The return to earth, the right place for love (as Frost will say). One fall or two: that's another way of asking the question of how to think of God.  Calliope can't defend Orpheus because she is an empty dream.  Orpheus's turn to Eurydice as a turn to the fact of mortality: all mortals are empty dreams. Fall of Eve, and of Adam: "And me with thee hath ruined" = first silent thought.

The return to earth, the right place for love (as Frost will say). One fall or two: that's another way of asking the question of how to think of God.  Calliope can't defend Orpheus because she is an empty dream.  Orpheus's turn to Eurydice as a turn to the fact of mortality: all mortals are empty dreams. Fall of Eve, and of Adam: "And me with thee hath ruined" = first silent thought.

Following sections and a snow day, we try to catch up, which means (it turns out) looking at more similarities between God and Satan: their derision for their enemies, their invocation of "necessity / The Tyrant's plea."  How the Son manages the Father's douche-bag-splaining ("death for death" --> "life for life").  This is a further idea of justification: making God just.  Satan's reaction to the innocent Adam and Eve ("whom my thoughts pursue with wonder / And could love."  His pity for them though he is unpitied) contrasted with God's ("ingrate!").  Satan's dream temptation of Eve and how much Raphael echoes it in his Great Chain of Being speech.

Following sections and a snow day, we try to catch up, which means (it turns out) looking at more similarities between God and Satan: their derision for their enemies, their invocation of "necessity / The Tyrant's plea."  How the Son manages the Father's douche-bag-splaining ("death for death" --> "life for life").  This is a further idea of justification: making God just.  Satan's reaction to the innocent Adam and Eve ("whom my thoughts pursue with wonder / And could love."  His pity for them though he is unpitied) contrasted with God's ("ingrate!").  Satan's dream temptation of Eve and how much Raphael echoes it in his Great Chain of Being speech.

The rebel angels vs. God on free will (does God have it?).  Parallels between them.  The word "dispose" as a word about narrative ordering in Milton, and therefore of the narrator's own story and experience; suzet and fabula; Satan's hatred of light and his voice, vs. Milton's vs. the Muse's, vs. God's ("woe to the inhabitants of earth").  How the mind is its own place, bot for Satan and for the narrator/Milton.  There's new stuff here, not in previous Milton classes....

The rebel angels vs. God on free will (does God have it?).  Parallels between them.  The word "dispose" as a word about narrative ordering in Milton, and therefore of the narrator's own story and experience; suzet and fabula; Satan's hatred of light and his voice, vs. Milton's vs. the Muse's, vs. God's ("woe to the inhabitants of earth").  How the mind is its own place, bot for Satan and for the narrator/Milton.  There's new stuff here, not in previous Milton classes....

On to Book 3 of Paradise Lost: Shelley on God's viciousness; God's jokes about Satan; similarities between the Son and Satan (via their courage) and God and Satan (via their gaming for humanity).  Question of justifying the ways of God to men: do we judge whether he's just?  How? Euthyphro dilemma.  Luther on God's apparently unjust ways (can't be justified independently to us).  Poetry in hell; philosophy in hell.

On to Book 3 of Paradise Lost: Shelley on God's viciousness; God's jokes about Satan; similarities between the Son and Satan (via their courage) and God and Satan (via their gaming for humanity).  Question of justifying the ways of God to men: do we judge whether he's just?  How? Euthyphro dilemma.  Luther on God's apparently unjust ways (can't be justified independently to us).  Poetry in hell; philosophy in hell.

Back to Satan in Books 1 and 2, via Burke's chapter on "How words influence the Passions," where he quotes "Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, / A universe of death" from Book 2.  The sublime in Burke and Kant (and Nietzsche, and a little Longinus) as the inner response to outer disorder, in contrast to the beautiful.  Delight vs. pleasure.  Magnificence of Satan.  "Yet faithful how they stood, / Their glory withered."

Back to Satan in Books 1 and 2, via Burke's chapter on "How words influence the Passions," where he quotes "Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, / A universe of death" from Book 2.  The sublime in Burke and Kant (and Nietzsche, and a little Longinus) as the inner response to outer disorder, in contrast to the beautiful.  Delight vs. pleasure.  Magnificence of Satan.  "Yet faithful how they stood, / Their glory withered."