Savage Indignation: Colonial Discourse from Milton to SwiftSavage Indignation is about a flexible and indiscriminate discourse during the window of license occurring between the end of an English divine polity (1649) and the emergence of science as arbiter of true discourse (ca. 1734). Rather than tracing the development of the expedient language of empire and ideological success, the book analyzes the resistance and the waste that are integral to that spectacle of the bourgeois progress. Theoretically informed by Foucault and others, the readings of Milton's late poems, the Oroonoko texts, and Scriblerian efforts attend to denotative and connotative limits of the language, and they incorporate contemporary ephemera to expand the amplitude of potential signification. During the period, von Sneidern concludes, proprietary discourse and the language of trespass had not yet been converted into the language of duty. Just about anything could and was said, to the ingenious reader's wonder, merriment, and considerable uneasiness of mind. Maja-Lisa von Sneidern, Editorial Associate for Arizona Quarterly, teaches part-time at the University of Arizona South. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 71
Page
... world taken leave of its senses . Across the political spectrum authors invoked the tropes of voyage and new worlds in the hope of making audible what in more familiar , domestic registers had fallen on deaf ears . John Milton , Aphra ...
... world taken leave of its senses . Across the political spectrum authors invoked the tropes of voyage and new worlds in the hope of making audible what in more familiar , domestic registers had fallen on deaf ears . John Milton , Aphra ...
Page 15
... world of discourse , " suspecting that words harbor " barely imaginable powers and dangers . " 3 He goes on to speculate that discourse has prohibitions , disciplinary and doctri- nal rules of exclusion , to mitigate the mischief of ...
... world of discourse , " suspecting that words harbor " barely imaginable powers and dangers . " 3 He goes on to speculate that discourse has prohibitions , disciplinary and doctri- nal rules of exclusion , to mitigate the mischief of ...
Page 16
... World geography and its inhabitants posed to primarily English / British self - concept , and two of his case ... world " in order to corrupt God's " darling Sons , " it never occurred to me that the poem was not alluding to the New ...
... World geography and its inhabitants posed to primarily English / British self - concept , and two of his case ... world " in order to corrupt God's " darling Sons , " it never occurred to me that the poem was not alluding to the New ...
Page 17
... world " were to stand in metonymic relation to the New World , offering God's En- glishmen a new opportunity to manifest his will , one last chance to get planting right . The Archangel's relation and commentary is not knowledge that ...
... world " were to stand in metonymic relation to the New World , offering God's En- glishmen a new opportunity to manifest his will , one last chance to get planting right . The Archangel's relation and commentary is not knowledge that ...
Page 18
... World demanded a revised understanding of biblical authority ; the nearly contemporary European discovery of a Western Hemisphere and the emergence of the Protestant Reformation is not mere coincidence . Orlando Patter- son has claimed ...
... World demanded a revised understanding of biblical authority ; the nearly contemporary European discovery of a Western Hemisphere and the emergence of the Protestant Reformation is not mere coincidence . Orlando Patter- son has claimed ...
Contents
26 | |
Freedom Pleasure and Waste | 53 |
Royal Slaves Unnatural Oppression and the Nature of Race | 85 |
Royal Slaves Of Blood and Bondage | 102 |
A Monster Colonialism and the Scriblerian Project | 140 |
Notes | 162 |
Works Cited | 193 |
Index | 201 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abdelazer Adam and Eve Adam's Alexander Pope anamorphic anamorphosis angels Aphra Behn appetite argues aristocratic particularities articulates asserts authority Behn Behn's birth body Book British choice colonial discourse concept of race conjoined conjoined twins Critical cultural death divine economic eighteenth century emerges Empire Empson England English excrement Foucault freedom God's Gulliver Gulliver's Gulliver's Travels Heylyn Houyhnhnms human identify ideology Imoinda individual John Jonathan Swift king labor liberty literary London marriage Martin's master material ment Michel Foucault Milton Milton's God miscegenation monster narrative natural noble offers oppression Oroonoko Oxford University Press Paradise Lost particularities of blood pleasure poem political Polly Prince Purchas racial Raphael readers Restoration royal slave Samson Agonistes Satan Satire savage indignation scatology Scriblerians serve servitude seventeenth-century sexual slavery Slavoj Žižek social Southerne's Spanish symbolic tale theory Thomas Southerne threat tion twins waste women World Yahoos York Žižek
Popular passages
Page 47 - dimension, where length, breadth, and height, And time and place are lost Into this wild Abyss the wary fiend Stood on the brink of Hell and look'da while, Pondering his Voyage: for no narrow frith He had to cross.
Page 48 - So eagerly the fiend O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps or flies[.]
Page 70 - such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. This is the sublime and refined point of felicity, called the possession of being well deceived; the serene peaceful state, of being a fool among knaves.
Page 19 - And what is Faith, Love, Virtue unassay'd Alone, without exterior help sustain'd? Let us not then suspect our happy State Left so imperfet by the Maker wise, As not secure to single or combin'd. Frail is our happiness, if this be so, And Eden were no Eden thus expos'd.
Page 46 - Adam: Heav'n is for thee too high To know what passes there; be lowly wise Think only what concerns thee and thy being; Dream not of other Worlds, what Creatures there Live, in what state, condition or
Page 76 - I told him, we fed on a Thousand Things which operated contrary to each other; that we eat when we were not hungry, and drank without the Provocation of Thirst: That we sat whole Nights drinking strong Liquors without eating a Bit; which disposed us to Sloth, enflamed our Bodies, and precipitated or prevented Digestion.
Page 36 - And should I at your harmless innocence Melt, as I do, yet public reason just, Honor and Empire with revenge enlarg'd, By conquering this new World compels me now To do what else though damn'dI should abhor.
Page 179 - he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did eat: but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion
Page 65 - add / Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add Faith, / Add Virtue, Patience, Temperance, add Love, / By name to come call'd Charity, the soul / Of all the rest: then wilt thou
Page 55 - I thy Priest before thee bring, Fruits of more pleasing savor from thy seed Sown with contrition in his heart, than those Which his own hand manuring all the Trees Of Paradise could have produc't, ere fall'n From innocence.