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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Page 47
... artifact depends on our ability to extend its original reference into a genuinely revelatory description . . . of the world we inhabit now . " With such an assertion the interpreter is freed from the logic of dispersal governing texts ...
... artifact depends on our ability to extend its original reference into a genuinely revelatory description . . . of the world we inhabit now . " With such an assertion the interpreter is freed from the logic of dispersal governing texts ...
Page 48
... artifact , its createdness , can be grounded in any meaning whatever , whether its original meaning or its later significance . This mistake pro- ceeds from the widespread assumption that the business of criticism is interpretation ...
... artifact , its createdness , can be grounded in any meaning whatever , whether its original meaning or its later significance . This mistake pro- ceeds from the widespread assumption that the business of criticism is interpretation ...
Page 117
... artifact . The problem cannot be cleaned up so quickly . For even in the Christian framework some things will awaken rumors of an earlier pattern of thinking , and spilled or stream- ing blood is one of those things , suggesting danger ...
... artifact . The problem cannot be cleaned up so quickly . For even in the Christian framework some things will awaken rumors of an earlier pattern of thinking , and spilled or stream- ing blood is one of those things , suggesting danger ...
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abyss Adam alienated Anaximander Aristotle artifact artist become body called chaos choice choose Christian concept created createdness creative Creator critical critical theory dead decision delirium divine Creation earth epic everything experience Faerie Queene fall Father foreskins forget God's Greek hallucination heap heaven Hebrews hell Homer human imagine interpretation Jesus John Milton Jorie Graham kings literary Lycidas material matter meaning metaphor metaphysical metonymical Milton modern modernist monist narrative nature necessity and chance original Paradise Lost Paradise Regained passage perhaps Philistines phrase physical pinnacle poet poet's poetic poetry political present problem question reading rebel angels refer 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