WEBVTT 00:01.560 --> 00:04.690 Professor John Rogers: For a vast number of 00:04.688 --> 00:07.398 complicated reasons, Milton has invited for 350 00:07.404 --> 00:11.124 years now a uniquely violent -- and I do think it's a violent -- 00:11.122 --> 00:14.962 response to the particular question of his value as a poet. 00:14.960 --> 00:17.820 And the violence, I think, of this reaction is 00:17.816 --> 00:21.306 due in large part to our tendency to think of Milton and 00:21.308 --> 00:24.798 of Milton's work in terms of the category of power. 00:24.800 --> 00:27.060 So I've given this first lecture a title, 00:27.062 --> 00:29.722 the title being "Milton, Power, and the Power of 00:29.721 --> 00:32.331 Milton," because any introduction to 00:32.329 --> 00:36.119 Milton has to confront the long-standing conviction in 00:36.117 --> 00:40.617 English letters of Milton's power or his strength as a poet. 00:40.620 --> 00:44.350 It's practically impossible to begin a reading of Milton 00:44.351 --> 00:47.541 without the burden of innumerable prejudices and 00:47.540 --> 00:50.130 preconceptions. Milton's reputation always 00:50.130 --> 00:52.490 precedes him. And in fact that's always been 00:52.487 --> 00:54.197 the case even in his lifetime. 00:54.200 --> 00:57.510 Even if we've heard of nothing of Milton the poet or nothing of 00:57.511 --> 00:59.361 Milton the man, we're certainly, 00:59.355 --> 01:03.035 of course, likely to have heard of Adam and Eve and of the story 01:03.038 --> 01:06.028 of the Garden of Eden, and so it's especially 01:06.031 --> 01:10.211 difficult to read Paradise Lost without bringing to it 01:10.209 --> 01:13.899 some sense of the power of the religious problems, 01:13.900 --> 01:18.040 the theological and ethical problems, that that story seems 01:18.039 --> 01:21.819 so powerfully to set out to address.Now readers of 01:21.821 --> 01:26.181 English literature talk about Milton very differently from the 01:26.175 --> 01:29.025 way they talk about other writers. 01:29.030 --> 01:32.990 Historically, it has not been pleasure or wit 01:32.993 --> 01:37.773 or beauty that has been associated with the experience 01:37.768 --> 01:39.748 of reading Milton. 01:39.750 --> 01:43.400 Those are the categories of value that we tend to associate 01:43.401 --> 01:46.551 or to affiliate with our other favorite writers, 01:46.550 --> 01:52.070 writers as diverse as Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf, 01:52.073 --> 01:55.683 for example. But in our collective cultural 01:55.678 --> 01:58.428 consciousness, if there is a such thing, 01:58.433 --> 02:02.673 whether we like him or not we tend to think of John Milton as 02:02.671 --> 02:05.501 powerful. And the reasons for this 02:05.496 --> 02:10.236 coupling of the name Milton and of this idea or the metaphor of 02:10.241 --> 02:13.661 power, I think, are worth looking in 02:13.664 --> 02:19.234 to.Power is a conceptual category that Milton brooded on 02:19.229 --> 02:23.189 and cultivated his entire writing life. 02:23.189 --> 02:27.139 From a very early age, Milton nursed the image of 02:27.142 --> 02:29.532 himself as a powerful poet. 02:29.530 --> 02:32.950 In Milton we have a man who was able to state -- now just think 02:32.954 --> 02:36.154 about this for a moment, I take this to be an absolutely 02:36.154 --> 02:39.404 remarkable fact -- we have in Milton a man who was able to 02:39.399 --> 02:42.869 state categorically in his early twenties--so just a few years 02:42.871 --> 02:46.291 older than you are now-- that the epic poem that he would not 02:46.287 --> 02:49.697 even begin writing for another twenty-five years would become 02:49.702 --> 02:52.722 an unforgettable work of English literature. 02:52.720 --> 02:58.780 Milton anticipated and lovingly invested all of his energy in 02:58.781 --> 03:04.541 his future literary power and his future literary fame. 03:04.539 --> 03:07.589 He anticipated this power much as his father, 03:07.585 --> 03:11.715 a reasonably well-to-do banker, might have anticipated 03:11.717 --> 03:16.087 long-term earnings from a particularly risky business 03:16.086 --> 03:18.936 venture. In Milton's case this 03:18.941 --> 03:21.261 investment in power paid off. 03:21.259 --> 03:24.509 Milton would eventually come to feel so comfortable with the 03:24.512 --> 03:27.762 mantle of power that he was able to do much more than simply 03:27.764 --> 03:31.184 rewrite the first books of the Bible (which is of course one of 03:31.182 --> 03:34.602 the things that he accomplished in Paradise Lost, 03:34.599 --> 03:37.819 and that is itself no mean undertaking). 03:37.819 --> 03:42.639 By the end of his life, though, Milton would in effect 03:42.635 --> 03:45.175 try to rewrite everything. 03:45.180 --> 03:48.700 After he'd published all of his major poems, he began publishing 03:48.703 --> 03:52.003 a spate of works that attempted to re-create British culture 03:52.003 --> 03:53.293 from the ground up. 03:53.289 --> 03:57.549 He invented his own system of philosophical logic. 03:57.550 --> 04:01.640 He published a treatise that he had written earlier on grammar, 04:01.637 --> 04:05.127 inventing his own system for the understanding and the 04:05.132 --> 04:07.442 learning of the Latin language. 04:07.439 --> 04:11.139 He wrote a long and detailed history of Britain, 04:11.137 --> 04:15.307 attempting to create the meaning of that little island 04:15.307 --> 04:19.317 that he always assumed was God's chosen nation. 04:19.319 --> 04:22.359 And finally, and probably for Milton most 04:22.360 --> 04:26.460 important, Milton wrote a theology, inventing in effect 04:26.464 --> 04:31.114 his own religion; and Milton's Protestantism 04:31.108 --> 04:36.148 looks like no one else's, before or since. 04:36.149 --> 04:39.569 There's a real sense, I think, in which Milton wanted 04:39.569 --> 04:43.319 to re-create all of Western culture or to re-create all of 04:43.317 --> 04:45.747 Western culture in his own image. 04:45.750 --> 04:49.180 Regardless of what we think of the success of that example or 04:49.180 --> 04:52.040 of the appeal of the attempt to do such a thing, 04:52.040 --> 04:55.270 the amazing thing, I think, is that Milton felt so 04:55.272 --> 04:58.902 empowered even to embark on such an enormous project. 04:58.899 --> 05:03.189 And readers of Milton ever since have had to confront not 05:03.194 --> 05:07.954 just Milton's writing but this unspeakable sense of empowerment 05:07.948 --> 05:12.548 that underlies just about everything that Milton writes. 