Saturday, November 27, 2010
Paradise Lost, gut response
What do I do? If I want to share some passages and insights that I have gained from Milton's epic, am I enacting Eve offering the fruit to Adam? Promethius... Persephone... how do you know good pursuits of knowledge from bad pursuits of knowledge? Is all knowledge evil? What are the limits? What are the loopholes? Is the pursuit of knowledge equivalent to the pursuit of a woman-- some original misconception, some mal-interpretation of intention? Both religion and reason have room for non-reason. You cant be a humanist and a Miltonist at the same time, can you? Can you be a literary theorist and a nun?
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Interesting questions.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's okay to have knowledge if you made it. Can't you make knowledge? Maybe out of smaller bits of fact, like baking bread from flour and water.
It's apparent that a student reads Paradise Lost much differently at Loyola than he/she does at Tennessee.
ReplyDeletetell me the differences
ReplyDeleteWell, I can't exactly tell you the differences. I just know that a few of these questions never crossed these mind, or if they did I just brushed them off. Not that they aren't important questions; they just interest me as much, I guess (mostly, the questions related to pursuit of knowledge).
ReplyDeleteYou mean questions related to the pursuit of knowledge DONT interest you as much? Which questions do interest you-- what questions have you thought about while learning about P.L.?
ReplyDelete