WEBVTT 00:01.790 --> 00:04.470 Professor John Rogers: Everyone agrees that the 00:04.474 --> 00:07.394 epic similes in Paradise Lost are different from the epic 00:07.390 --> 00:10.640 similes in any other epic poem, and everyone agrees -- I'm just 00:10.636 --> 00:13.936 going to be presenting to you a sense of critical consensus here 00:13.942 --> 00:16.572 -- everyone agrees that the similes are in some way 00:16.566 --> 00:19.606 absolutely essential to an understanding of this remarkable 00:19.610 --> 00:22.340 poem. Everyone agrees that what 00:22.343 --> 00:26.893 Milton is doing in the similes is educating the reader, 00:26.887 --> 00:29.157 the reader of this poem. 00:29.160 --> 00:33.230 He's introducing the reader to a mode of vision different from 00:33.234 --> 00:37.314 the vision typically permitted him from within the poem's more 00:37.309 --> 00:41.639 or less straightforward, linear, narrative boundaries. 00:41.640 --> 00:46.360 The similes enable us to see something about the story that 00:46.356 --> 00:50.256 the rest of the poem doesn't enable us to see. 00:50.260 --> 00:54.980 I think that it's fair to say that everyone agrees on that, 00:54.984 --> 00:59.384 and that's not nothing but that's pretty much where the 00:59.382 --> 01:02.732 agreement ends. Milton's similes are 01:02.732 --> 01:08.502 notoriously difficult as you no doubt have already experienced. 01:08.500 --> 01:12.120 The poem seems unusually self-conscious about the role 01:12.120 --> 01:13.760 that its similes play. 01:13.760 --> 01:17.880 So think of the article on Milton's similes by Geoffrey 01:17.877 --> 01:20.287 Hartman. Hartman describes Milton's 01:20.288 --> 01:23.778 tendency in Paradise Lost, and he takes this term 01:23.775 --> 01:26.435 from Coleridge: the tendency to stand ab 01:26.438 --> 01:29.288 extra, to stand from outside. 01:29.290 --> 01:33.120 Milton's looking in at his own work from a distance, 01:33.123 --> 01:36.283 according to Coleridge and then Hartman. 01:36.280 --> 01:39.670 Hartman associates this image of Milton's standing ab 01:39.674 --> 01:43.504 extra with the figures in so many of those similes who seem 01:43.501 --> 01:45.971 also to be standing ab extra. 01:45.970 --> 01:50.050 I think Hartman is absolutely right to note that it's this 01:50.049 --> 01:54.339 aspect of Milton's similes that sets them entirely apart from 01:54.343 --> 01:58.643 the similes in any other epic poem.Everyone should have a 01:58.638 --> 02:01.978 handout. Does everyone have a handout? 02:01.980 --> 02:09.000 Yes, okay. So this is my first point. 02:09.000 --> 02:12.170 There's always, and I think this is nearly 02:12.170 --> 02:17.040 invariable -- there's an element in Milton's similes that stands 02:17.043 --> 02:20.913 outside the framework of the basic comparison. 02:20.909 --> 02:25.049 In Book One alone there are four primary instances of what 02:25.045 --> 02:28.595 we can think of as this primary simile dynamic. 02:28.599 --> 02:31.919 We can call these the observer similes, and you see that 02:31.918 --> 02:33.848 they're listed on the handout. 02:33.849 --> 02:37.139 First we have the "Pilot of some small night-founder'd 02:37.136 --> 02:39.866 Skiff," and the pilot stands ab extra, 02:39.865 --> 02:41.845 from outside, in the simile. 02:41.849 --> 02:46.039 The simile is there ostensibly to compare Satan with the great 02:46.040 --> 02:47.620 sea beast, leviathan. 02:47.620 --> 02:50.440 In the comparison of Satan's shield with the moon is the 02:50.435 --> 02:53.045 figure of the Tuscan artist, the Tuscan artist being 02:53.045 --> 02:55.445 Galileo. Galileo appears in the simile 02:55.447 --> 02:58.587 but actually seems to be unnecessary for the general 02:58.590 --> 03:00.440 purposes of the comparison. 03:00.439 --> 03:03.659 Then we have the simile of the fallen leaves, 03:03.662 --> 03:07.472 which compares the fallen angels to fallen leaves, 03:07.469 --> 03:10.839 and in that simile we have the image of the Israelites. 03:10.840 --> 03:13.800 Milton calls them the "Sojourners of Goshen," and 03:13.798 --> 03:17.068 they're standing outside the general parameters of the 03:17.065 --> 03:19.865 comparison. In each of these cases the 03:19.870 --> 03:23.270 figure who stands ab extra, from outside, 03:23.268 --> 03:26.558 is an observer, an observer looking in and 03:26.560 --> 03:30.700 interpreting the action before him and an observer in a 03:30.695 --> 03:35.365 position presumably to make some kind of moral judgment on the 03:35.366 --> 03:37.966 action taking place.Okay. 03:37.970 --> 03:41.110 First of all, let's look at the simile that 03:41.114 --> 03:43.964 compares Satan's shield to the moon. 03:43.960 --> 03:46.610 This is Book One, line 283. 03:46.610 --> 03:50.340 This should be in the Hughes, page 218. 03:50.340 --> 03:54.190 Okay: He scarce had ceas't when 03:54.185 --> 03:58.395 the superior Fiend [that's obviously Satan]Was moving 03:58.403 --> 04:01.113 toward the shore; his ponderous 04:01.105 --> 04:05.055 shield,Ethereal temper, massy, large and 04:05.062 --> 04:10.112 round,Behind him cast; the broad circumferenceHung 04:10.113 --> 04:14.503 on his shoulders like the Moon, whose OrbThrough Optic 04:14.497 --> 04:18.727 Glass the Tuscan Artist viewsAt Ev'ning from the top 04:18.726 --> 04:21.766 of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, 04:21.771 --> 04:27.351 to descry new Lands,Rivers or Mountains in her spotty 04:27.346 --> 04:31.536 Globe. Let's try to take this apart. 04:31.540 --> 04:33.860 As I see it, the official function of this 04:33.860 --> 04:37.310 simile is to give us a sense of the size of Satan's shield and 04:37.313 --> 04:40.713 thereby to give us a sense of the size of Satan himself. 04:40.709 --> 04:45.379 Satan's shield is as big as the moon -- this is the most common 04:45.377 --> 04:47.857 form of simile, epic or otherwise, 04:47.861 --> 04:50.121 and it can be schematized. 04:50.120 --> 04:56.570 Well, I'm going to write on the board, "shield equals moon," and 04:56.571 --> 05:02.201 you can schematize it with, let's say, "A equals A'." 05:02.203 --> 05:03.333 A'? 05:03.330 --> 05:09.820 05:09.819 --> 05:16.569 You get it, something slightly different from A. 05:16.569 --> 05:19.789 That kind of makes sense, but there's more, 05:19.792 --> 05:24.322 of course, here than the moon to describe Satan's shield. 05:24.319 --> 05:27.189 It's a much more elaborate simile than that: 05:27.185 --> 05:31.245 "the broad circumference / hung on his shoulders like the Moon 05:31.251 --> 05:35.251 whose Orb / through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views. 05:35.250 --> 05:38.630 All of a sudden a third element has been injected in to the 05:38.631 --> 05:40.901 comparison. It has nothing whatsoever to do 05:40.904 --> 05:43.644 with the question of simply the size of Satan's shield, 05:43.639 --> 05:47.809 and we realize that we have to redraw the schema into which we 05:47.809 --> 05:52.479 fit this simile. So it's not merely "A equals 05:52.484 --> 05:58.204 A'." It's "A equals A' X," and X 05:58.196 --> 06:06.006 here would be Galileo, the Tuscan artist. 