A working thesis (finally)

At this point this is still a very rough thesis, but I think I finally have one that is able to move forward.  So I've mentioned in previous blog posts that I'm interested in looking at archetype of the "overreacher" in Milton's Satan.  Milton certainly didn't invent the overreacher, though his Satan has come to be perhaps the prime example of one, such that it would influence later works like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Byron's Manfred.  So here is my working thesis (more or less):  Milton followed the literary tradition of the overreacher (as seen in works like Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great and Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare's Macbeth, and the story of Icarus) in order to use it as a template to represent his personal experiences and the historical context that he had lived through.  It's interesting to look at Paradise Lost through the lens of the Cromwell, the Interregnum, and the Restoration.

This is what I have currently as far as a thesis.  If anyone has any research that they think might fit well with this, please let me know.

Social Proof: Professors and Communities

I'll admit I did drag my feet a bit when doing this since I was reluctant to contact people, but I'm glad I did. Otherwise, I wouldn't have seen some of the faults my argument may have. As far as social proof goes, I was able to find some great sources through different communities. I emailed a couple of professors, one being Joan S Bennett, a retired professor from the University of Deleware and Jeffrey Shoulson, a professor I found on Academia.edu. To professor Bennett I sent this message: 

Social Proof Efforts, pt. 1

Social Proof thus far:

Social Interaction

First off, I don't know how my paper would have turned out if I hadn't done this process, but I know for sure that it wouldn't be as well-focused and well-informed. The sources I was able to attain from this process are more useful than the one's I had found on Milton. Now, the correspondence.

I got around to emailing two people, Dr. Vincent Blasi, a professor of Law at Columbia who wrote an article on Milton and the First Amendment. He hasn't emailed me back yet (and I'm really not sure he will), but this is the email I sent:

Social Proof and Preliminary Writing for Paradise Lost

It is interesting to note that in many

depictions of the fall, Satan is depicted

as neither man nor beast but rather as a

cross between the two.

I posted recently on my personal blog about my interaction with Harold Bloom as pertaining to my current research of Satan's humanity in John Milton's Paradise Lost. I had originally contacted Bloom based on some reading that I had done from an article by Paris Kaye, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that he as well had responded to my query as of this last Saturday. I sent a similar email as I had sent Dr. Bloom, and Mr. Kaye sent me a number of different resources to look over as I go about formally drafting my research:

• Bloom, Harold; Genius; Warner Books, 2002, pp 47-57. 
• Jung, Carl G.; Answer to Job Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (trans. R.F.C. Hull); Princeton University Press, 2002 
• Jung, Carl G.; Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9 (Part 1): Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious: 2nd (second) Edition; Princeton Press, 1971.

Mr. Kaye additionally wrote:

Perhaps, some allusion to the Faustian legacy as presented by Christopher Marlowe (A.K.A. Dr. Faustus). Marlowe’s dramatic work is instructive not only because it was accessible to Milton (and arguably influenced Milton) but presents an anthropomorphic perspective in terms of deities ascribed human traits. Jung’s work, especially Answer to Job, delves into the psychology of a benevolent despotic deity and the archetypal duality of the collective unconscious.

It's interesting to me that though Mr. Kaye is not, as far as I can tell, a formal academic, his feedback was much more rigorous and helpful than was that of Dr. Bloom. I think it shows that sometimes our best resources are found in the most unlikely of places.

My Abstract: Re-Orienting Milton

So I found this Conference in Tokyo talking about East-West, cross-cultural ties in literature and art looking for papers due last week. Sooo... I sent in an abstract. Professor Burton and lots of family and friends helped a ton with the polishing, but here's the final product:

An oriental reading of Paradise Lost and other writings resolves certain longstanding paradoxes in Milton's great works and reorients readers to his initial and intended meaning. Such paradoxes have come about due to gradual changes in our own culture resulting in an ultimate disconnect from the original culture and paradigm of Milton's time and place. A specific cross-culture norm that existed in both the Far East and in the West at the time Milton was writing was a value placed on what Western culture now condemns and terms the "passive." After WWII, our culture shifted out of this value system while China remained the same, making our reading of Paradise Lost and other Miltonic works imperfect and biased. 

By valuing the passive in the same way as Eastern culture while reading Milton's great works, we not only eliminate some of the false assumptions on which the West's Anglocentric view has founded arguments about Milton's culture but also recover the intended meaning of his work. One such assumption is that heroism is parallel with action. This assumption is the foundation of the all too common Romanticizing of Satan in Paradise Lost. As Satan is the most active, ambitious character in Milton's work, many critics have made the mistake of setting him as a Romantic hero; however, acknowledging the centrality of passivity in Milton's work (and perhaps in the Christian message itself) undermines the romanticizing of Satan as a character. In other words, by Romanticizing Paradise Lost (or aligning it with the foreign and exotic), this de-Romanticizes Satan.

Keywords: Paradise Lost, Orientalism, Romanticism

Thoughts About Samson Agonistes

As I'm writing my paper, I've been struck by Samson Agonistes and its themes of freedom and redemption. It's so very easy to be caught up in the great epics of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, and I must admit when we read this one I may or may not have skimmed portions of the text. However, as I write I'm finding the characters rather interesting, and I think they tie into my topic of appetite as character
development more that Satan or Christ.

Samson’s downfall is brought by a physical hunger, and his lust and sexual appetites are what lead to his chaining before the Philistines. Samson Agonistes is something of a cautionary tale, and an overview reading often places the titular character in what I see as the role of tragic redemption, a kind of "Oh, if only he had kept it in his pants" warning I imagine parents of the time reading to their children. But when considering things further I've come to interpret it a little differently. I think Milton uses Samson to illustrate the point that satisfying a need does not automatically make one happy or sated. Samson lusted, and his lust was filled, but he finds himself in a new position hungering for freedom and repentance.

Samson views his current condition as divine punishment, a sort of penance he must pay in order to receive that forgiveness. In book one Milton writes:

"...I must die

Betrayed, captivated, and both my eyes put out,

Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze,

To grind in brazen fetters under task

With this Heav'n gifted strength (32-26)."

He's stuck in a bit of a bind, but Milton shows that hope is not lost. While he must go through more servitude to gain forgiveness, it will eventually lead him to his freedom. His appetites, while they may take a while, will eventually be satisfied, and he will not be left hungering for a release from bondage. He got himself into this mess, but Milton shows how he can set himself free. Everything is a process and a cycle, and it is how the character deals with that cycle that shows his or her development.