05:12.550 --> 05:16.270 And so it seems to me that a useful introduction to the 05:16.270 --> 05:20.610 poetry of Milton would be a look at some of the various types of 05:20.611 --> 05:24.681 power that Milton imagines in his work and some of the types 05:24.675 --> 05:28.945 of power that literary history has tended to confer upon Milton 05:28.947 --> 05:32.227 the man, the image of Milton the man, 05:32.225 --> 05:34.625 and of Milton's writing.Now, 05:34.634 --> 05:39.454 probably the form of power that we most readily associated with 05:39.452 --> 05:43.652 John Milton involves his position at the dead center of 05:43.648 --> 05:46.288 the English literary canon. 05:46.290 --> 05:49.360 This goes beyond questioning. 05:49.360 --> 05:52.780 He's an object of worship by British and American 05:52.783 --> 05:55.283 institutions of higher education, 05:55.279 --> 06:00.339 and my guess is that few of you have failed to observe that it's 06:00.335 --> 06:04.345 practically impossible to graduate from Yale with a 06:04.347 --> 06:08.997 Bachelor of Arts in English without having read Paradise 06:09.001 --> 06:14.921 Lost either in English 125, or DS Litm or, 06:14.915 --> 06:23.535 in fact, in a course just like this one. 06:23.540 --> 06:27.500 Those of you who are taking this course because you have 06:27.503 --> 06:31.743 to take one of the pre-1800s and Milton is one of those, 06:31.740 --> 06:35.080 you are more than entitled to ask why the poet, 06:35.076 --> 06:38.196 this poet, Milton, is exercising this 06:38.196 --> 06:42.256 institutional sway over you as you go about choosing your 06:42.258 --> 06:46.318 courses or perhaps as you experience your courses in some 06:46.320 --> 06:50.380 way as having been chosen for you.It would be utterly 06:50.382 --> 06:54.882 inadequate for us to account for this institutional and surreal 06:54.880 --> 06:59.450 institutional power that Milton holds over us by stating blandly 06:59.450 --> 07:03.440 that Milton is the greatest English poet. 07:03.439 --> 07:07.209 That's the easy answer obviously, and of course it's 07:07.209 --> 07:11.699 not untrue. But we can do better than that. 07:11.699 --> 07:15.499 We can anatomize some of the forms of power that have been 07:15.495 --> 07:19.285 most commonly attributed to this greatest English poet. 07:19.290 --> 07:24.910 There is first the understandable aesthetic power, 07:24.911 --> 07:29.961 the power of the beauty of Milton's verse, 07:29.959 --> 07:34.109 an aesthetic power that's often thought or felt to inhere 07:34.112 --> 07:36.562 somewhere in the poetry itself. 07:36.560 --> 07:38.610 In fact for readers of Paradise Lost, 07:38.610 --> 07:41.550 and this has been an experience now for a few hundred 07:41.554 --> 07:44.254 years, it does often seem as if there 07:44.247 --> 07:48.577 were some mysterious life force, a pulsating through Milton's 07:48.582 --> 07:51.402 dense and driving lines of unrhymed, 07:51.400 --> 07:55.110 iambic pentameter. 07:55.110 --> 07:58.710 And now there's also the power that Milton himself 07:58.714 --> 08:02.254 claimed was behind the poetry of Paradise Lost. 08:02.250 --> 08:06.560 Milton insisted--and it's completely possible that he 08:06.564 --> 08:10.344 might actually have believed--that God Himself was 08:10.340 --> 08:15.040 responsible for composing the poetry of Paradise Lost, 08:15.040 --> 08:19.400 that John Milton was merely the conduit for God's first 08:19.402 --> 08:21.962 serious attempt at an epic poem. 08:21.959 --> 08:26.119 And so in this perspective we have an image of the awesome 08:26.116 --> 08:30.346 power of the Deity Himself thundering away behind every jot 08:30.345 --> 08:34.205 and tittle of Milton's great epic.But for Milton's 08:34.210 --> 08:37.710 contemporaries in the seventeenth century, 08:37.710 --> 08:42.670 Milton's power really wasn't at all aesthetic or even religious 08:42.669 --> 08:47.479 in nature. Milton's power was primarily 08:47.475 --> 08:53.375 seen as social and political and cultural. 08:53.379 --> 08:56.639 This is a wildly anachronistic use of terms, 08:56.640 --> 08:59.980 but there's nonetheless a lot of sense of it: 08:59.976 --> 09:04.146 Milton was essentially a left-wing political radical and 09:04.147 --> 09:08.767 it was widely feared by his more timid contemporaries that his 09:08.772 --> 09:13.552 writings would seduce his readers in to rejecting good, 09:13.549 --> 09:16.249 old-fashioned, traditional religious and 09:16.251 --> 09:19.571 social values. There was a lot of validity to 09:19.569 --> 09:21.999 that contemporary cultural fear. 09:22.000 --> 09:25.330 Milton was a revolutionary. 09:25.330 --> 09:28.820 He was responsible for writing the first justification for an 09:28.817 --> 09:31.547 armed rebellion against a legitimate monarch, 09:31.549 --> 09:37.329 the first to publish such a work in, essentially, 09:37.325 --> 09:41.175 all of Europe. Milton actually wrote that it 09:41.184 --> 09:43.794 was the duty, not just the right but the 09:43.786 --> 09:47.476 duty, of a nation to rise up and 09:47.477 --> 09:54.157 dethrone through execution an unjust, though legitimate, 09:54.158 --> 09:56.808 king. Milton in fact was largely 09:56.811 --> 10:00.561 responsible in a cultural sense for the fact that the armed 10:00.562 --> 10:02.892 rebellion of England's civil war, 10:02.889 --> 10:07.659 what we think of as the Puritan Revolution, actually led to the 10:07.659 --> 10:12.049 execution by decapitation of England's monarch Charles the 10:12.045 --> 10:15.365 First in 1649. And on top of all of this 10:15.373 --> 10:18.953 political revolution, the political radicalism, 10:18.948 --> 10:23.538 Milton was one of the first intellectuals in Europe to speak 10:23.535 --> 10:28.345 out in favor not only of divorce -- Milton argued for the right 10:28.354 --> 10:32.554 to divorce on grounds of incompatibility -- but also he 10:32.551 --> 10:36.211 argued in favor of the right to plural marriage, 10:36.205 --> 10:40.515 polygamy. He was branded as a radical and 10:40.515 --> 10:44.865 dangerous debunker of traditional Christian family 10:44.870 --> 10:48.690 values.Now, many of you know that Milton in 10:48.685 --> 10:52.615 his later years was blind, and the fact of his blindness 10:52.615 --> 10:57.255 was in his own day frequently cited by contemporary preachers, 10:57.259 --> 11:00.149 men at the pulpit, as an example of exactly how 11:00.148 --> 11:03.978 God punishes those who dare to write against the king or those 11:03.978 --> 11:07.678 who dare to write against the institution of marriage or the 11:07.683 --> 11:10.803 family. And Milton's power for so many 11:10.796 --> 11:15.306 of these contemporaries was seen as palpably destructive and 11:15.312 --> 11:16.922 truly frightening. 