Annotated Bibliography--Carmen

Social Graph
Steven Thorley--My father is extremely knowledgable in all things religion. At the same time, he is a philosopher and scientist. He really is the smartest man I know, and we talk about religion and literature and all that stuff anyways. Now I can finally use those conversations for school.
Chris Hall--One of my best friends and a huge literature enthusiast. Definitely has unique opinions that stray from the norm...maybe that intentional, but it will be good to get a different perspective on it all.
Dane Thorley--My brother goes to school in New York. I've already talked to him about this paper, and he said that Columbia has a really great collection of scholarly articles that he will look through for me.
Matthew Richardson--Brother Richardson is in my home ward in Orem. He's a religion professor here at BYU and he's a general authority, so I think it's safe to say that he knows his stuff. I would love to talk to him about the Biblical portrayals of Eve and Delilah.

New Media
Emerging Scholars Blog--This link leads to a post about Best Christian Books. Good informational blog to refer to.
Kingdom Poets--Blog about poets from the Christian Faith.
Team Milton--this blog is a great resource where all of us students has written about our experience reading John Milton
Women in the Bible
Paradise Lost Podcasts--love podcasts. Since I'm not as willing to re-read Paradise Lost as I am to read Samson Agonistes, listening to a few of these will be good in refreshing my memory.
Samson and Delilah poem

Social Networks
Great Yahoo message boards:
Marriage and Divorce in the Works of John Milton
Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost: Similarities Between the Sexes
Fallen Women of the Bible: Eve, Jezebel, Delilah

Message board/essay thing from Study Mode:
Comparing the Characters of Eve and Delilah

Milton, Adam, and Eve

Milton: Misogynist, Feminist, or Sexist?

Traditional Scholarly Sources
Milton's Dalila and Eve: Filling in the Spaces in the Biblical Text--great article that takes Milton's stories about Dalila and Eve and compares them to the Bible, pointing out what he left out, what he added in, etc.
Feminist Milton
Threshold Poetics--focuses on Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost from a feminist and psychoanalytic perspective

        I need to visit the library over break and see what other traditional sources I can find. This is what I have so far, and I feel pretty good about it. I will be posting a working thesis soon!

Liberty and Freedom Turned Sour: Annotated Bibliography

Alright. Bibliography time.

Working Thesis:  Though Milton fights vehemently for freedom and liberty of the people in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, his later ruler-subject interactions in Paradise Lost show that the ideals of liberty and freedom have limits and can become rhetorically dangerous, hindering one's real freedom and the freedoms of others under the same government.

1. Social Graph

• David Gatenby, one of my closest friends and a fellow literary nut. He started college as a comparative literature major and then got bored because he had already read and written papers for fun about all the books he was asked to read for his classes. Also one of my most politically interested friends, always up to date. Great to discuss ideas with about anything literary or political.
• My father, who I actually bounced some ideas off of today to tighten my thesis a bit.
• Greg, Heather, and Chelsea all have a lot in common with what I am writing about and found some great sources and ideas through their research and blog posts. Hopefully I can return the favor.
• William Kennedy. A fellow English Major who is graduating next semester. He just wrote a few papers on Paradise Lost so his mind is fresh on the subject.
• Dave Sewell. My boss and CEO the company I work for. He just got elected to the Provo City Council. I'm interested to see how someone directly involved in local government has to say about freedom, liberty, and the responsibility of citizens.

Milton, Satan, and Religious Tyranny: Annotated Bibliography

Alright so here's my revised working thesis. "Milton channels his own views and personality into Satan in order to create a more human version of the devil as opposed to the previous versions of the devil in Christian literature. Milton creates this new form of Satan in order to make a political statement against the tyranny of the monarchy in the Church." I'm still working on what exactly Milton is fighting against in the Church. 

An Exploratory, Annotated Bibliography on Satan's Humanity in Paradise Lost

I laid out my working thesis in a post last week, but I wanted to post a revised version, in addition to a number of social and media resources that will eventually be incorporated into my final paper:

WORKING THESIS

Although Milton draws upon strong religious and archetypal currents in crafting his Satan figure in Paradise Lost, truly understanding the arch-fiend's character (and thus, the epic as a whole) requires that the reader dissociate Satan's character from that of the Biblical adversary. Rather, Satan should be interpreted as a representation of the fallen condition of mankind and thus as a lens for better understanding human nature and the concept of self.

SOCIAL GRAPH

I posted an initial query as to interest in Paradise Lost on my Facebook account and received a number of responses from friends who either had read or were reading Paradise Lost. A couple of them even contributed resources for my study of Satan's humanity.