06:06.009 --> 06:10.119 The X of course doesn't announce its purpose within the 06:10.116 --> 06:12.266 logical context of the simile. 06:12.269 --> 06:17.379 One of the labors of reading Paradise Lost is the 06:17.382 --> 06:22.962 reader's obligation to supply the analog for the X, 06:22.959 --> 06:26.539 and this poem is filled with such X's.So, 06:26.537 --> 06:28.487 what is it? What is it, we ask, 06:28.491 --> 06:31.891 in the action of the poem that this X could be analogous 06:31.891 --> 06:33.481 to? It's a good question, 06:33.482 --> 06:36.612 and I think it still stands unresolved in the general 06:36.607 --> 06:38.407 understanding of this poem. 06:38.410 --> 06:41.660 What does this observer ab extra represent? 06:41.660 --> 06:44.270 Milton's similes always seem overstuffed. 06:44.270 --> 06:45.850 They're overdetermined. 06:45.850 --> 06:50.070 They always mean or signify far more than they're supposed to if 06:50.069 --> 06:52.949 their job is simply to make a comparison. 06:52.949 --> 06:57.099 There's never been any agreement, so far as I can tell, 06:57.103 --> 07:01.493 as to who it is we're supposed to be imagining the outside 07:01.488 --> 07:05.298 observer to be, and there are all sorts of 07:05.296 --> 07:07.276 conjectures. There is the reader. 07:07.280 --> 07:10.260 There is God. There's Milton. 07:10.259 --> 07:12.879 There are a number of possibilities.Now, 07:12.879 --> 07:16.349 this particular simile conjures for us an image of someone 07:16.351 --> 07:18.911 trying to get a fix on Satan's shield, 07:18.910 --> 07:24.110 and there's the suggestion here of an attempt to get a proper 07:24.112 --> 07:27.322 perspective on this huge character, 07:27.320 --> 07:29.820 Satan. By extension we have our 07:29.823 --> 07:33.513 attempt as readers to arrive at an understanding of the first 07:33.506 --> 07:34.976 two books in general. 07:34.980 --> 07:40.070 I think it's easy to see why Milton would have wanted to do 07:40.066 --> 07:42.986 this. There's no question that it's 07:42.991 --> 07:47.691 Satan who in these first two books completely overwhelms our 07:47.694 --> 07:50.354 imagination. He's without question the most 07:50.351 --> 07:52.541 compelling figure, certainly, in the first two 07:52.544 --> 07:55.034 books and, I think, arguably in the entire poem. 07:55.029 --> 07:59.119 This fact is a continually troubling phenomenon both for 07:59.119 --> 08:02.539 Milton and, of course, for Milton's readers. 08:02.540 --> 08:06.050 It only stands to reason, I think, that Milton would want 08:06.051 --> 08:09.381 to inscribe within this poem the problem posed by this 08:09.375 --> 08:12.945 extraordinarily compelling characterization of Satan. 08:12.949 --> 08:15.109 How are we supposed to see Satan? 08:15.110 --> 08:18.780 How are we supposed to arrive at some kind of proper moral 08:18.776 --> 08:20.766 discernment of Satan's being? 08:20.769 --> 08:25.269 This is the type of question that these similes are 08:25.269 --> 08:30.489 continually raising.But we have further to go with this 08:30.490 --> 08:33.060 simile. So initially the ponderous 08:33.061 --> 08:35.981 shield is of an "ethereal temper," we are told. 08:35.980 --> 08:38.880 It has been tempered in a celestial fire in ether, 08:38.877 --> 08:42.367 and it was the ether of the ethereal heavens that had always 08:42.365 --> 08:46.085 been thought -- throughout the Renaissance and long before, 08:46.090 --> 08:51.950 of course -- to be the most perfect substance imaginable. 08:51.950 --> 08:54.740 The moon, too, was widely believed to be a 08:54.741 --> 08:56.921 perfect sphere of fiery ether. 08:56.919 --> 08:59.959 Like the sun, it was thought to be a perfect 08:59.960 --> 09:02.930 heavenly body and, as you probably know, 09:02.929 --> 09:05.879 it was Galileo though -- the Tuscan artist, 09:05.881 --> 09:10.031 the Italian astronomer -- who disproved just that assumption 09:10.027 --> 09:14.237 in 1610 when he published the Sidereus Nuncius (The 09:14.243 --> 09:18.463 Starry Messenger). So with his optic glass, 09:18.460 --> 09:21.920 his telescope, Galileo was able to discern 09:21.922 --> 09:24.542 spots on the orb of the moon. 09:24.539 --> 09:28.949 It turned out to be a spotty globe just like the earth. 09:28.950 --> 09:32.720 The moon seemed to contain all of the geological imperfections 09:32.715 --> 09:33.945 [laughs] of earth. 09:33.950 --> 09:37.530 Suddenly, looking through the optic glass, one could see 09:37.532 --> 09:40.662 valleys, it seemed to have rivers, and there were 09:40.658 --> 09:43.198 mountains. It could no longer be said that 09:43.196 --> 09:44.346 the moon was perfect. 09:44.350 --> 09:46.800 It was no longer a fiery heavenly body. 09:46.799 --> 09:49.299 It was no longer, after Galileo, 09:49.304 --> 09:53.514 of an ethereal temper.It's in this light that the 09:53.506 --> 09:56.176 introduction, I think, of Galileo in this 09:56.179 --> 09:58.249 simile starts to make a little more sense. 09:58.250 --> 10:01.810 If we had been thinking -- and some of us may well have been 10:01.806 --> 10:05.176 thinking and we were right to think provisionally -- that 10:05.182 --> 10:08.982 Satan was a character that we could actually identify with, 10:08.980 --> 10:11.570 if we had been thinking that Satan was in any way a perfect 10:11.570 --> 10:13.940 character with some sort of justifiable claim -- these 10:13.937 --> 10:16.167 thoughts are now being corrected by the means, 10:16.170 --> 10:18.400 by the mechanism, of the simile. 10:18.399 --> 10:21.329 Like the moon, Satan may look beautiful, 10:21.330 --> 10:25.920 but upon a closer scrutiny that beauty begins to yield certain 10:25.915 --> 10:28.315 metaphysical flaws.Okay. 10:28.320 --> 10:33.240 That's one way to read the simile, one way to make sense of 10:33.242 --> 10:37.572 this mention of the X, the Galileo figure. 10:37.570 --> 10:40.960 That's a moral reading of Paradise Lost that I've 10:40.961 --> 10:43.121 just given you; but of course, 10:43.122 --> 10:48.212 it's only a partial one because we haven't gone further enough. 10:48.210 --> 10:52.360 It's not simply that Galileo represents the admiring observer 10:52.355 --> 10:56.495 of Satan who is finally able to arrive at a just sense of his 10:56.500 --> 10:58.850 moral spots and imperfections. 10:58.850 --> 11:00.670 It's more complicated than that. 11:00.669 --> 11:07.269 Galileo himself is viewing the situation from a fallen and an 11:07.269 --> 11:11.119 unperfect, uncertain perspective. 11:11.120 --> 11:15.000 Galileo's only using, of course, his telescope in the 11:14.997 --> 11:18.797 first place because his human capacity for vision is 11:18.801 --> 11:22.531 insufficient to see the truths of the heavens. 11:22.529 --> 11:26.929 The unfallen Adam certainly didn't need a telescope to 11:26.926 --> 11:30.406 discern a lot about the heavenly bodies. 