11:16.919 --> 11:21.399 Obviously, it goes without saying that today the assessment 11:21.398 --> 11:25.648 of Milton as some kind of imminent social threat or some 11:25.645 --> 11:30.505 sort of social force in terms of the radical nature of political 11:30.509 --> 11:33.829 power -- that has taken a sharp turn. 11:33.830 --> 11:38.310 Milton is much more likely imagined to wield -- and if you 11:38.307 --> 11:43.097 have any sense of what the mythology surrounding Milton is, 11:43.100 --> 11:47.900 you would have to agree with this -- a socially conservative 11:47.897 --> 11:52.857 power over his readers.In the debates ranging for the last 11:52.857 --> 11:57.407 thirty years or so over the value of traditional pedagogy 11:57.411 --> 12:01.641 and over the value of canonical reading lists, 12:01.639 --> 12:04.569 Milton is always cited, invariably cited, 12:04.568 --> 12:08.668 as the canon's most stalwart representative of oppressive 12:08.667 --> 12:11.007 religious and social values. 12:11.009 --> 12:15.139 There's no question: Milton is the dead white male 12:15.135 --> 12:19.425 poet par excellence in English letters certainly, 12:19.429 --> 12:22.829 and his poetry works, at least from this point of 12:22.829 --> 12:26.299 view, to solidify those dead white male values, 12:26.299 --> 12:29.709 whatever those are, in the unsuspecting minds of 12:29.712 --> 12:33.712 his readers, none of whom obviously are dead and many of 12:33.706 --> 12:36.316 whom are neither white nor male. 12:36.320 --> 12:40.950 Milton's power from this perspective of the radical 12:40.945 --> 12:46.585 cultural critique is really not so different from the power of 12:46.587 --> 12:51.857 the late Jerry Falwell or someone like Rush Limbaugh. 12:51.860 --> 12:56.360 There is something insidious and culturally malicious and 12:56.364 --> 13:00.874 powerful about the social conservatism of what is thought 13:00.869 --> 13:05.939 to be his voice.Now this is the contemporary picture of John 13:05.937 --> 13:10.597 Milton and this more or less contemporary picture of Milton 13:10.603 --> 13:14.713 as a powerful force of conservatism derives in large 13:14.706 --> 13:19.046 part from the English writer Virginia Woolf, 13:19.049 --> 13:25.729 who wrote about Milton during the 1920s. 13:25.730 --> 13:28.610 It's Woolf's image that's probably the one that's most 13:28.605 --> 13:31.585 firmly rooted in the minds of Milton's readers today. 13:31.590 --> 13:35.320 For Virginia Woolf, especially in A Room of 13:35.322 --> 13:40.472 One's Own, the dead writer Milton exercises an active power 13:40.465 --> 13:45.025 at the present moment as he forces his female readers to 13:45.028 --> 13:49.008 accept their subordinate place in society; 13:49.009 --> 13:52.309 and the text of Milton, and especially of Paradise 13:52.308 --> 13:55.478 Lost, therefore has to be seen as an active, 13:55.480 --> 14:02.080 persistently malignant conveyor of patriarchal oppression. 14:02.080 --> 14:05.910 Now, like all judgments of literary value and literary 14:05.905 --> 14:09.225 power and force, the twentieth-century feminist 14:09.225 --> 14:12.085 evaluation of Milton, Virginia Woolf's, 14:12.090 --> 14:15.580 has a complicated and long prehistory, and it's worth our 14:15.582 --> 14:19.452 while to look briefly at some of the complicated steps by which 14:19.449 --> 14:22.879 an evaluation like Virginia Woolf's actually comes in to 14:22.879 --> 14:26.349 being. So let me take you back. 14:26.350 --> 14:28.770 You can now look at your handouts. 14:28.769 --> 14:31.589 Let me take you back to the seventeenth century, 14:31.590 --> 14:35.010 up to the very beginning of the literary reception of John 14:35.009 --> 14:38.299 Milton.Milton, who had died in 1674, 14:38.298 --> 14:43.918 had established himself as a great English poet within twenty 14:43.924 --> 14:46.554 or so years of his death. 14:46.549 --> 14:49.189 As early as the late seventeenth century, 14:49.190 --> 14:53.220 Milton had already entered what we can think of as the English 14:53.216 --> 14:56.526 literary canon. For many of his younger 14:56.534 --> 15:00.394 contemporaries, he was a canonical authority 15:00.393 --> 15:03.633 whose wisdom, whose mere opinions, 15:03.629 --> 15:08.309 could be cited as proof, as some sort of indisputable 15:08.309 --> 15:12.079 evidence, for one position or another And 15:12.080 --> 15:16.770 an extraordinarily ambitious poet like Milton naturally 15:16.768 --> 15:20.238 derived a great deal of satisfaction, 15:20.240 --> 15:22.500 I'm convinced, in his own lifetime, 15:22.495 --> 15:26.135 in anticipating just this kind of posthumous respect and 15:26.143 --> 15:28.893 worship, the fantasy of his fellow 15:28.891 --> 15:33.811 Englishmen quoting him as an authority much as he himself 15:33.810 --> 15:37.870 had for so many decades quoted scripture.Now, 15:37.870 --> 15:41.460 one of the earliest -- and I think this is a remarkable fact 15:41.463 --> 15:45.123 -- one of the earliest citations of Paradise Lost that 15:45.117 --> 15:48.887 actually appears in print in the seventeenth century comes from 15:48.893 --> 15:52.063 the proto-feminist writer Lady Mary Chudleigh. 15:52.059 --> 15:56.579 Chudleigh dared to argue -- and it's an amazing argument, 15:56.580 --> 16:00.940 given the time -- in 1699 Chudleigh argued that a woman 16:00.940 --> 16:05.620 could be considered and should be considered as excellent a 16:05.622 --> 16:10.012 creature as a man, that women might actually be as 16:10.014 --> 16:12.474 ontologically valuable as men. 16:12.470 --> 16:16.230 And in making such a point, Chudleigh naturally had to 16:16.226 --> 16:20.476 confront -- as writers have for millennia -- Chudleigh had to 16:20.479 --> 16:24.169 confront the problem of the scriptural account of the 16:24.165 --> 16:27.785 priority of the sexes, the suggestion that many 16:27.786 --> 16:31.946 readers extract from the Book of Genesis in the Bible that the 16:31.945 --> 16:35.145 initial creation of the male of the species, 16:35.149 --> 16:40.549 Adam, seems to establish the privileged rank of the entire 16:40.548 --> 16:43.368 male sex. And so Chudleigh attempts to 16:43.367 --> 16:46.857 demonstrate -- and this is the passage at the top of the 16:46.857 --> 16:50.667 handout -- Chudleigh attempts to demonstrate that the Genesis 16:50.666 --> 16:54.026 story of Adam and Eve establishes no such thing. 