• Christopher Lew, a friend from my chemistry days, said that he had read it but had the most experience in the beginning and the end. He might be a good one to talk to about Satan specifically, as the beginning kind of lays out his character.
• Jordan Callister, a good friend from the Russian department, said he's reading it right now and "LOVE[S] IT," so he would likely be good to talk to as well, especially since he's reading it recreationally rather than as an assignment. That shows real interest in the subjects.
• Danny Cardoza, a close friend from my internship in Moscow and one of my most active supporters and contributors, said he had read Paradise Lost something like eight years ago, but I'll likely still discuss it with him in greater detail, in that discussions with him always go interesting places and lead me to neat ideas.
• Evan Preece, an acquaintance from the Foreign Language Student Residency (FLSR), said he'd read it, and while I don't know how rigorous of a reading that was, he sounds like he would be a good enthusiast to bounce some ideas off of.
• Aleesha Bass, a cohort member from my digital culture class, linked to a Prezi that she worked on last year. It talks about Satan and the heroic tradition, an idea that I've seen come up in a number of other resources. Aleesha likely has a lot to say about Satan's character, and I'd especially be interested in learning more about the comparisons she makes in the Prezi, i.e. to Achilles, Hamlet, etc.
• Ryan Schnell, another friend from the FLSR, linked me to a couple of articles by a Biblical scholar, Father Patrick Madigan, who presented at BYU not long ago. They address the expressive individualism and rebellious imagination of Satan in Paradise Lost and draw the comparison between the arch-fiend and modern man. Ryan is also a Biblical scholar-to-be, so he might be a good resource for investigating historical conceptions of Satan.
• My mom and sister both majored in English, so I'll likely be shooting ideas at them over Thanksgiving break. I don't think they've read PL of late, but they nonetheless could provide some feedback for my flow of arguments.
• I also noticed that Heather and Jonathan are looking at aspects of Satan's humanity, so they'd likely be good resources and/or collaborative partners. 

More Annotated Sources

John Milton, Monalisa 2013

In previous posts, I have outlined a couple people to look into and annotated a few sources I have checked into. Here, I would like to go on with that list by adding some blogs and new media, since my project will work with that. But also, I would like to focus a little more on Milton. I realize that it will be really easy to fall into the trap of making Milton fall to the wayside in favor of the modern application. So I need to find some sources that deal strictly with Milton and so I am not forgetting him. I already did this some, but I could do it more. So here it goes.


ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY.2

First, let's cover some social media.

Gabriel Jbreel Hess

• An aspiring military chaplain, he posts numerous links to Edward Snowden's leaks and articles about the NSA.
• I've already talked to him, and he's been willing to help me find more things as they pop up.

Google+ Media

• Communities are few and far between that deal strictly with the NSA and Edward Snowden, but all you have to do is type in #NSA or #Snowden on the search bar and you come up with this.
• This is an invaluable source for breaking news information I could use to further my argument.
• Typing in #Milton or #JohnMilton lends very few results.

Annotated Bibliography: Research Process

As I am researching more and more I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m not going deep enough. In addition to the thesis below I’ve been gathering information specifically regarding Milton’s deviation from traditional methods, and perchance utilizing these deviations to point out Christ’s superiority (meaning c. The thesis below is still bumbling but it isn’t as long. Is it too general? Too narrow? 

Working Thesis #2: Although Milton’s heavy use of classical pagan allusions can be a cause of confusion as far as his Christian directives, Milton is further defining his divine calling that they are a means to an end, that end being a personal understanding and relationship with Christ as the pinnacle of all learning. As demonstrated in Christ’s rebuttal of classical scholarship in “Paradise Regained."

Chinese & European Takeaways: An Annotated Bibliography

My working thesis that is more of an abstract and a little redundant... Help anyone?

Taken by Nicole Harvey using Canon Powershot S110 on 11/9/2012 

Postcolonial reading has come under recent criticism as modern innovations have made other cultures more accessible and comparable to our own. Robert Markley has been one of its main critics. Markley's main argument in his second chapter of The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600-1730 is that postcolonial criticism of 17th century authors like Milton has been too narrow and has made assumptions about things that are not factual. Namely, it has taken for granted the "fact" that England has not only been the supreme historic power, but also that the English have all historically viewed themselves in this way. He debunks this assumption first by naming statistics supporting China as a more civilized nation at the time English colonization and second by citing Englishmen at the time who lobbied in Parliament to emulate China's model of government. He claims it is our Anglocentricity that prevents our acknowledging either the influence of these other powers or the threat the English felt at Asia's political and religious power. In other words, Markley believes postcolonial reading and our Anglocentricity assumes the difference between England and China is in favor of England while the truth was the complete opposite. I would like to state that it is Markley's own Anglocentricity that prevents his ability to acknowledge the similarities between Milton's work and Far Eastern culture. It is these similarities that reconcile long-debated contradictions throughout pieces like Paradise Lost.

Universal similarities change with circumstance and time. One universalistic norm that existed at the time Milton was writing was a value placed on what our culture now condemns and terms the "passive." After WWII, our culture changed while China remained the same in this regard, making our Anglocentric reading of Paradise Lost imperfect and biased. By reading Milton in Eastern thought, or valuing the passive, we eliminate some of the things our modern, Anglocentric view mistakenly assumes about Milton's culture. By using this reading, we find new insight into the definition of power studied by the postcolonial critics Markley criticizes.

Here's a list of sources I've found useful (or want to soon utilize):

A Mix of Sources

The more I look at what I'm doing, the more I'm realizing that there hasn't been much scholarship regarding the Patriot Act and Milton in an official sense, but there are a few people who have picked up the narrative.

As I will largely be constructing this narrative in the form of modern happenings, I will be utilizing a lot of newspaper articles and press releases and news clips. It will also take awhile to sort through everything I have found to utilize what I want. However, this is my start. If any of you have or come across something juicy, would you please let me know? Thanks!