11:30.409 --> 11:33.809 Further complicating the picture, Milton places this 11:33.805 --> 11:37.595 scene of observation with extraordinary care at the moment 11:37.601 --> 11:40.491 of evening. You'll be noticing as you read 11:40.487 --> 11:43.697 and reread the poem just how many crucial moments in 11:43.695 --> 11:47.025 Paradise Lost occur at evening or twilight, 11:47.029 --> 11:52.039 that privileged moment between day and night in which objects 11:52.039 --> 11:55.379 in our field of vision may be visible, 11:55.379 --> 11:58.519 but they're nonetheless indistinct and indeterminate. 11:58.519 --> 12:01.999 They're blurred.So, Galileo here is struggling to 12:01.995 --> 12:06.065 get the proper visionary fix on the moon at a point in the day 12:06.071 --> 12:08.211 when there are no absolutes. 12:08.210 --> 12:12.060 We're in between absolute day and absolute night, 12:12.057 --> 12:15.267 light and dark. Milton pushes this image even 12:15.270 --> 12:18.910 further into indistinctness with an instance of his famous 12:18.906 --> 12:21.646 deployment of the conjunction or. 12:21.649 --> 12:24.819 It has been argued, and I think this is a brilliant 12:24.816 --> 12:28.236 point, that the most important word in Paradise Lost is 12:28.236 --> 12:30.196 or, the conjunction. 12:30.200 --> 12:32.330 We'll be talking about why that's the case, 12:32.328 --> 12:35.318 but you'll get a little sense of it here: "the Tuscan Artist 12:35.318 --> 12:38.518 views… / from the top of Fesole, 12:38.518 --> 12:42.958 / or in Valdarno…" Well, on some level we'd kind 12:42.958 --> 12:47.048 of like to know which it is, either on the top of a mountain 12:47.045 --> 12:51.235 or in a valley -- the Valdarno, the valley of the Arno River in 12:51.235 --> 12:53.475 Italy. The place names may seem just 12:53.480 --> 12:56.380 superfluous here, something additional that has 12:56.382 --> 12:59.792 nothing whatsoever to do with the actual purpose of the 12:59.790 --> 13:02.690 comparison, but Milton's uncertainty or the 13:02.686 --> 13:06.156 narrator's uncertainty as to whether Galileo has stationed 13:06.156 --> 13:09.626 his telescope at the top of a mountain or deep in a valley 13:09.625 --> 13:12.725 raises an important question about the status, 13:12.730 --> 13:14.790 literally the status, of the observer here. 13:14.789 --> 13:19.769 It's not just that Satan or the moon or whatever it is that 13:19.773 --> 13:24.073 we're looking at seems indeterminate until we get a 13:24.069 --> 13:25.959 proper look at it. 13:25.960 --> 13:27.400 It's so much more complicated than that. 13:27.399 --> 13:31.819 We don't even know where it is we're supposed to be looking 13:31.817 --> 13:36.307 from, and the choice between Fesole and Valdarno that Milton 13:36.311 --> 13:39.131 gives the reader is crucial here. 13:39.129 --> 13:43.359 The fact of the proliferation of possible perspectives is just 13:43.359 --> 13:46.919 as important, and I would think it's actually 13:46.918 --> 13:50.978 even more important, as any single seemingly proper 13:50.980 --> 13:52.930 perspective.Okay. 13:52.929 --> 13:55.899 This is only the first mention of Galileo in the poem and, 13:55.901 --> 13:58.561 as you will see if you're careful in looking at your 13:58.560 --> 14:02.550 footnotes in the Hughes, appears two other times within 14:02.553 --> 14:06.863 the later similes in the poem, always in a simile. 14:06.860 --> 14:09.720 You have on the handout the other mentions in Paradise 14:09.724 --> 14:10.854 Lost of Galileo. 14:10.850 --> 14:15.190 It would be a wonderful paper topic, an examination of all of 14:15.189 --> 14:16.779 the Galileo similes. 14:16.779 --> 14:20.389 I think it stands to reason to assume that this figure of 14:20.386 --> 14:24.376 Galileo is of some importance to Milton and the workings of the 14:24.380 --> 14:26.370 poem. Galileo is the only 14:26.366 --> 14:30.136 contemporary personage, the only seventeenth-century 14:30.141 --> 14:34.361 figure, even so much as mentioned in Paradise Lost. 14:34.360 --> 14:37.690 The rest of contemporary history, including all of the 14:37.690 --> 14:40.900 stormy events leading up to Milton's own beloved Puritan 14:40.903 --> 14:42.993 Revolution, in which Milton himself, 14:42.988 --> 14:46.108 of course, had participated -- all of that has been at least at 14:46.112 --> 14:48.962 the literal level, at the explicit level, 14:48.961 --> 14:52.871 expunged from the poem.Galileo's important. 14:52.870 --> 14:55.750 Milton had written in Areopagitica that he had 14:55.747 --> 14:57.847 actually met Galileo on his journey, 14:57.850 --> 15:00.820 when Milton was a young man and Galileo was a very old man, 15:00.820 --> 15:02.050 through the continent. 15:02.049 --> 15:05.349 When Milton met him, Galileo would have been old and 15:05.349 --> 15:08.259 blind, not unimportant to the later Milton, 15:08.259 --> 15:13.769 and Galileo was under house arrest at his home in Fiesole. 15:13.769 --> 15:16.799 He'd been imprisoned for his intellectual daring and 15:16.804 --> 15:20.264 affirming the Copernican view that the earth orbited around 15:20.255 --> 15:22.215 the sun. He had rebelled against the 15:22.218 --> 15:24.348 supreme authority of the Roman Catholic Church, 15:24.346 --> 15:27.316 and in this respect, he provides the poem with 15:27.315 --> 15:31.575 something like an earthly version of the arch-rebel Satan 15:31.582 --> 15:36.082 of course: Satan who rebels against the supreme authority of 15:36.078 --> 15:40.138 the heavenly father.Well, that makes sense, 15:40.144 --> 15:45.094 kind of, that Milton had clearly admired the astronomer. 15:45.090 --> 15:49.190 In calling him here the Tuscan artist, in some respects we can 15:49.186 --> 15:52.406 see him forging an identification between himself 15:52.410 --> 15:56.440 as a literary artist and Galileo as a scientific artist. 15:56.440 --> 16:00.820 The rebellious artist Milton and the rebellious astronomer 16:00.821 --> 16:04.901 Galileo are continually threatening to lapse into some 16:04.895 --> 16:07.965 sort of identity with Satan himself. 16:07.970 --> 16:12.550 Suddenly, the distinctions that the simile works so hard to 16:12.553 --> 16:15.323 establish are beginning to erode. 16:15.320 --> 16:18.520 Not just that, but the moral certainties that 16:18.516 --> 16:23.016 may have seemed distinct when we contrasted the ethereal heaven 16:23.020 --> 16:27.020 with the spotty and the imperfect nature of Satan and of 16:27.016 --> 16:30.426 the moon -- those, too begin to seem fairly hazy. 16:30.429 --> 16:34.669 The simile sets out to establish the moral polarities 16:34.665 --> 16:38.405 between good and evil, but it then works almost 16:38.412 --> 16:42.162 systematically to undo that understanding. 16:42.159 --> 16:46.089 The perspective is an evening perspective rather than a 16:46.090 --> 16:48.710 perspective of total illumination. 16:48.710 --> 16:53.090 The similes are continually working to unleash -- and 16:53.090 --> 16:58.140 they're really quite unruly in this respect -- to unleash the 16:58.144 --> 17:02.694 moral and the theological confusion that so much of the 17:02.693 --> 17:07.663 rest of the poem seems really quite eager to pin down and to 17:07.663 --> 17:11.373 fix.That was the Galileo simile. 