16:54.030 --> 16:57.160 She writes, Woman's being created 16:57.160 --> 17:01.380 last will not be a very great argument to debase the dignity 17:01.378 --> 17:02.878 of the female sex. 17:02.879 --> 17:06.379 If some of the men own this [she continues] 17:06.380 --> 17:08.880 'tis more likely to be true. 17:08.880 --> 17:10.880 The great Milton, a grave author, 17:10.879 --> 17:14.819 brings in Adam thus speaking to Eve in Paradise Lost [and 17:14.815 --> 17:17.435 then she quotes Adam speaking to Eve], 17:17.440 --> 17:22.250 "Oh, fairest of creation, last and best of all God's 17:22.254 --> 17:25.734 works." The great Milton can be invoked 17:25.730 --> 17:29.850 here because he has already been established as an authority. 17:29.849 --> 17:33.559 He's already been established as a figure whose very word 17:33.563 --> 17:37.413 possesses something like an indisputable cultural power. 17:37.410 --> 17:41.390 So as a very "grave author" -- and this is what Chudleigh is 17:41.390 --> 17:45.570 implying -- Milton can tell us something potentially true about 17:45.573 --> 17:49.823 the priority of the sexes.Of course--and you know this to be 17:49.824 --> 17:53.474 the case from your own writing of papers in the English 17:53.467 --> 17:57.517 department-- like any literary critic who ever tried to write 17:57.516 --> 18:01.736 an analysis of anything, Chudleigh has no choice but to 18:01.739 --> 18:05.019 nudge the lines that she's quoting out of context. 18:05.019 --> 18:08.579 It's been said that to quote anybody is necessarily to 18:08.575 --> 18:11.585 misrepresent him, and this fact is obviously a 18:11.594 --> 18:15.424 very good thing for Lady Mary Chudleigh since Milton would 18:15.418 --> 18:19.308 certainly not himself have wanted to suggest that women are 18:19.309 --> 18:21.949 superior to men. Milton, in fact, 18:21.952 --> 18:25.502 soon goes on in Paradise Lost -- right after this 18:25.500 --> 18:29.700 very passage that she cites, Milton the narrator berates 18:29.697 --> 18:34.497 Adam for his overvaluation of his wife through the character 18:34.500 --> 18:36.780 of the Archangel Raphael. 18:36.779 --> 18:40.029 I think this is one of the great ironies of English 18:40.025 --> 18:43.005 literary history, certainly in the reception of 18:43.011 --> 18:46.331 the poet Milton, that one of the very first 18:46.328 --> 18:50.678 published discussions of Milton's epic attempts to enlist 18:50.675 --> 18:55.255 John Milton as a proponent of feminism.Now we don't have 18:55.256 --> 18:59.986 to be overly concerned here with what I take to be Chudleigh's 18:59.991 --> 19:04.651 generous oversight of Milton's generally sexist bias. 19:04.650 --> 19:07.730 What's important for our immediate purposes is her 19:07.727 --> 19:10.927 identification of Milton as a cultural authority. 19:10.930 --> 19:15.270 He's a literary power, a figure who could be called 19:15.265 --> 19:19.595 upon to supply the voice of tradition in itself. 19:19.599 --> 19:24.229 He can be called upon in fact exactly as he is by Lady Mary 19:24.231 --> 19:26.931 here. He can be called upon to 19:26.926 --> 19:30.756 contradict scripture: and it's this power to 19:30.755 --> 19:36.275 contradict the Word of God that makes Milton a force than which 19:36.275 --> 19:41.705 it's hard to imagine anything more powerful.Now as you can 19:41.706 --> 19:46.446 see from the handout, Milton is discussed in a very 19:46.449 --> 19:51.339 different manner a year later in a work published by Mary Astell 19:51.337 --> 19:55.837 in 1700 and in an even more remarkably feminist cry for the 19:55.837 --> 20:00.487 liberation of women from what she describes and characterizes 20:00.492 --> 20:02.822 as domestic oppression. 20:02.820 --> 20:07.840 Astell writes the following: Patience and submission 20:07.844 --> 20:12.044 are the only comforts that are left to a poor people who groan 20:12.039 --> 20:16.509 under tyranny unless they are strong enough to break the yoke. 20:16.509 --> 20:21.439 Not Milton himself would cry up liberty to poor female slaves or 20:21.440 --> 20:25.040 plead for the lawfulness or resisting a private 20:25.041 --> 20:28.251 tyranny. So Milton for Astell is hardly 20:28.246 --> 20:32.076 the embodiment of orthodoxy that he is for Lady Mary Chudleigh. 20:32.079 --> 20:36.079 For Astell, Milton remains the subversive revolutionary whose 20:36.076 --> 20:39.736 treatises against the tyranny of the Stuart monarchy, 20:39.740 --> 20:43.330 whose treatises against the tyranny of Charles the First 20:43.334 --> 20:46.214 established his reputation as a liberator, 20:46.210 --> 20:49.720 a liberator of all of the oppressed and enslaved citizens 20:49.717 --> 20:52.407 of England, and that's Milton's rhetoric; 20:52.410 --> 20:56.180 that rhetoric belongs to Milton himself. 20:56.180 --> 20:59.080 But Astell resents, of course, Milton here, 20:59.076 --> 21:02.106 and what she resents is the limitation of his 21:02.109 --> 21:05.279 subversiveness. He refused to extend his 21:05.279 --> 21:09.779 critique of tyranny in the political realm to a critique of 21:09.775 --> 21:14.265 man's domestic tyranny over woman in the private realm, 21:14.270 --> 21:15.860 in the domestic sphere. 21:15.859 --> 21:18.019 It's as if Mary Astell were saying, "Well, 21:18.016 --> 21:19.696 Milton was on the right track. 21:19.700 --> 21:20.930 He simply didn't go far enough. 21:20.930 --> 21:25.100 He didn't extend the logic of his position."Now it has to 21:25.104 --> 21:29.074 be said that Mary Astell's image of Milton is probably the 21:29.069 --> 21:33.239 product of a much closer reading of Paradise Lost than 21:33.243 --> 21:35.473 Lady Mary Chudleigh's was. 21:35.470 --> 21:40.140 Astell certainly seems to have noticed Milton's notorious and, 21:40.140 --> 21:44.810 of course, deplorable line in Paradise Lost about God's 21:44.811 --> 21:48.411 creation of Adam and Eve: "He for God only, 21:48.410 --> 21:53.230 she for God in him," Milton's narrator tells us of God's 21:53.232 --> 21:55.602 creation of Adam and Eve. 21:55.599 --> 21:58.159 Mary Astell is clearly responding to this. 21:58.160 --> 22:01.360 Her statement points to a persistent worry, 22:01.363 --> 22:05.413 and it's a worry that exists even now in the twentieth 22:05.405 --> 22:08.985 century about the nature of Milton's power. 