amimetobios

Contrasts and debates in Milton

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.

First class on Milton: Lycidas

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.

Scopophilia and narrative

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!

More on Book VI as Pastoral

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.

Variety and uniformity

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.

Justice and Courtesy

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

Varieties of justice

Adjudication in Book 5: Retributive vs. distributive justice. Some background on English-Irish strife. Revenge as wild justice. Can justice come into play between nations?

The Temple of Venus

Scudamor at the Temple of Venus. Jealousy and friendship. Love and hate. The relation of all to the idea of justice, broached in Book 5

The friend as second self in Book 4

The Aristotlean idea of friendship: the friend as second self. The nature of this combined subjectivity. Its relation to love, and jealousy. Siblings. Marriage. Weddings.

Faerie Queene, Book IV: Love and Friendship

The spectrum of virtues from private to social. Similarities and differences between love and friendship. Their relation to jealousy.

Matter and form in the Garden of Adonis

The philosophical relation of matter to form in the Garden of Adonis. The strange reversal in Spenser, whereby matter is eternal, but forms decay. What this has to do with poetry. Time the troubled. Jealousy vs. chastity.

What it's like to live in the Land of Faery

Living in the land of Faery, vs. living in reality, and vs. living in the world of Platonic forms. The proem to Book 6. The Garden of Adonis and what it was like to live there once -- the Wordsworthian strain in Spenser. Knowing what it was like "by tryall." Literary need: the creation and establishment of that kind of need.

Amoret and Belphoebe, and what the House of Busirane is for

Allegory for whom? Why the house of Busirane? Whom is it for? Britomart? Amoret? Scudamor? How does the House of Busirane work in each of these three cases?

More on Book 3

Allegory and human individuality. What it means to turn people into allegories. A version of road rage. Temporal fouls ups as Britomart wounds Marinell after she sees Florimel racing to aid the already-wounded Marinel. What Britomart's wound means. Her pleasure in her distress. Seeing and wounding. Adonis.