17:11.369 --> 17:15.499 That's how big Satan's shield was: well, how big is Satan's 17:15.500 --> 17:18.760 spear? Milton compares it to the mast 17:18.762 --> 17:22.602 of a ship. This is line 292 in Book One, 17:22.602 --> 17:26.342 the bottom of page 218 in the Hughes. 17:26.339 --> 17:30.119 This is a simile that Stanley Fish brilliantly describes as 17:30.121 --> 17:33.841 central to a certain temporal procedure common in Milton's 17:33.837 --> 17:36.007 verse; Fish is interested in the 17:36.009 --> 17:38.439 temporal process of reading in general. 17:38.440 --> 17:41.990 It's this extraordinary insight that he gives us: 17:41.987 --> 17:46.497 we can only read one word at a time, we can only read one line 17:46.495 --> 17:49.345 at a time. Fish argues that the simile has 17:49.350 --> 17:52.580 no choice but to unfold over time, and so in the example 17:52.580 --> 17:56.410 about Milton's spear, we read first that -- this is 17:56.410 --> 18:00.500 line 292, this is how Stanley Fish's reading goes: 18:00.501 --> 18:04.171 "His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine 18:04.166 --> 18:08.676 / hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast / of some great 18:08.676 --> 18:10.766 Ammiral [or flagship]." 18:10.769 --> 18:14.789 An "Ammiral" is a big warship.Now we may assume, 18:14.790 --> 18:18.180 having read only that much of the simile, 18:18.180 --> 18:21.510 that Satan's spear is as tall as the mast of the ship, 18:21.512 --> 18:22.772 not a small spear. 18:22.769 --> 18:25.879 And so we adjust our minds to accommodate -- because 18:25.876 --> 18:29.346 presumably we weren't imagining Satan to be that big -- to 18:29.348 --> 18:32.518 accommodate this sense of Satan's tremendous physical 18:32.515 --> 18:35.605 magnitude. Surely, Satan is bigger than 18:35.608 --> 18:39.918 anything we had been assuming, but the simile continues. 18:39.920 --> 18:42.430 As soon as we read the next lines, we're struck with the 18:42.429 --> 18:45.349 possibility -- and surely it's just a provisional possibility, 18:45.349 --> 18:49.649 but we're struck by the image that Satan's spear is actually 18:49.649 --> 18:54.429 quite small. His spear "were but a wand / he 18:54.431 --> 18:58.921 walkt with to support uneasy steps." 18:58.920 --> 19:01.470 If only for a moment, Satan suddenly seems old and 19:01.473 --> 19:04.143 frail. This is an image of an old man 19:04.136 --> 19:06.586 with a cane. We have to adjust our 19:06.589 --> 19:09.969 understanding of his physical size one more time, 19:09.969 --> 19:13.699 and of course necessarily his moral magnitude would be 19:13.702 --> 19:17.442 adjusted as well in our interpretation.Needless to 19:17.435 --> 19:19.495 say, we're not done. 19:19.500 --> 19:23.910 The simile isn't telling us that Satan's spear is as small 19:23.909 --> 19:28.009 as a wand because what we have is a syllogism here. 19:28.009 --> 19:33.939 Satan's spear is to the tallest pine what the tallest pine is to 19:33.943 --> 19:36.113 a little, bitty wand. 19:36.109 --> 19:39.299 Finally we realize that Satan's spear [laughs] 19:39.299 --> 19:41.779 is of an unimaginable proportion. 19:41.779 --> 19:45.199 Just as soon as we crowded our imagination already with the 19:45.200 --> 19:48.150 image of the spear the size of a Norwegian pine, 19:48.150 --> 19:51.110 which took a certain imaginative leap on our parts, 19:51.110 --> 19:54.540 we realize that Satan and his spear are immeasurably larger 19:54.544 --> 19:58.334 even than that. The simile pushes the size of 19:58.330 --> 20:03.010 the spear clean out of our rational comprehension, 20:03.009 --> 20:07.109 and it's this process that is, according to Stanley Fish, 20:07.107 --> 20:09.007 the point of the simile. 20:09.009 --> 20:11.679 The circuitous, logical route that we had to 20:11.684 --> 20:15.424 take in order to arrive at this new sense of Satan's size has 20:15.415 --> 20:18.955 everything to do with our status as temporally bound, 20:18.960 --> 20:23.750 temporally constrained readers.The genius of Fish's 20:23.746 --> 20:29.056 reading of Milton's similes is to understand the particularly 20:29.064 --> 20:32.614 time-bound nature of Milton's verse. 20:32.609 --> 20:35.369 So first we read that Satan's spear is big. 20:35.369 --> 20:37.549 Then we read, or at least we think we read, 20:37.547 --> 20:40.447 that Satan's spear is small, and then we realize over the 20:40.450 --> 20:43.090 course of this reading process that Satan's spear is 20:43.094 --> 20:45.244 unimaginable, and we realize that our 20:45.243 --> 20:47.933 time-bound mode of knowing is ultimately inadequate to 20:47.925 --> 20:50.955 understand anything about the inscrutable truths of eternity: 20:50.961 --> 20:52.531 this is according to Fish. 20:52.529 --> 20:55.649 We can't know anything certain about the eternal and the 20:55.653 --> 20:58.953 immortal world of Paradise Lost except through these 20:58.947 --> 21:01.557 faculties we have and those are uncertain, 21:01.559 --> 21:06.809 imperfect, fallen human capacities of reading. 21:06.809 --> 21:10.259 Milton wants the reader to know that she's fallen, 21:10.264 --> 21:13.724 we are all fallen, and any problem that we have in 21:13.718 --> 21:17.878 understanding the theology of heaven and hell is our problem 21:17.878 --> 21:19.568 as fallen readers. 21:19.569 --> 21:23.029 Fish imagines Milton as always on some level slapping the 21:23.031 --> 21:25.811 reader's wrist, reminding the reader of his or 21:25.813 --> 21:28.733 her fallen-ness, that there's a constant 21:28.727 --> 21:33.027 pedagogical correction going on.That was Stanley Fish. 21:33.029 --> 21:36.809 The other great critic of the Miltonic simile for my money 21:36.805 --> 21:39.185 takes a completely different tack, 21:39.190 --> 21:42.980 and that's Geoffrey Hartman who makes an argument that might 21:42.978 --> 21:46.058 even be thought to contradict Fish's argument, 21:46.059 --> 21:50.979 although actually Geoffrey Hartman wrote his piece first. 21:50.980 --> 21:54.990 Hartman's image of the simile isn't temporal the way Fish's 21:54.985 --> 21:57.155 was. It's spatial. 21:57.160 --> 21:59.760 For Hartman, the Miltonic simile actually 21:59.756 --> 22:03.066 permits the reader something like the perspective of 22:03.066 --> 22:04.986 eternity, a divine perspective, 22:04.990 --> 22:07.150 and of course, this is exactly what Stanley 22:07.150 --> 22:08.950 Fish had told us was impossible. 22:08.950 --> 22:12.670 The rhetorical strategy that Milton uses to give us this 22:12.669 --> 22:16.929 perspective of eternity is what Geoffrey Hartman called Milton's 22:16.930 --> 22:19.900 counter-plot. Like Fish, Hartman is most 22:19.903 --> 22:23.413 interested in the similes of the first two books, 22:23.410 --> 22:26.910 the similes that provide some kind of window onto the world of 22:26.914 --> 22:30.364 Satan, and he focuses on the simile actually that follows the 22:30.362 --> 22:33.582 simile of Satan's shield that we've been looking at; 22:33.579 --> 22:38.849 it follows the simile of the spear that Fish had analyzed. 