22:08.990 --> 22:14.260 Is this guy a revolutionary or is he a reactionary? 22:14.259 --> 22:19.139 Astell distinguishes Milton's cry against political tyranny 22:19.140 --> 22:22.940 from her own critique, her own cry against the 22:22.938 --> 22:26.798 patriarchal tyranny, and in making this distinction 22:26.803 --> 22:30.753 she's exposing something that I take to be extremely 22:30.745 --> 22:33.465 interesting. She's exposing the 22:33.470 --> 22:36.920 uncomfortable affinity between two competing, 22:36.916 --> 22:40.046 equally progressive social movements. 22:40.049 --> 22:45.629 You'll see this phenomenon manifest itself throughout your 22:45.626 --> 22:49.046 reading of Milton, I'm convinced; 22:49.049 --> 22:51.599 and what we see here is the strange proximity, 22:51.595 --> 22:54.305 and it's often a very uncomfortable proximity, 22:54.309 --> 22:57.209 of Milton's rhetoric of political liberation to the 22:57.208 --> 23:00.568 proto-feminist rhetoric of domestic liberation that is just 23:00.570 --> 23:03.530 beginning to emerge at the end of the^( )seventeenth 23:03.527 --> 23:07.057 century.Now in the middle years of the seventeenth century 23:07.063 --> 23:10.433 during the English revolution that saw the execution of the 23:10.426 --> 23:13.846 king and saw the establishment of a non-monarchic republican 23:13.846 --> 23:17.916 government, Milton had practically invented 23:17.916 --> 23:21.796 the formal language, the literary language, 23:21.800 --> 23:23.380 of insubordination. 23:23.380 --> 23:27.950 He developed an entire vocabulary, a rhetoric of 23:27.952 --> 23:31.552 righteous disobedience, of resistance, 23:31.551 --> 23:34.471 of protest and revolution. 23:34.470 --> 23:37.860 And I think it's a measure of the power of Milton's 23:37.861 --> 23:41.801 anti-tyrannical language that it can be used against Milton 23:41.796 --> 23:44.526 himself. A writer like Mary Astell can 23:44.527 --> 23:48.427 employ Milton's revolutionary rhetoric to advance a cause to 23:48.428 --> 23:52.398 which John Milton himself would of course have had difficulty 23:52.395 --> 23:55.775 subscribing; a dead Milton could exercise a 23:55.777 --> 24:00.367 social power that had nothing whatsoever to do with the living 24:00.368 --> 24:04.208 Milton's own social views.Now we'll fast forward 24:04.206 --> 24:08.266 a couple of centuries and look at Virginia Woolf. 24:08.269 --> 24:12.499 By the time we get to Woolf in the early part of the twentieth 24:12.504 --> 24:16.464 century, Milton has come to be associated with essentially 24:16.460 --> 24:20.140 all of these ways of thinking about power, 24:20.140 --> 24:24.320 however contradictory they are. 24:24.319 --> 24:27.759 He's the very voice of traditional wisdom for some, 24:27.761 --> 24:30.241 as he was for Lady Mary Chudleigh. 24:30.240 --> 24:34.630 And he's the voice of political subversiveness for others, 24:34.625 --> 24:36.775 as he was for Mary Astell. 24:36.779 --> 24:39.729 He's the friend of women everywhere, at least for a few 24:39.729 --> 24:42.459 of his female readers in the eighteenth century, 24:42.460 --> 24:46.310 and for many he's the very embodiment of oppressive 24:46.305 --> 24:50.765 patriarchy.I mentioned earlier that it's Virginia Woolf 24:50.766 --> 24:55.296 who's largely responsible for our sense of Milton's identity 24:55.304 --> 24:59.154 as an oppressive patriarchal literary voice, 24:59.150 --> 25:02.780 but Virginia Woolf, too, had inherited these 25:02.782 --> 25:07.942 contradictory ways of thinking about Milton and about Milton's 25:07.935 --> 25:10.685 power. And you can see from the 25:10.690 --> 25:14.830 handout that in 1924, Woolf is beginning to formulate 25:14.830 --> 25:19.610 her dazzling feminist critique of the masculine traditions -- 25:19.607 --> 25:24.147 what she thinks of as the masculine traditions of literary 25:24.145 --> 25:28.435 writing -- and she's not just one of the first literary 25:28.444 --> 25:32.824 critics to reveal that most famous writers have been men 25:32.822 --> 25:37.142 (everyone had already, had always known that), 25:37.141 --> 25:41.331 but she's one of the first literary critics to reveal that 25:41.334 --> 25:45.384 most famous writers have been writing as men, 25:45.380 --> 25:49.230 exerting the influence of their sex (that's to use her language) 25:49.232 --> 25:52.782 in a manner that implicitly glorifies their masculinity, 25:52.780 --> 25:56.640 implicitly glorifies all men. 25:56.640 --> 26:01.840 But this is not so [she writes in 1924] 26:01.844 --> 26:06.034 with Milton. There's [and this is Woolf's 26:06.034 --> 26:10.744 amazing argument here] a small group of writers whose 26:10.740 --> 26:14.180 work [and I'm quoting her] is pure, 26:14.180 --> 26:17.760 uncontaminated, sexless as the angels are said 26:17.764 --> 26:22.304 to be sexless and Milton is their leader [she tells 26:22.304 --> 26:25.104 us]. Like Lady Mary Chudleigh, 26:25.100 --> 26:28.260 Woolf holds up Milton as a powerful authority. 26:28.259 --> 26:31.949 He's almost a mythological figure who can sanction, 26:31.951 --> 26:35.721 who can authorize this revolution in women's writing 26:35.716 --> 26:40.216 that Virginia Woolf is beginning to prophesy here early in the 26:40.220 --> 26:43.690 twentieth century.But this of course, 26:43.690 --> 26:47.770 as we know, is only one of the ways in which Milton's power, 26:47.768 --> 26:50.808 or what Woolf thinks of as his leadership, 26:50.810 --> 26:52.940 can be thought of. 26:52.940 --> 26:56.600 In 1928, and this is the next quotation on the handout, 26:56.603 --> 27:00.203 Milton has come to represent for Virginia Woolf a very 27:00.199 --> 27:02.709 different type of cultural force. 