," I suppose, or he was just one of those (soon to be many) people living in a sinful condition who manage to refrain from sin most of the time as they go from trial to trial in the course of life. Cain was not one of these people. Both brothers were "sinful," in other words, but one did good, the other evil (although even he might still be redeemed). I also didn't mean to suggest that Cain should not be blamed. He is certainly to be blamed. He made a sacrafice that God did not think worthy, and instead of resolving to do better next time, he killed his brother out of envy or competitive fury or some such motive (the text is not clear). Sin was crouching at the door and he failed to rule over it. The failure was his own. All I meant to say was that it wasn't his "sinful conditon" that *made* him do it. He wasn't simply a "bad seed" fated to become a murderer by virtue of his having been conceived after his mother and father fell (if that's what happened). Perhaps not all Christian commentators would read the text this way, but surely Milton would have. Cain's will was free and subject to a whole slew of forces that could cause him to turn it one way or the other. My point was simply to raise the question as to whether or not he had to be conceived after the fall to be tainted with Original Sin. Maybe the figure that I echo above from Genesis is important here. God says that sin is crouched (or "rests") at the door (or "entrance") and desires him (or will if he does not "do well"). This at least implies that sin is in some sense external to Cain (it's even outside the tent or house or what have you), and he is exhorted to rule over it. I imagine that we're supposed to assume that he can do so if he wishes. Even if sin is thought of as a part of his essential nature (whenever it became so--at conception? sometime later after his mother fell?), it's not something that must necessarily rule that nature. The Rabbinic commentaries, as far as I know, all more or less agree that the verse asserts Cain's freedom of will, his power over the "evil inclination" and therefore his failure to do the right thing and his culpability. Does anyone know about the 17th-century Christian commentaries? One more thing. Again, I'll have to look into the theology of this more closely, but Milton would certainly have thought that things that might happen to a pregnant woman could affect the nature of the child she carries. No one in the period, I think, would have thought that one's nature was fated and dictated only by the conditions at *conception*. Most stories concerning this refer to physical attributes and what we would call "birth defects," which could be caused by something happening at either conception or at any time in the subsequent 9 months. Women were exhorted to be careful about what they looked at, had contact with, and thought about. The moment of quickening might have been thought of as more particularly decisive for moral nature, however. Ambrose Pare, for example, says that the soul only enters the developing embryo after around forty or forty five days, that is after it has "obtained a perfect and absolute distinction and conformation of the members...." (Pare, 1649, 24.XI, 597). He goes on to suggest that the soul is pliable and can be affected by things that affect the also still pliable physical body both while it is in the womb and shortly after birth (even in later life--he cites stokes and drunkeness among other things). He later quotes I Corinthians, Ch. 12 in support of the idea that God bestows all of a person's spiritual gifts at the time that the soul enters its body. So it's at least consistent with contemporary physiological beliefs for the imperfect gifts of a person subject to Original Sin to have been bestowed upon Cain 40 days after a conception that happened--again, if it did--before the fall. Also, in poking around about Cain I came across a reference to a passage of Talmud (Sanhedrin 91b) that's probably irrelevant to Milton's ideas, but interesting in light of this discussion. The passage, in discussing the sway that the evil inclination has over human beings, reads "sin rests at the door" as refering to the door of life, that is to the entrance of the womb. The evil inclination does not affect the infant in utero, but waits to pounce once it enters the world. There's also a tradition (found in Niddah 30b) that teaches that the infant is taught the whole of the Torah in the womb. Just before birth an angel comes and stikes it on the mouth, making it forget. I imagine that the idea must have some platonic lineage to it. Interesting.... Louis ======================================= Louis Schwartz English Department University of Richmond Richmond, VA 23173 (804) 289-8315 lschwart@richmond.edu From: Robert Whalen [rob.whalen@utoronto.ca] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:39 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Sex in PL (the ambiguity of "I ween" at PL 