22:38.849 --> 22:41.269 This is the simile of the leaves. 22:41.269 --> 22:46.219 I'm going to ask you to look at line 300 of Book One, 22:46.216 --> 22:48.876 page 219 in the Hughes. 22:48.880 --> 22:52.810 Satan has roused himself from off the burning marl, 22:52.813 --> 22:56.823 and he stands in order to call up his fallen minions, 22:56.819 --> 22:59.899 to rouse them to acts- great acts of heroism. 22:59.900 --> 23:02.900 … he stood and call'dHis 23:02.902 --> 23:06.662 Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans'tThick as 23:06.655 --> 23:11.155 Autumnal Leaves that strow the BrooksIn Vallombrosa, 23:11.160 --> 23:14.190 where th' Etrurian shadesHigh overarch't 23:14.194 --> 23:16.584 imbowr; or scatterd sedgeAfloat, 23:16.577 --> 23:20.197 when with fierce Winds Orion arm'dHath vext the Red-Sea 23:20.198 --> 23:21.528 Coast, whose waves 23:21.530 --> 23:25.730 o'erthrewBusiris and his Memphian Chivalry,While with 23:25.734 --> 23:28.964 [this thing doesn't end] perfidious hatred they 23:28.957 --> 23:31.827 pursu'dThe Sojourners of Goshen, 23:31.829 --> 23:34.599 who beheldFrom the safe shore thir floating 23:34.595 --> 23:37.055 CarcassesAnd broken Chariot Wheels; 23:37.059 --> 23:40.969 so thick bestrewnAbject and lost lay these, 23:40.973 --> 23:45.483 covering the Flood,Under amazement of thir hideous 23:45.483 --> 23:48.193 change. For me the [laughs] 23:48.192 --> 23:52.052 absolutely shocking fact of this simile is that its primary 23:52.046 --> 23:55.436 purpose is merely [laughs] to describe the number of 23:55.435 --> 23:59.285 angels who are prostrate on the burning lake of hell. 23:59.289 --> 24:02.949 They lie entranced, thick as -- how many angels 24:02.954 --> 24:06.234 were there? They lie "thick as Autumnal 24:06.229 --> 24:10.209 leaves that strew the Brooks / in Vallombrosa"; 24:10.210 --> 24:14.380 but Milton will pursue this simile with such a relentless 24:14.384 --> 24:18.264 drive -- it's exhausting -- that by the end of it, 24:18.259 --> 24:22.019 I think we've probably forgotten its role in merely 24:22.021 --> 24:26.381 illustrating the quantity of angel forms.Now the angels 24:26.384 --> 24:30.154 lay as thick as the sedge on the Red Sea coast when 24:30.145 --> 24:33.755 Pharaoh--Milton uses the Latin Busiris for 24:33.755 --> 24:38.115 "Pharaoh"--with all his Egyptian army chased the Israelites 24:38.118 --> 24:42.628 across the Red Sea after God -- and this is the story told in 24:42.632 --> 24:47.002 Exodus 14 -- parted the Red Sea to allow the "Sojourners of 24:46.995 --> 24:51.485 Goshen," the Israelites, to cross. 24:51.490 --> 24:55.670 Satan's described initially here as the wind god Orion, 24:55.665 --> 25:00.765 a classical figure who vexed or tossed the waves of the Red Sea, 25:00.769 --> 25:05.529 just as Satan is rousing and inspiring his fallen host of 25:05.534 --> 25:07.604 angels; but Milton continues to 25:07.595 --> 25:08.885 complicate the simile. 25:08.890 --> 25:12.660 He quickly complicates our identification of Orion with 25:12.660 --> 25:16.780 Satan, which wasn't arrived at that easily to begin with. 25:16.779 --> 25:20.669 Satan may be like the wind, Orion, but Orion here is also 25:20.667 --> 25:24.687 seen as vexing and destroying the Egyptians whose carcasses 25:24.693 --> 25:27.543 wash up on the shores of the Red Sea, 25:27.539 --> 25:30.359 and the Israelites, having crossed the Red Sea 25:30.361 --> 25:33.691 safely, look on at this destruction from the safety of 25:33.685 --> 25:35.875 their shore.Think about it. 25:35.880 --> 25:39.610 Something's gone awry in this simile. 25:39.609 --> 25:43.849 The wind, Orion, had initially represented the 25:43.853 --> 25:49.513 heroic general of his troops, Satan -- Geoffrey Hartman would 25:49.511 --> 25:53.661 describe this as the plot of the simile; 25:53.660 --> 25:56.620 but this wind, Orion, begins immediately to 25:56.621 --> 25:59.861 destroy the evil Busiris, the Egyptian Pharaoh: 25:59.864 --> 26:04.104 a figure that biblical history had long associated with Satan 26:04.095 --> 26:07.965 and had considered to be an earthly version or a type of 26:07.972 --> 26:10.692 Satan. So you have a wind god who is 26:10.694 --> 26:14.464 identified with Satan destroying Pharaoh, who is also identified 26:14.462 --> 26:17.602 with Satan, just as he attempts to destroy 26:17.595 --> 26:20.855 God's faithful. And it's this final movement of 26:20.861 --> 26:24.751 the simile, according to this ingenious argument by Geoffrey 26:24.748 --> 26:27.908 Hartman, that Hartman calls the counter-plot. 26:27.910 --> 26:32.520 Embedded within the explicit plot of the simile is a secret, 26:32.516 --> 26:37.326 a kind of buried narrative, and it's a hidden story that 26:37.325 --> 26:40.775 illustrates Satan's self-destruction. 26:40.779 --> 26:45.369 It illustrates Satan's self-destruction even as the 26:45.369 --> 26:50.509 main narrative of the simile portrays Satan's heroism. 26:50.509 --> 26:55.289 The plot around the simile is glorifying the heroic Satan 26:55.286 --> 27:00.316 here, and Hartman ingeniously locates throughout a number of 27:00.319 --> 27:04.499 Milton's similes this same dynamic of a redemptive 27:04.499 --> 27:07.309 counter-plot. It's as if there is a 27:07.313 --> 27:09.763 subterranean, figurative movement at work in 27:09.756 --> 27:12.366 the simile that's continually reminding us, 27:12.369 --> 27:16.599 according to Hartman, of the calm efforts of divine 27:16.597 --> 27:21.077 providence on behalf of us, of good Christian men and women 27:21.076 --> 27:24.666 -- some ultimate divine control over the evil actions of 27:24.673 --> 27:28.273 Satan.Now the genius of Hartman's argument about the 27:28.269 --> 27:32.059 counter-plot was that when Hartman floated this argument in 27:32.061 --> 27:36.121 the late ‘50s was that it enabled us to understand -- not 27:36.115 --> 27:38.155 us, we weren't born then, 27:38.161 --> 27:41.351 but it enabled readers of Milton to understand for the 27:41.346 --> 27:45.006 first time something like the theological purpose behind a lot 27:45.012 --> 27:48.562 of the most fascinating and extraordinary rhetorical effects 27:48.558 --> 27:51.528 of the poem. And Hartman made sense of the 27:51.531 --> 27:55.071 seemingly chaotic and confused movement of the narrator's 27:55.067 --> 27:56.327 imagination here. 27:56.329 --> 28:00.179 This counter-plot continues to reinforce, according to Hartman, 28:00.182 --> 28:03.722 our faith in the two most important elements of the poem's 28:03.724 --> 28:07.394 theology: and that's man's free will or Milton's doctrine of 28:07.391 --> 28:11.921 free will on the one hand, and Milton's insistence on the 28:11.918 --> 28:16.738 importance of divine providence on the other hand -- God's 28:16.741 --> 28:20.061 foreknowledge. Through the dynamics of the 28:20.058 --> 28:23.118 counter-plot, the similes reassure us of what 28:23.120 --> 28:26.950 Hartman calls the "graceful coexistence of free will and 28:26.947 --> 28:29.867 divine providence."Let's move on. 28:29.869 --> 28:33.169 Neither of these critics -- neither Fish nor Hartman 28:33.172 --> 28:36.802 discusses one of the most celebrated aspects of this last 28:36.798 --> 28:40.288 simile that we've looked at, and I have a little hunch that 28:40.288 --> 28:41.988 there's a reason for their neglect. 