Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity'Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity' is a study of the challenge intersubjective experience poses to doctrinal formulations of difference. Focusing on 'Paradise Lost' and 'Samson Agonistes' and using feminist and relational psychoanalytic theory, the project examines representations of looking, working, eating, conversing, and touching, to argue that encounters between selves in 'threshold space' dismantle the binary oppositions that support categorical thinking. A key term throughout the study is recognition, defined as the capacity to tolerate both sameness and difference between separate selves. Recognition of likeness-in-difference thus undermines the exclusionary logic of patriarchal and poitical hierarchies. Both Eve and Dalila demonstrate the ability to respect the borders of the other while seeking out similarity, but where 'Paradise Lost' depicts the eventual achievements of intersubjective understanding between Adam and Eve after the fall, 'Samson Agonistes' records its failure when Samson, maintaining the boundaries of difference, refuses Dalila's effort to make contact. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 9 |
On Looking | 33 |
Creation and Work in the Garden | 68 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
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Common terms and phrases
activity Adam and Eve Adam's appear argues becomes Benjamin birth blindness body boundaries bring calls Cambridge claim connection context continuity conversation creation cultural Dalila death describes desire difference disabled discussion doctrine Duke University early modern earth eating effect Eve's exchange existence experience eyes face fact fall feel female figure follow fruit fully garden gender gives God's hand heaven human idea identity individual interpretation intersubjective John kind knowledge language less lines looks male meaning Milton mother move mutual narrative nature notion object once Paradise Lost passage perhaps physical Pittsburgh poem political position possibility radical reading recognition references relation relationship require Samson Samson Agonistes scene seems sense separate sexual simply space speech Studies suggests thee theory things thou threshold tion touch turn understand University Press voice Winnicott writes York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity |
| Author | Susannah B. Mintz |
| Publisher | University of Delaware Press, 2003 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Mar 11, 2008 |
| ISBN | 0874138221, 9780874138221 |
| Length | 259 pages |
| Subjects | › › Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / Poetry |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |