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New for 2023: Victorian Poetry Scroll back for previous courses on Shakespeare, Eighteenth Century Poetry, Close Reading, Various film genres, Film and Philosophy, the Western Canon, Early Romantics, 17th Century Poetry, etc.
Episodes
Friday Apr 08, 2011
Comus, rape, and freedom
Friday Apr 08, 2011
Friday Apr 08, 2011
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.
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