28:41.990 --> 28:47.350 This is the initial part of the simile that describes the 28:47.346 --> 28:52.696 leaves: "thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks / 28:52.702 --> 28:57.022 in Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades / 28:57.016 --> 28:59.416 high overarch't imbow'r." 28:59.420 --> 29:03.900 At least since the eighteenth century, these lines have been 29:03.895 --> 29:06.545 singled out for their beauty and, 29:06.549 --> 29:10.239 considering that Milton is describing the hideous demons 29:10.239 --> 29:13.629 under Satan's control, the pastoral elegance of this 29:13.634 --> 29:17.454 little simile really catches us off guard.There's naturally 29:17.450 --> 29:21.020 a lot of pressure on Milton to make this part of the simile 29:21.019 --> 29:24.709 beautiful and striking because he's echoing not just one epic 29:24.711 --> 29:26.911 poet, but essentially he's echoing 29:26.914 --> 29:28.384 just about every epic poet. 29:28.380 --> 29:31.110 Homer and Virgil and, well after them, 29:31.110 --> 29:35.390 Dante and innumerable others have all applied the simile of 29:35.391 --> 29:40.041 the leaves or some version of it to describe the numberless-ness 29:40.041 --> 29:42.971 of the dead. This is on your handout. 29:42.970 --> 29:45.030 In The Iliad, as you can see, 29:45.025 --> 29:48.485 the warrior Glaucus uses the simile of the leaves to dismiss 29:48.490 --> 29:50.370 the importance of genealogy. 29:50.369 --> 29:52.639 "Why does it matter what family I'm from?" 29:52.640 --> 29:53.850 he asks Diomedes. 29:53.849 --> 29:57.579 "Very like leaves upon this earth are the generations of 29:57.575 --> 30:00.245 men." There's a kind of organic 30:00.254 --> 30:05.814 continuity that men partake of just as the natural world does. 30:05.809 --> 30:09.049 Virgil alludes to just this passage in Homer when he 30:09.054 --> 30:12.744 describes the entrance of a whole crowd of people in to the 30:12.743 --> 30:16.373 underworld as "the falling of leaves in the early frost of 30:16.369 --> 30:19.429 autumn." This is where Milton gets the 30:19.431 --> 30:22.441 "autumnal." Finally, Dante alludes to this 30:22.436 --> 30:25.946 image of the Virgilian underworld in The Inferno 30:25.948 --> 30:29.388 when he describes the descent of humanity, 30:29.390 --> 30:32.540 the evil seed of Adam, into the Christian hell. 30:32.539 --> 30:35.969 It's Dante who first supplies the notion of fallen-ness, 30:35.973 --> 30:38.473 the theological notion of fallen-ness, 30:38.470 --> 30:42.160 to this idea of the fact that the leaves have fallen because 30:42.163 --> 30:45.133 of course Dante, unlike Homer and Virgil, 30:45.127 --> 30:49.487 is a Christian and has access to the Christian myth of the 30:49.491 --> 30:54.391 Fall.And so it would seem to be Dante's use of the image that 30:54.391 --> 30:57.761 has a primary influence here on Milton, 30:57.759 --> 31:01.489 but, as we might expect, there is a complication in the 31:01.485 --> 31:04.585 way that Milton uses this particular image. 31:04.589 --> 31:08.239 Vallombrosa is a place in Italy that Milton had actually visited 31:08.236 --> 31:11.716 as a young man. He visited Vallombrosa when he 31:11.717 --> 31:14.877 was introduced to Galileo in Fiesole. 31:14.880 --> 31:20.270 Vallombrosa literally means "shady valley," and I think it 31:20.267 --> 31:25.747 recalls Galileo's shady place, Valdarno, another valley. 31:25.750 --> 31:29.280 As you know, in classical literature the 31:29.277 --> 31:34.517 dead are referred to as shades, but here in Milton's simile 31:34.522 --> 31:38.142 "shades" merely means "shade trees." 31:38.140 --> 31:42.260 It refers solely to trees, and Vallombrosa is the place 31:42.263 --> 31:46.543 "where th' Etrurian shades / high overarch't imbow'r." 31:46.539 --> 31:50.229 If these trees are still supplying shade, 31:50.230 --> 31:55.950 embowering the entire valley of Vallombrosa, the leaves haven't 31:55.951 --> 31:58.351 all fallen, of course. 31:58.349 --> 32:02.169 They're only in the process of falling. 32:02.170 --> 32:06.710 I think this is an important distinction because what you 32:06.714 --> 32:11.584 have here in the middle of this simile in Milton's account of 32:11.583 --> 32:14.183 hell is an image of a bower. 32:14.180 --> 32:19.450 This is a little paradise, a paradise on the verge of 32:19.449 --> 32:24.009 being lost as the shades lose their leaves. 32:24.009 --> 32:27.099 The leaves are about to fall but they haven't yet fallen. 32:27.099 --> 32:31.929 I think it's the imminence of their fallen-ness that lends 32:31.933 --> 32:36.773 this image its incredibly powerful emotional intensity and 32:36.766 --> 32:39.216 also, I think, its beauty.Now, 32:39.221 --> 32:42.911 the simile concludes with the strong sense of a hideous change 32:42.908 --> 32:46.288 -- and you will recognize this pattern again and again in 32:46.292 --> 32:50.222 Milton -- the hideous change undergone by the fallen angels. 32:50.220 --> 32:55.100 But what we have here is an image of the beauty of that 32:55.098 --> 33:00.608 change, the beauty of the fact that the leaves are falling. 33:00.609 --> 33:04.609 Both Hartman and Fish argued that the rhetorical strategies 33:04.608 --> 33:08.188 of Milton's similes work to reinforce the theological 33:08.193 --> 33:10.403 categories of good and evil. 33:10.400 --> 33:15.840 They argue that the similes are supposed to reassure us that 33:15.835 --> 33:21.085 there is a divine good that ultimately overwhelms the evil 33:21.086 --> 33:25.606 represented by Satan; but neither of these critics 33:25.607 --> 33:30.357 was able to discuss directly Milton's aestheticization of the 33:30.359 --> 33:33.209 Fall in the lines on Vallombrosa. 33:33.210 --> 33:36.690 That's because it's here where the rigid polarities between 33:36.690 --> 33:39.930 light and dark and good and evil, all of these absolute 33:39.930 --> 33:42.030 oppositions, begin to collapse. 33:42.029 --> 33:46.769 Milton opens up a shady space for something approaching a kind 33:46.768 --> 33:51.658 of moral relativism where black and white theological categories 33:51.663 --> 33:53.453 simply don't apply. 33:53.450 --> 33:57.500 Of course, this is only provisional but the shady space 33:57.496 --> 33:59.066 exists nonetheless. 