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 39
Page 9
... readers had . Joan Dayan taught me an entirely new way to read a text ; to me , she has developed the most convincing and nuanced reading of race and identity to date . Traces of Doug Canfield's vast grasp of the English Restoration and ...
... readers had . Joan Dayan taught me an entirely new way to read a text ; to me , she has developed the most convincing and nuanced reading of race and identity to date . Traces of Doug Canfield's vast grasp of the English Restoration and ...
Page 14
... readings in this book , not because history repeats — it does not — but because the conditions that provoke savage indignation are currently so recognizable . Fur- thermore , twenty - first - century technological innovations daily 14 ...
... readings in this book , not because history repeats — it does not — but because the conditions that provoke savage indignation are currently so recognizable . Fur- thermore , twenty - first - century technological innovations daily 14 ...
Page 22
... readers took from the poem . Some sixty years later , Jonathan Swift , another political activist , who has been molded ... Reading Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World alongside John Schroder's dispensatory , the chap- ter ...
... readers took from the poem . Some sixty years later , Jonathan Swift , another political activist , who has been molded ... Reading Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World alongside John Schroder's dispensatory , the chap- ter ...
Page 27
... readers ] as a unity amid discontinuities , a spot of stillness in a flux , the principle of constancy in a field of change . . . the eye of a storm " ( 47 ) . Milton's poetry may be the last , perhaps only , " great " British literary ...
... readers ] as a unity amid discontinuities , a spot of stillness in a flux , the principle of constancy in a field of change . . . the eye of a storm " ( 47 ) . Milton's poetry may be the last , perhaps only , " great " British literary ...
Page 28
... readers join Milton in lamenting the fact that the world has grown gray with the fall of aristocratic culture " ( The Imaginary Puritan , 44 ) . This parochial- ism is astounding . If we resist reading Paradise Lost as a " divine his ...
... readers join Milton in lamenting the fact that the world has grown gray with the fall of aristocratic culture " ( The Imaginary Puritan , 44 ) . This parochial- ism is astounding . If we resist reading Paradise Lost as a " divine his ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
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.