amimetobios

We continue our consideration of the mind as its own place: the continuity between the lady and Satan. The relative unimportance of the outside world, therefore. We begin considering the Invocation to Book 3.

We consider freedom and fate in Paradise Lost, and the question of God vs. Satan; and talk about some of Milton's heresies, including his anti-Trinitarianism. NB: this recording ends abruptly half way through, because of a software glitch.

Comus vs. the lady. The moral asymmetry of rape: seduction is better with respect to the victim but worse with respect to devotion to abstract moral principle, because rape (as the Lady says) does not touch her mind, whereas seduction would. And yet rape is clearly a far worse crime than seduction, because it enslaves and does violence to the victim as seduction doesn't. So the moral quality of Comus is ambiguous as long as he remains a seducer. When he becomes a would-be rapist, he is clearly evil but also clearly impotent in his wish to do evil, since nothing he can do to the lady discredits her.

We conclude our discussion of Lycidas, by considering the austerity of its ending: the image of a world of absence in which all the false surmise that precedes it is gone. Then on to Comus, the subject of this and the next class.

We take a detour through a general account of how debate works in Milton - the way he presents both sides and his essentially dramatic structure, derived as much from Plato as from Shakespeare, and the way he thinks about the moral status of a dramatic structure, where each side seeks to convert the other. The various speakers in Lycidas, the happy fall in Paradise Lost: all are about seeing different routes to morality, including exposure to evil argument (as in Aeropagitica). Comedy vs. tragedy - is the fall is fortunate then comedy can go through error to truth. If the fall is tragic, then there is no hope. Comedy would allow for recovery of truth through different points of view.

We begin discussing Milton by starting out on Lycidas, and the nature of pastoral and pastoral elegy, as a segue from Book VI of The Faerie Queene. Lycidas as a poem in which Milton demonstrates his own power.

Last and I think BEST class on the Faerie Queene: scopophilia and narraive. Colin Clout and the Graces are present to the hidden Calidore, as Amoret has been present to Britomart in the house of Busirane. Voyeurism: they're present to us but we're not present to them. Kleinian reading of this scenario. Paradoxes of fiction and fictional interest. They'll reappear in Milton as well. Tomorrow: Lycidas!

Book Vi as pastoral. Native courtesy. Class distinction. Courtesy innate, but if it's innate it seems to indicate high class origins. Paradoxes of courtesy. Calidore and Colin Clout.

We continue considering the relation of difference and variety to uniformity, under the aspects of both justice and courtesy in Books V and VI. How can variety coexist with courtesy. A card trick (and much embarrassed silence) shows how the random can sync with the coordinated: the lesson of the Mutabilitie Cantos too.

The relation of justice to courtesy. The openmindedness of the latter. Beheadings everywhere. Arthegall vs. the leveling gyant, part I.