33:59.069 --> 34:03.499 He returns us to the lowly perspective that Galileo had 34:03.496 --> 34:07.756 when he set up his telescope in that other valley, 34:07.759 --> 34:11.959 Valdarno, and it's this lowly vantage point that's beautiful 34:11.964 --> 34:15.104 in part because it's a fallen perspective, 34:15.099 --> 34:19.459 not in spite of the fact that it's a fallen perspective.I 34:19.456 --> 34:23.886 think now we can see why these lines about the autumnal leaves 34:23.886 --> 34:28.096 are so difficult for us to incorporate into a moral reading 34:28.097 --> 34:31.217 or a theological reading of the poem. 34:31.219 --> 34:34.619 They're invariably cited as among the most beautiful and 34:34.615 --> 34:38.065 exquisite lines in Paradise Lost but on some level 34:38.073 --> 34:41.533 they've proven the bane of scholars because they can't be 34:41.530 --> 34:45.050 squared with any of the poem's theological message. 34:45.050 --> 34:48.590 This is the remarkable thing about so many of Milton's 34:48.588 --> 34:52.528 similes: they're always bursting out of whatever critical or 34:52.527 --> 34:56.997 theological constraints that we work so hard to impose on them. 34:57.000 --> 35:00.300 So for Stanley Fish, Milton is always reminding us 35:00.301 --> 35:04.081 of our fallen-ness as readers and we're continually being 35:04.075 --> 35:08.045 encouraged to submit all of our uncertainties and all of our 35:08.051 --> 35:10.411 doubts to the power of faith. 35:10.409 --> 35:14.229 God is in control of the universe and if the poem seems 35:14.228 --> 35:17.268 -- not that Stanley Fish believes in God, 35:17.269 --> 35:19.999 but nonetheless his Milton certainly does -- God is in 35:20.000 --> 35:21.340 control of the universe. 35:21.340 --> 35:24.960 If the poem seems momentarily to suggest otherwise, 35:24.957 --> 35:29.147 that's simply Milton's way of reminding us of the extent of 35:29.153 --> 35:32.743 our fallen-ness. Geoffrey Hartman's theory had a 35:32.743 --> 35:36.893 similar tendency to align the poem with a kind of a religious 35:36.891 --> 35:39.431 orthodoxy. The similes are for him 35:39.433 --> 35:43.933 instrument in the poem's larger agenda to reinforce our faith in 35:43.933 --> 35:48.723 the coexistence of free will and divine providence -- difficult, 35:48.719 --> 35:53.659 huge concepts.Hartman's absolutely right to insist that 35:53.660 --> 35:58.520 no theological concept is as important to Paradise Lost 35:58.516 --> 36:03.626 as free will on the one hand and divine providence on the 36:03.627 --> 36:06.017 other. We can say that, 36:06.016 --> 36:10.626 but I wonder if it's possible even for these similes to 36:10.629 --> 36:14.639 convince us of the easy coexistence of these two 36:14.644 --> 36:18.834 incredibly important theological categories, 36:18.829 --> 36:21.109 free will and divine foreknowledge. 36:21.110 --> 36:23.080 Long before Milton had begun to [laughs] 36:23.081 --> 36:25.661 tackle the problem, Christians had for centuries, 36:25.659 --> 36:29.069 for millennia, puzzled over the logical 36:29.070 --> 36:32.930 inconsistency between these two concepts. 36:32.929 --> 36:35.809 We all have our version of trying to wrestle with this: 36:35.809 --> 36:38.369 if God knows what you're going to do tomorrow, 36:38.369 --> 36:42.249 to what extent does it make sense to say that what you do 36:42.248 --> 36:43.978 tomorrow you do freely? 36:43.980 --> 36:48.050 Milton, like a lot of orthodox Christians, will insist when 36:48.054 --> 36:52.134 he's speaking theologically that God's foreknowledge has no 36:52.129 --> 36:55.149 causal effect whatsoever on the future, 36:55.150 --> 36:57.800 and so it doesn't actually impinge on our free will. 36:57.800 --> 37:01.880 God the Father will make a similar argument in Book Three. 37:01.880 --> 37:05.610 The conclusion reached in Book Three is that God has 37:05.613 --> 37:08.983 foreknowledge but he isn't interested in actual 37:08.980 --> 37:13.370 predetermination or some type of divine action that literally 37:13.372 --> 37:16.742 compels the behavior of human creatures. 37:16.739 --> 37:20.189 So it's possible, presumably, to say that Adam 37:20.190 --> 37:26.210 and Eve actually had no choice, they had no choice when they 37:26.207 --> 37:32.927 decided to eat the fruit, and even though God knew that 37:32.933 --> 37:35.753 of course -- no, [laughs] 37:35.753 --> 37:37.573 I said exactly the wrong thing. 37:37.570 --> 37:40.140 This is the confusion -- "wandering mazes lost"! 37:40.139 --> 37:42.819 -- that the problem of free will and foreknowledge puts us 37:42.815 --> 37:44.635 in. Even though God knew exactly 37:44.635 --> 37:48.085 what Adam and Eve would do -- that they would eat the fruit -- 37:48.090 --> 37:51.540 we still have to be able to say that they ate the fruit freely 37:51.544 --> 37:53.814 out of their own free will.Now, 37:53.809 --> 37:58.779 scholars are ingenious in their ability to skirt absolutely the 37:58.783 --> 38:03.763 central conundrum of Providence that this poem raises and which 38:03.756 --> 38:08.646 it raises so insistently and really refuses to let go of; 38:08.650 --> 38:13.190 but that doesn't mean that the problem just goes away. 38:13.190 --> 38:16.190 I can't help but feel that within the context of the 38:16.191 --> 38:18.311 [laughs] actual story of the Fall, 38:18.309 --> 38:21.529 the Fall of Adam and Eve, that the idea of divine 38:21.534 --> 38:24.764 providence isn't actually all that comforting. 38:24.760 --> 38:27.720 The very idea of divine providence, when it's injected 38:27.724 --> 38:31.194 into the story of Adam and Eve's perfectly disastrous choice to 38:31.193 --> 38:34.283 eat the apple, seems to arouse in a lot of us 38:34.277 --> 38:35.867 feelings of injustice. 38:35.870 --> 38:37.080 What would we call this now? 38:37.080 --> 38:39.010 This is entrapment. 38:39.010 --> 38:42.100 Why did God place the stupid fruit in the garden in the first 38:42.102 --> 38:45.302 place if he knew in advance that Adam and Eve were going to eat 38:45.298 --> 38:48.468 the thing? The very idea of Providence in 38:48.468 --> 38:51.898 this context can, in fact, assume a kind of 38:51.896 --> 38:56.546 menacing force that seems to compel men and women to their 38:56.548 --> 39:01.448 evil actions regardless of their technical possession of this 39:01.445 --> 39:05.525 capacity that we feel very comfortable calling free 39:05.526 --> 39:08.796 will.So, Hartman and Fish have forwarded 39:08.804 --> 39:11.534 two perfectly ingenious theories of Milton's similes, 39:11.530 --> 39:14.270 and they've had a tremendous impact, rightly, 39:14.272 --> 39:16.892 on generations now of readers of Milton. 39:16.889 --> 39:19.739 They've taught us how to appreciate what's strangest and 39:19.744 --> 39:22.084 most remarkable about Paradise Lost, 39:22.079 --> 39:26.609 but I simply cannot agree with their suggestion that 39:26.607 --> 39:31.207 Milton's similes work in any meaningful way to strengthen our 39:31.210 --> 39:36.050 belief in the Christian idea of the coexistence of free will and 39:36.045 --> 39:38.035 God's foreknowledge. 39:38.039 --> 39:42.229 I am not convinced that the poem's radical and most 39:42.233 --> 39:46.513 subversive and most exquisite rhetorical effects, 39:46.510 --> 39:50.410 these amazing similes, present us with anything like a 39:50.407 --> 39:53.567 simple and unambiguous religious message. 