4.741) x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: milton-l@richmond.edu Robin Hamilton wrote: > > > It should be easy to challenge the OED here, if someone can come up with > even one example of "I ween", used parenthetically, which carries a definite > semantic weight. In support of the OED and the surmising Milton (sorry, Robin!) is George Herbert's Outlandish Proverb #811, "Weening is not measure." Robert Whalen From: jfleming@sfu.ca Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 1:36 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Sex (again) On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:47:57 -0400 (EDT) milton-l@richmond.edu wrote: > There is, without question, a lot of evidence to suggest that Adam and > Eve have sex in PL. But all of this evidence is circumstantial. Milton > simply does not give us the hard textual proof that Roy Flannagan has > called for. Yet Milton certainly could have provided it. How? He does not provide "it", after all, in the post-lapsarian scene of book nine (1034-45), or in the archangelic vision of eleven (556-604). In both cases, as in M's prelapsarian Eden, "amorous play" is about as explicit as the verse gets. Should we, therefore, doubt that A and E have "sex" after the Fall, or that the Sethite marriage rites come down to "sex"? (I adopt the requisite Foucauldian-nominalist quotation marks.) If we should not doubt it, how and why should we doubt that M's prelapsarian love-talk, which is no more "mysterious" than his postlapsarian version, involves "sex"? We can only support the doubt you recommend -- we can only support a radical distinction between M's pre- and post-lapsarian accounts of physical love -- by falling back, as you consistently do, on some version of the a priori view that "'Paradise' can't have 'sex' in it." But this is begging the question you are trying to prove. (After all, he > offers hard proof that angels ingest and assimilate nutritive matter). Writing about sex is not the same as writing about eating. Butler and Foucault might insist that it is; but their insistence is not a proof. James Dougal Fleming From: john rumrich [rumrich@mail.utexas.edu] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 11:45 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Cc: jdgar@mail.utexas.edu Subject: RE: The Anti-Milton Controversy Let me add to what Chuck Huttar notes below. TSLL will be printing his very fine essay on Lewis and Eliot (and, incidentally, on the Nativity Ode) in the next year or so. We have not yet finally determined which issue. But for those of you with access to project Muse, it will be easy enough to check for it at the following address: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/texas_studies_in_literature_and_language/ I'm delighted that we are printing one of Chuck's informative, measured, and beautifully written articles on Milton. All best, John Rumrich > >Yes, in broad terms, it is true; more precisely, (a) it happened after the two >met for the first time, a meeting that was arranged by Charles Williams; (b) >it had already begun happening much earlier, even before Lewis met Williams in >the mid-1930s. There is abundant evidence in what Lewis says in print about >Eliot from about 1930 on -- if it's read carefully (i.e., without the >preconception of "hostility." Hostility certainly did exist in the 20s, before >either became Christian. All of this is covered in greater detail in an >article I have forthcoming in TSLL. Meanwhile, take a look at my "Lewis's >Prufrockian Vision in The Great Divorce," published in _Mythlore_ a couple of >years ago. > >Best regards, > >Chuck Huttar From: Duncan Kinder [duncan@neoclassicists.net] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 4:45 PM To: Gardner Campbell; milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Sex in PL I suppose, had Marvell rather than Milton written Paradise Lost, the question would be, regarding Eve, "How coy was Adam's mistress?" Duncan C. Kinder dckinder@mountain.net From: Thomas.H.Luxon@Dartmouth.EDU Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 8:24 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Sex (again) Dear Folks, I believe Roy and Kent are correct to give "I ween" its full weight as a hedge and warning against too easy an equation between "wedded love" and what we call sex. I think James Turner and others skip too easily past the "I ween" and wind up with a Milton who seems to approve of carnal delights and disapprove of Raphael's warnings in book 8. I have already detailed these arguments (and several more) in my forthcoming "Milton's Wedded Love: Not about Sex (as we know it)" in Milton Studies 40. I rarely indulge in such shameless self-promotion, but all this conversation on the topic seems to impell me. Please look out for the piece; it should be published by the end of the year. Then we can have another marathon round of talk about sex (or not). Thank you for your patience, Tom Luxon