27:02.710 --> 27:07.000 Near the conclusion of the perfectly extraordinary book 27:07.002 --> 27:10.682 A Room of One's Own, Woolf elaborates on her 27:10.683 --> 27:14.383 prophecy of a feminist future, a world in which women can be 27:14.382 --> 27:17.332 viewed -- a literary feminist future – 27:17.329 --> 27:21.729 a world in which women can be viewed as writers of no less 27:21.725 --> 27:24.805 stature and of no less power than men. 27:24.810 --> 27:29.730 So this is Woolf I am quoting: For my belief is [and 27:29.734 --> 27:32.744 I'll have to skip around a little bit] 27:32.741 --> 27:37.701 that if we live another century or so and have 500 a year each 27:37.699 --> 27:42.369 of us and rooms of our own, if we have the habit of freedom 27:42.371 --> 27:45.581 and the courage to write exactly what we think, 27:45.579 --> 27:51.329 if we look past Milton's bogey, for no human being should shut 27:51.334 --> 27:54.974 out the view, then the opportunity will come 27:54.965 --> 27:59.165 and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on 27:59.174 --> 28:02.944 the body which she has so often laid down. 28:02.940 --> 28:05.850 Now the language is intentionally and really 28:05.852 --> 28:09.852 sublimely opaque and apocalyptic here as Woolf imagines what 28:09.848 --> 28:13.848 might have happened to Judith Shakespeare had she been given 28:13.845 --> 28:18.175 the cultural opportunities of her more privileged brother, 28:18.180 --> 28:22.270 William, but the anticipated triumph of women writers can 28:22.272 --> 28:25.782 never occur, according to Virginia Woolf here, 28:25.779 --> 28:30.439 until we look past "Milton's bogey" -- until we look past 28:30.439 --> 28:32.019 "Milton's bogey." 28:32.019 --> 28:35.779 She's ingeniously vague about what Milton's bogey is. 28:35.779 --> 28:39.829 I have puzzled over this, I've puzzled over this phrase 28:39.828 --> 28:44.248 for years, and I'm not even remotely satisfied that I have a 28:44.251 --> 28:48.081 clue what she means: but Milton's bogey would 28:48.075 --> 28:51.385 seem to be, I think, that frightening 28:51.394 --> 28:56.304 shadow that Milton casts over wives who might find themselves 28:56.302 --> 29:00.312 identifying with the subordinate Milton's Eve. 29:00.309 --> 29:03.939 Milton's bogey seems to be the specter hovering over 29:03.938 --> 29:07.248 women poets or women writers who may find in Milton an 29:07.254 --> 29:10.324 identification of poetic strength with masculinity 29:10.320 --> 29:14.070 itself.Now Woolf doesn't try to explain exactly how it is 29:14.074 --> 29:16.894 that Milton is shutting out the view, 29:16.890 --> 29:19.990 and she doesn't try to explain what the view would look like if 29:19.990 --> 29:21.090 it weren't shut out. 29:21.089 --> 29:26.559 But in citing the power of what she claims to be this Puritan 29:26.562 --> 29:30.942 bogey, Virginia Woolf really suddenly reveals, 29:30.940 --> 29:34.930 I think, how difficult it is even for her to shut out 29:34.925 --> 29:39.675 entirely the real--or it might just be the bogus--power of John 29:39.676 --> 29:42.086 Milton. At the very moment that Woolf 29:42.086 --> 29:44.836 advises women readers to look past Milton's bogey, 29:44.839 --> 29:49.069 she finds herself in the peculiar position of echoing the 29:49.067 --> 29:50.877 poetry of John Milton. 29:50.880 --> 29:53.430 This is, I think, an unbelievable thing to have 29:53.427 --> 29:56.637 happen at one of the formative moments of twentieth-century 29:56.640 --> 29:59.050 feminism. She's alluding here, 29:59.045 --> 30:03.845 I think, to one of the most famous passages in Paradise 30:03.847 --> 30:08.817 Lost in which Milton is asserting nothing other than his 30:08.818 --> 30:12.608 poetic power.This is on the handout. 30:12.609 --> 30:17.609 The blind poet calls on the Holy Spirit to assist him in the 30:17.614 --> 30:19.824 composition of the epic. 30:19.819 --> 30:24.259 He asks the Heavenly Muse at the end of the passage to help 30:24.258 --> 30:28.618 him "see and tell of things invisible to mortal sight," 30:28.619 --> 30:32.569 and Milton's going to need this additional help from God 30:32.570 --> 30:36.880 because, as he says -- this is near the middle of the passage 30:36.880 --> 30:40.470 -- because "wisdom at one entrance is quite shut 30:40.472 --> 30:42.632 out." Milton's blindness, 30:42.629 --> 30:45.869 the fact of his blindness, has shut out his view of 30:45.867 --> 30:48.637 the visible world, which would ordinarily present 30:48.636 --> 30:51.156 itself to him through the entrance of his eyes; 30:51.160 --> 30:54.950 and this shut-out will enable him, will help him, 30:54.954 --> 30:58.754 explore the invisible world of divine truth.Now when 30:58.750 --> 31:02.680 Virginia Woolf writes that Milton's bogey has shut out the 31:02.682 --> 31:06.712 view of his female readers, she seems to be suggesting that 31:06.710 --> 31:09.930 the specter of Milton blinds women to the things that they 31:09.930 --> 31:13.870 should be seeing, the most important truths out 31:13.871 --> 31:15.811 there in the world. 31:15.809 --> 31:19.409 How troubling though -- this seems undeniable -- and how 31:19.412 --> 31:23.602 strange that Woolf really at her most radical is echoing the very 31:23.603 --> 31:26.423 words of the power that she's opposing! 31:26.420 --> 31:29.430 It's almost as if she were saying in some way, 31:29.425 --> 31:33.095 in a post-Miltonic world, which is the world that we all 31:33.098 --> 31:36.188 live in, it's impossible fully to look 31:36.191 --> 31:40.021 past Milton's bogey; that the rhetoric of power, 31:40.016 --> 31:44.346 the literary strategies of power, and in some cases the 31:44.350 --> 31:50.070 very experience of power, have become inextricably tied 31:50.065 --> 31:52.465 and indebted to Milton. 31:52.470 --> 31:55.780 And in this great prophecy of twentieth-century feminism, 31:55.779 --> 31:59.029 Woolf is essentially proposing a cultural revolution. 31:59.029 --> 32:03.799 And it's as if the text here were telling us that whether we 32:03.796 --> 32:07.176 like it or not, whether we like Milton or not, 32:07.182 --> 32:11.142 the language of revolution is one that is forever and always 32:11.139 --> 32:13.889 indebted to that bogeyman John Milton, 32:13.890 --> 32:19.150 as Virginia Woolf had written, "Milton is our leader."Now 32:19.152 --> 32:24.242 some of you I'm assuming will already have read Paradise 32:24.240 --> 32:29.330 Lost and so it will come to you as no surprise that the 32:29.327 --> 32:34.417 representation of power for which Milton is most celebrated 32:34.415 --> 32:40.375 is the power exhibited in the failed revolution against God, 32:40.380 --> 32:44.550 the revolution against God by Satan and his fellow rebels. 