Delirious Milton: The Fate of the Poet in ModernityComposed after the collapse of his political hopes, Milton's great poems Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes are an effort to understand what it means to be a poet on the threshold of a post-theological world. The argument of Delirious Milton, inspired in part by the architectural theorist Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York, is that Milton's creative power is drawn from a rift at the center of his consciousness over the question of creation itself. This rift forces the poet to oscillate deliriously between two incompatible perspectives, at once affirming and denying the presence of spirit in what he creates. From one perspective the act of creation is centered in God and the purpose of art is to imitate and praise the Creator. From the other perspective the act of creation is centered in the human, in the built environment of the modern world. The oscillation itself, continually affirming and negating the presence of spirit, of a force beyond the human, is what Gordon Teskey means by delirium. He concludes that the modern artist, far from being characterized by what Benjamin (after Baudelaire) called "loss of the aura," is invested, as never before, with a shamanistic spiritual power that is mediated through art. |
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... past epic and the entire history of literature up to his pivotal seventeenth- century moment , but also , at the same time , how it changes the direction of literature toward ' modernity . " " -Maureen Quilligan , author of Incest and ...
... past epic and the entire history of literature up to his pivotal seventeenth- century moment , but also , at the same time , how it changes the direction of literature toward ' modernity . " " -Maureen Quilligan , author of Incest and ...
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... past from which it remains quite dis- tinct . Claiming no primary existence for itself , theory is the detached representation of what already is , rather than a part of what already is . In contrast , " poetry , " which means ...
... past from which it remains quite dis- tinct . Claiming no primary existence for itself , theory is the detached representation of what already is , rather than a part of what already is . In contrast , " poetry , " which means ...
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... past , into the totality of what has already been made by man within the frame of the larger totality of divine Creation— “ Creation , ” as I shall put it when the word is used in this sense , with a capital C. But it is also to look ...
... past , into the totality of what has already been made by man within the frame of the larger totality of divine Creation— “ Creation , ” as I shall put it when the word is used in this sense , with a capital C. But it is also to look ...
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... past - of what he calls moniments - Milton is a thinker of the arche , of the origin and governing " principle . " In this he is much more in har- mony than Spenser is with the main tradition of philosophical and sci- entific thought in ...
... past - of what he calls moniments - Milton is a thinker of the arche , of the origin and governing " principle . " In this he is much more in har- mony than Spenser is with the main tradition of philosophical and sci- entific thought in ...
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... past and with the future of making . The future of making , or poiesis , differs from the past in two respects . First , the future of making is a creation produced entirely by man , constituting what architectural theorists call a ...
... past and with the future of making . The future of making , or poiesis , differs from the past in two respects . First , the future of making is a creation produced entirely by man , constituting what architectural theorists call a ...
Contents
Artificial Paradises | 10 |
Miltons Halo | 20 |
Milton and Modernity | 45 |
Why This Is Chaos Nor Am I Out of It | 65 |
Gods Body CONCEPT AND METAPHOR | 86 |
A Bleeding Rib MILTON AND CLASSICAL CULTURE | 107 |
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abyss Adam alienated Anaximander Aristotle artifact artist body called chaos choice choose Christian classical culture concept created createdness creative Creator critical dead delirium divine Creation earth epic everything Faerie Queene fall Father foreskins forget God's Greek hallucination heap heaven Hebrews hell heroic Homer human imagine interpretation Jesus John Milton Jorie Graham kings literary material matter meaning metaphor metaphysical metonymical Milton modern modernist monist narrative nature necessity and chance original Paradise Lost Paradise Regained perhaps Philistines phrase physical pinnacle poem poet poet's poetic poetry political present problem question reading rebel angels refer Rem Koolhaas Renaissance Samson Agonistes Satan says scene seems sense space speak Spenser spirit stand Stanley Fish structure substance Tasso temptation tempting thee theology theory things thou thought tion Torquato Tasso tradition truth University Press verse vision voice wilderness word writing