39:53.570 --> 39:57.360 Paradise Lost as a whole clearly wants us to believe that 39:57.358 --> 40:00.968 God has foreknowledge and it also clearly wants us to believe 40:00.966 --> 40:04.886 that we have free will, but the similes seem just as 40:04.885 --> 40:09.145 often to open up and to question the poem's doctrinal 40:09.150 --> 40:12.280 conclusions. The similes work not to sew 40:12.278 --> 40:16.078 everything up but make it impossible for us to maintain 40:16.076 --> 40:20.086 anything like the official position on a moral distinction 40:20.085 --> 40:23.175 between heavenly good and satanic evil. 40:23.179 --> 40:27.379 Milton's interest in moments of blurriness and of visual 40:27.381 --> 40:31.891 indistinctness suggest that the distinction between good and 40:31.889 --> 40:35.479 evil is actually never that clear.Okay. 40:35.480 --> 40:39.380 We have time for another simile, the last simile of Book 40:39.375 --> 40:42.525 One. This is page 231 in the 40:42.532 --> 40:46.242 Hughes. This is the simile of the 40:46.239 --> 40:49.549 belated peasant that Hartman describes. 40:49.550 --> 40:52.390 Satan and the fallen angels are entering the magnificent 40:52.393 --> 40:55.813 structure of Pandemonium, and at one instant all of the 40:55.812 --> 40:59.302 angels shrink in order to fit in to the building, 40:59.300 --> 41:00.620 however big it is. 41:00.619 --> 41:05.229 It's obviously too small for the angels to fit there in their 41:05.232 --> 41:06.772 proper dimensions. 41:06.770 --> 41:10.450 Look at line 779 of Book One: [They] 41:10.449 --> 41:13.939 in narrow roomThrong numberless, like that Pigmean 41:13.936 --> 41:17.956 RaceBeyond the Indian Mount, or Faery Elves,Whose 41:17.956 --> 41:21.316 midnight Revels, by a Forest sideOr Fountain 41:21.316 --> 41:22.886 [Well, which is it? 41:22.889 --> 41:26.059 This is another important or] 41:26.060 --> 41:30.590 some belated Peasant sees,Or dreams he sees, 41:30.590 --> 41:33.210 while over-head the MoonSits Arbitress, 41:33.212 --> 41:36.462 and nearer to the EarthWheels her pale course; 41:36.460 --> 41:39.280 they on thir mirth and danceIntent, 41:39.281 --> 41:43.371 with jocond Music charm his ear;At once with joy and 41:43.365 --> 41:47.625 fear his heart rebounds. Now, the purpose of this simile 41:47.629 --> 41:50.999 is to evince the indistinctness and the confusion produced by 41:50.996 --> 41:52.956 our vision of the fallen angels. 41:52.960 --> 41:56.370 We can only imagine the fallen angels with a kind of dim 41:56.367 --> 41:59.277 uncertainty just as the belated peasant sees, 41:59.280 --> 42:06.140 or perhaps he only dreams he sees, the dance of fairy elves 42:06.144 --> 42:11.804 by a forest side.Now, so many scholars of Milton are 42:11.803 --> 42:16.903 under some sort of pressure to reconcile everything in Milton's 42:16.896 --> 42:20.506 universe to a single theological message, 42:20.510 --> 42:24.780 but I think there's something in this simile that resists our 42:24.779 --> 42:28.839 alignment of all the things that the peasant sees with the 42:28.835 --> 42:31.535 satanic world of unmitigated evil, 42:31.540 --> 42:33.460 of the fallen angels. 42:33.460 --> 42:37.150 There's a difference between fairy elves and hideous demons, 42:37.152 --> 42:40.722 I submit, and with the phrase "sees or dreams he sees," 42:40.719 --> 42:43.719 Milton's alluding to Virgil's Aeneas who descends to the 42:43.719 --> 42:47.319 underworld and catches a glimpse of the shade of his dead lover, 42:47.320 --> 42:52.740 Dido -- or he thinks he catches a glimpse of the shade of his 42:52.735 --> 42:54.445 dead lover, Dido. 42:54.449 --> 42:58.069 The Virgilian echo gives this passage in Milton an 42:58.068 --> 43:01.538 unmistakable pathos and an undeniable beauty. 43:01.539 --> 43:05.029 As with the passage on the falling of the leaves there's a 43:05.029 --> 43:07.599 kind of elegiac tone that works to undo, 43:07.599 --> 43:12.219 or at least to challenge, our theological certainty. 43:12.219 --> 43:15.949 As we've noticed, all of these similes have these 43:15.947 --> 43:19.207 observer figures and this one does, too. 43:19.210 --> 43:23.150 There's a second figure here standing ab extra, 43:23.146 --> 43:27.446 and that's the moon hovering overhead: "while over-head the 43:27.454 --> 43:29.464 Moon / sits Arbitress." 43:29.460 --> 43:34.490 We're naturally invited to question what force is it that 43:34.485 --> 43:36.545 this moon represents. 43:36.550 --> 43:39.520 Now you may remember what Geoffrey Hartman had argued that 43:39.519 --> 43:42.279 the moon represents the power of divine providence, 43:42.280 --> 43:45.160 and there's a lot of ways in which this reading makes sense. 43:45.159 --> 43:48.969 An arbitress is a judge and she would seem to oversee the 43:48.974 --> 43:50.614 justice in this world. 43:50.610 --> 43:54.860 The question of providential justice is of course of primary 43:54.863 --> 43:58.763 significance to Milton's poem, but Hartman goes on to say that 43:58.759 --> 44:01.629 the moon, which reminds us of a calm and perfect sense of 44:01.631 --> 44:04.491 Providence, also works to guarantee the 44:04.487 --> 44:08.997 principal of free will.So, this is my question to you: 44:09.001 --> 44:13.911 how complete and perfect is the image of Providence that hovers 44:13.910 --> 44:17.790 moonlike over the pages of Paradise Lost? 44:17.789 --> 44:21.189 I think Milton is encouraging us in these similes 44:21.187 --> 44:23.667 to question, really to wrestle with, 44:23.670 --> 44:27.760 the theological certainties that the rest of the poem labors 44:27.760 --> 44:31.080 to establish. The uncertain status of divine 44:31.075 --> 44:34.485 providence here, I think, is made clear by its 44:34.489 --> 44:36.309 figuration as a moon. 44:36.309 --> 44:39.109 So I'm going to conclude here by reminding you what you 44:39.111 --> 44:42.661 already know. We have already seen a moon in 44:42.657 --> 44:45.267 Book One. The moon was compared to 44:45.267 --> 44:48.217 Satan's shield, and Milton was preparing us 44:48.219 --> 44:51.519 then for this radically ambiguous status of this 44:51.523 --> 44:53.143 providential moon. 44:53.139 --> 44:55.989 It was Galileo's job, you'll remember, 44:55.989 --> 45:00.609 with his telescope to detect the otherwise undetectable spots 45:00.609 --> 45:03.689 and imperfections in this seemingly, 45:03.690 --> 45:05.840 but only seemingly, perfect moon. 45:05.840 --> 45:09.720 I'm convinced that it's the reader's job to apply the same 45:09.718 --> 45:13.328 degree of critical scrutiny, a kind of Galilean critical 45:13.325 --> 45:16.105 scrutiny, to the image of Providence that will be 45:16.108 --> 45:17.958 elaborated, as you will see, 45:17.958 --> 45:21.268 at extraordinary length in Book Three of Paradise 45:21.267 --> 45:24.487 Lost.So, for next time you'll read Book 45:24.486 --> 45:26.246 Three. You will focus, 45:26.247 --> 45:29.357 however, on the opening invocation. 45:29.360 --> 45:32.260 Please do read all of the other selections as well. 45:32.260 --> 45:34.200 You will have sonnets and little bits of prose. 45:34.199 --> 45:38.999 We'll be talking about Milton's blindness.