32:44.549 --> 32:48.069 My guess is that our sense of Milton's power, 32:48.069 --> 32:52.519 however that power is imagined, is intimately related to the 32:52.515 --> 32:55.735 way in which Milton himself represents power in the 32:55.739 --> 32:59.479 characters of Satan and of God in Paradise Lost. 32:59.480 --> 33:02.180 Look at the next passage. 33:02.180 --> 33:05.580 This is from Paradise Lost. 33:05.579 --> 33:09.989 Satan and the rebel angels have been roundly defeated. 33:09.990 --> 33:15.000 They've been humiliated by the Son of God and the other 33:15.002 --> 33:21.132 priggish loyalist angels so they are pained, utterly humiliated. 33:21.130 --> 33:24.400 They're prostrate on the burning lake of this miserable 33:24.404 --> 33:27.944 new realm called hell, yet nonetheless Satan pulls 33:27.942 --> 33:32.032 himself together and begins to analyze, to theorize, 33:32.030 --> 33:34.680 his situation. He describes for us his own 33:34.681 --> 33:38.681 power that somehow manages to survive even a terrifying and 33:38.680 --> 33:42.610 humiliating defeat like the one he's just experienced. 33:42.610 --> 33:47.170 So this is Satan: What though the field be 33:47.170 --> 33:49.810 lost? All is not lost; 33:49.810 --> 33:53.370 the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, 33:53.368 --> 33:57.418 immortal hate, And courage never to submit or 33:57.424 --> 33:59.774 yield: And what is else not to 33:59.770 --> 34:02.830 overcome? That glory never shall his 34:02.830 --> 34:06.000 wrath or might Extort from me. 34:06.000 --> 34:10.700 To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, 34:10.695 --> 34:14.865 and deify his power Who from the terror of this Arm 34:14.865 --> 34:17.005 so late Doubted his Empire, 34:17.010 --> 34:21.870 that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame 34:21.874 --> 34:25.284 beneath This downfall. (I.105-116) 34:25.280 --> 34:29.010 Now we might at first think that Satan's vaunting here is 34:29.014 --> 34:32.884 the product of nothing more elevated than hate and a desire 34:32.882 --> 34:37.162 for revenge, but Milton's doing something 34:37.161 --> 34:39.571 truly extraordinary. 34:39.570 --> 34:43.780 I think that the imaginative achievement here in Satan's 34:43.777 --> 34:45.687 speech is easy to miss. 34:45.690 --> 34:50.800 Satan finds it ignominious and shameful to lower himself to 34:50.802 --> 34:55.922 God, to bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee and deify 34:55.915 --> 34:59.315 His power, but this kind of submission is 34:59.321 --> 35:03.661 shameful not because it's simply always shameful so to debase 35:03.663 --> 35:06.393 oneself. It's an ignominy and a shame 35:06.388 --> 35:10.658 because it may very well be -- I think this is without question 35:10.659 --> 35:14.859 what Satan is implying here -- it may very well be that God is 35:14.862 --> 35:16.862 not actually omnipotent. 35:16.860 --> 35:19.940 Would an omnipotent, would a truly all-powerful God 35:19.943 --> 35:22.783 actually doubt the extent of His own empire? 35:22.780 --> 35:27.260 In Virginia Woolf's terms, Satan is trying to look past 35:27.264 --> 35:28.684 God's bogey. 35:28.679 --> 35:33.229 He tries to get behind the highly theatrical, 35:33.234 --> 35:38.724 the culturally constructed illusion of God's power, 35:38.719 --> 35:45.699 and you can hear Satan saying, "Well, so what if we lost? 35:45.699 --> 35:49.919 We may have lost this battle, but the important thing is that 35:49.921 --> 35:53.651 God revealed a terror of this arm, of our strength. 35:53.650 --> 35:57.570 A fear of the military strength of the rebel angels is what was 35:57.566 --> 35:59.016 manifest in this war. 35:59.019 --> 36:02.539 God was so afraid of us that He actually doubted His hold on His 36:02.543 --> 36:04.743 own empire, an empire that He was only 36:04.741 --> 36:07.461 actually able to maintain because of good luck or 36:07.457 --> 36:10.057 something like superior military firepower, 36:10.059 --> 36:14.109 but certainly nothing as grand and as absolute as 36:14.105 --> 36:18.905 omnipotence."This is an amazing thing for Satan to say 36:18.908 --> 36:22.898 after his fall. Even the expulsion of Satan 36:22.895 --> 36:28.105 from heaven was not sufficient to prove beyond a shadow of a 36:28.107 --> 36:31.727 doubt the legitimate authority of God. 36:31.730 --> 36:35.120 That Satan is still able to doubt the legitimacy of God's 36:35.124 --> 36:37.614 power is a testimony to the complexity, 36:37.610 --> 36:42.890 I think, of the analysis of power in Paradise Lost. 36:42.889 --> 36:46.229 No power, not even God's power, 36:46.226 --> 36:50.736 can be irresistibly and indisputably proven. 36:50.739 --> 36:54.889 Satan refuses in this speech to deify the power of the 36:54.892 --> 36:58.182 conquering enemy, and in this refusal Satan 36:58.183 --> 37:02.653 resembles no one so much as John Milton: John Milton, 37:02.650 --> 37:06.480 the political leftist who refused to deify the power of 37:06.483 --> 37:09.113 the English king Charles the First, 37:09.110 --> 37:12.280 who so many of his contemporaries considered to be 37:12.280 --> 37:15.700 God's anointed; John Milton who wrote hundreds 37:15.695 --> 37:20.095 of pages of anti-monarchic propaganda until King Charles's 37:20.095 --> 37:23.255 head was safely severed from his body. 37:23.260 --> 37:26.200 Like Milton, Satan is in the business of 37:26.199 --> 37:29.439 demystifying power, of exposing political or 37:29.441 --> 37:34.121 cultural power as something that is not simply inherently there 37:34.115 --> 37:35.995 or naturally there. 37:36.000 --> 37:39.900 Power is something -- and this is what we learn from a reading 37:39.895 --> 37:43.465 of John Milton -- power is something that is created by a 37:43.472 --> 37:48.002 human process of deification, a process of king-worship or a 37:48.001 --> 37:52.281 process of God-worship or book-worship or a process, 37:52.280 --> 37:55.890 for that matter, of poet-worship.Now later 37:55.887 --> 38:00.057 on in Paradise Lost, Satan comes to the 38:00.055 --> 38:04.615 conclusion that that old man in heaven who had assumed the 38:04.624 --> 38:09.194 authority to issue all of those arbitrary decrees -- Satan 38:09.193 --> 38:13.203 finally relents and concedes that He is actually an 38:13.201 --> 38:17.611 omnipotent God and that that God actually is, 38:17.610 --> 38:20.720 or was, the omnipotent creator of all things. 38:20.719 --> 38:24.049 But despite this enormous concession and this realization, 38:24.051 --> 38:27.301 Satan is still justified, I think, in his cynical 38:27.297 --> 38:31.137 demystification of God's behavior before the defeat of 38:31.139 --> 38:32.589 the rebel angels. 38:32.590 --> 38:36.500 And Satan complains now that God never bothered to 38:36.495 --> 38:40.715 demonstrate to the angels just how powerful He was. 38:40.719 --> 38:44.359 And so this is the last quotation on the handout. 38:44.360 --> 38:46.860 Satan again: But He who reigns 38:46.860 --> 38:50.330 Monarch in Heav'n, till then as one secure 38:50.329 --> 38:53.999 Sat on his Throne, upheld by old repute, 38:54.000 --> 38:57.230 Consent or custom, and his Regal State 38:57.230 --> 39:01.070 Put forth at full, but still his strength 39:01.068 --> 39:04.018 conceal'd, Which tempted our attempt and 39:04.022 --> 39:05.082 wrought our fall. 39:05.079 --> 39:08.139 (I.637-642) Satan's saying that before the 39:08.136 --> 39:10.756 war in heaven, God's power just seemed like 39:10.763 --> 39:14.643 any other king's power, as if God sat on the throne of 39:14.638 --> 39:19.138 heaven merely because of those humanly constructed reasons of 39:19.135 --> 39:22.705 tradition, or of old repute or consent or 39:22.707 --> 39:24.647 custom. Now alas for Satan, 39:24.650 --> 39:28.200 it turned out that God's monarchy was actually based on 39:28.203 --> 39:29.523 genuine strength. 39:29.519 --> 39:33.879 It wasn't simply that God just happened to be wearing the crown 39:33.876 --> 39:37.526 and just happened to be sitting in the best chair; 39:37.530 --> 39:41.170 but in Satan's articulation of what we can think of as a 39:41.172 --> 39:43.492 dialectic of power and authority, 39:43.489 --> 39:48.209 he provides us with a useful analysis of the problems 39:48.210 --> 39:51.750 besetting any understanding of power. 39:51.750 --> 39:55.280 The kinds of authority established by the bogeys of 39:55.280 --> 39:59.090 tradition and custom and conservative tradition are not 39:59.094 --> 40:03.194 always distinguishable from the kinds of authority that are 40:03.190 --> 40:05.450 based on genuine strength. 40:05.449 --> 40:09.539 Even if we locate a source of some kind of genuine strength, 40:09.544 --> 40:13.014 authoritative strength, it's still usually possible, 40:13.014 --> 40:15.864 as it is for Satan, to argue that that power is 40:15.863 --> 40:19.153 really at base just the concealed product of custom or 40:19.146 --> 40:22.426 what we would think of as cultural construction. 40:22.429 --> 40:26.129 To be a king, one need merely put forth one's 40:26.134 --> 40:31.354 regal state, one simply needs to act kingly.Now I raise the 40:31.353 --> 40:35.733 matter of Satan's critique of God's power because the 40:35.731 --> 40:39.521 evaluation and the criticism of Milton, 40:39.519 --> 40:43.449 and especially of Milton's poetry, has hinged for a couple 40:43.448 --> 40:47.308 of centuries now on a related set of questions about this 40:47.308 --> 40:50.828 poet's power. Is Milton powerful for the very 40:50.829 --> 40:55.679 straightforward reason that he's in possession of this tremendous 40:55.678 --> 40:59.238 literary strength, this unimaginable talent? 40:59.239 --> 41:02.419 Or has Milton only seemed powerful because of the 41:02.417 --> 41:06.257 traditional religious values with which he is so intimately 41:06.257 --> 41:09.497 associated? Does Milton only seem powerful 41:09.498 --> 41:14.218 because he has the force or the strength of the age-old literary 41:14.220 --> 41:15.720 canon behind him? 41:15.719 --> 41:20.169 Does Milton only seem powerful because he's the very literary 41:20.166 --> 41:24.166 embodiment of patriarchy and masculine bias?It goes 41:24.167 --> 41:28.537 without saying that these are questions that it's impossible 41:28.539 --> 41:31.799 for us to try to answer certainly now, 41:31.800 --> 41:36.750 but Milton lets us know later in Paradise Lost that 41:36.745 --> 41:41.855 Satan was wrong to embark on his dangerous deconstruction of 41:41.864 --> 41:45.644 divine power. Milton ultimately is a pious 41:45.644 --> 41:49.844 man and wants us to frown on Satan's critique of the 41:49.842 --> 41:53.302 Judeo-Christian conception of divinity. 41:53.300 --> 41:58.710 But regardless of Milton's ultimate dismissal of Satan's 41:58.711 --> 42:02.451 position, Satan's analysis of power, 42:02.449 --> 42:07.059 and of God's power especially, isn't that easily dismissible. 42:07.059 --> 42:10.719 And that's not simply because Satan bears such a strong 42:10.723 --> 42:13.173 resemblance to Milton, as, of course, 42:13.165 --> 42:16.825 he does. I'm convinced Satan looks ahead 42:16.834 --> 42:18.864 to us as well. 42:18.860 --> 42:23.480 Satan resembles us as readers as we attempt to dissect 42:23.476 --> 42:27.166 and to anatomize the power of Milton's poetry. 42:27.170 --> 42:31.090 I would go so far to say that something like a satanic 42:31.092 --> 42:35.392 sensibility may be one of our best guides in our reading of 42:35.385 --> 42:38.135 Milton. It's Milton's Satan who best 42:38.136 --> 42:42.076 prepares us -- I'll throw this out here at the end of this 42:42.077 --> 42:46.357 lecture -- who best prepares us to explore what we can think of 42:46.364 --> 42:49.134 as the labyrinth of Miltonic power. 42:49.130 --> 42:54.460 He puts us in a position to explore that truly weird but 42:54.455 --> 42:59.485 undeniable process whereby the very word "Milton," 42:59.489 --> 43:04.529 the name "Milton," stops referring to a particular 43:04.525 --> 43:10.175 middle-class Londoner who was born in 1608 and begins to 43:10.178 --> 43:15.828 embody the very essence of that strange and inexplicable 43:15.830 --> 43:21.890 phenomenon that we call literary power.So the lecture is 43:21.893 --> 43:23.233 over. 43:23.230 --> 43:51.700 43:51.699 --> 43:56.469 For next time, make sure that you will have 43:56.469 --> 44:01.579 read at the very least Milton's great poem, 44:01.579 --> 44:05.769 and he wrote it when he was only twenty-one years old, 44:05.770 --> 44:08.380 "The Ode on Christ's Nativity." 44:08.380 --> 44:10.350 And read, of course, the other two poems that were 44:10.346 --> 44:11.346 assigned for the class. 44:11.349 --> 44:14.729 But we'll be focusing on what we call "The Nativity Ode." 44:14.730 --> 44:17.000 Okay, that's it.