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Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 2:32 pm
by Thomas Hood
Ibid wrote:Haha- I wonder exactly how St. Thomas was able to acquire this knowledge. Perhaps he captured an angel and examined it, sort of like an alien autopsy.
Catholics (I'm not Catholic, but they do have the nicest art) believe there are three harmonious sources of knowledge: tradition, reason, and sensory experience. St. Thomas, being a saint, partook of all three:

"His theme was "The Majesty of Christ". His text, "Thou waterest the hills from thy upper rooms: the earth shall be filled with the fruit of thy works" (Psalm 103:13), said to have been suggested by a heavenly visitor, seems to have been prophetic of his career" (Catholic Encyclopedia).
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14663b.htm

So St. Thomas wouldn't have needed to do an autopsy to know about angels. They visited him personally :)

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:06 pm
by Raving Lunatic
Just to justify my statement earlier, I did say that the prof was a former priest. He separated from the Church due to what he called "fundamental philosophical differences". That in itself is a huge can of worms that I didn't want to go into with him. I thought it a little too personal, if you get my drift. Anywho, I am not Catholic either (I agree they have lovely art and I would love to an exhibition of papal treasures), and I believe that there is a "weapon" that can kill whoever designed it. To use a Hollywood analog, the Predator had weapons that not only would kill the arch-rivals, Aliens, but themselves as well. Okay, I know that wasn't a very educated analogy but it works.

Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:17 pm
by Ibid
This is interesting, this is from the Sparksnotes website's summary of Book 1:
"Satan's unrepentant evil nature is unwavering. Even cast down in defeat, he does not consider changing his ways: he insists to his fellow devils that their delight will be in doing evil, not good. In particular, as he explains to Beelzebub, he wishes to pervert God's will and find a way to make evil out of good. It is not easy for Satan to maintain this determination; the battle has just demonstrated God's overwhelming power, and the devils could not even have lifted themselves off the lake of fire unless God had allowed it. God allows it precisely because he intends to turn their evil designs toward a greater good in the end. Satan's envy of the Son's chosen status led him to rebel and consequently to be condemned. His continued envy and search for freedom leads him to believe that he would rather be a king in Hell than a servant in Heaven. Satan's pride has caused him to believe that his own free intellect is as great as God's will"

I hadn't really considered this work in exactly these terms. This paints Satan as more of a Quixotic character. If he and the other demons couldn't even kill a single angel and then as they lay prostrate in defeat, if they couldn't even pick themselves up without god allowing it, it means that conquering god would be a battle against the ultimate windmill.

So here we have Satan as the tragic anti-hero striving against a tyranny that he cannot possibly succeed against. In pop culture of the last 50 years this character has resonated with audiences who loved to sympathise with the tragic hero (James Dean,Pulp Fiction,etc). I wonder if the audience at the time this was published was as sympathetic to this type of character.

Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:42 pm
by DWill
Ibid: This paints Satan as more of a Quixotic character. If he and the other demons couldn't even kill a single angel and then as they lay prostrate in defeat, if they couldn't even pick themselves up without god allowing it, it means that conquering god would be a battle against the ultimate windmill.
That's an interesting way of looking at Satan, yet for me he can't be quixotic because his belief in his possible omnipotence is not his delusion, but a possibility believed in by the millions of other fallen angels as well. I think it is also only Milton's editorial comments that tell us that God is actually granting the demons whatever small remaining power they have. This is all part of Milton's attempt to remain theologically correct and to curb Satan's charisma just a bit, at the same time as he makes Satan a worthy epic opponent of God. He had a delicate task in PL's opening books, and the strength of Satan here is mainly what fueled the "Satan hero" views of later poets and readers. Milton's drama is probably stronger than his logic in setting up the confrontation between God and Satan.

Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:40 am
by Robert Tulip
Ibid wrote:Satan as the tragic anti-hero striving against a tyranny that he cannot possibly succeed against.
This description of God as a tyrant is not right. A tyrant acts for self interest, whereas God supports acts of love. It is rather like saying the law of gravity is tyrannical, or an eddy saying the river is a tyrant for flowing with the natural law. If Satan chose to act in love instead of his twisted hatred he would find his opposition to God would dissolve in mercy and forgiveness.

Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:12 am
by DWill
Robert Tulip wrote:
Ibid wrote:Satan as the tragic anti-hero striving against a tyranny that he cannot possibly succeed against.
This description of God as a tyrant is not right. A tyrant acts for self interest, whereas God supports acts of love. It is rather like saying the law of gravity is tyrannical, or an eddy saying the river is a tyrant for flowing with the natural law. If Satan chose to act in love instead of his twisted hatred he would find his opposition to God would dissolve in mercy and forgiveness.
This relates to the "Satan hero" perception that you rejected in the first PL thread. I think we have to judge this matter in terms of Milton's artistic control of the ideas of the poem through his characterizations. The Satan hero view came about not because anyone could really think that in the poem's action, or in the explicit views of Milton the poet/editorialist, Satan comes out anywhere near the top. It is a function of human qualities with which Milton does invest Satan (in the first two books, anyway), qualities that in other contexts (poems, stories) have clearly been heroic. The parallel with Prometheus has been drawn. Perhaps, to the ancient Greeks, Prometheus' act of stealing fire from the gods was an act of impiety. For us modern readers, Prometheus is courageous and a friend to man. Readers of PL who have little liking for God, as characterized by Milton, may be drawn away to the relatively more recognizable human qualities in Satan, and find these admirable in a tragic sense. Even in Satan's determination to "harm" the human race, revisionists may see a service of sorts: we became fully human only when we were expelled from the garden. Before that, we appeared to be similar to Homer's lotus eaters.

Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:49 am
by Ibid
Robert Tulip wrote:
Ibid wrote:Satan as the tragic anti-hero striving against a tyranny that he cannot possibly succeed against.
This description of God as a tyrant is not right. A tyrant acts for self interest, whereas God supports acts of love. It is rather like saying the law of gravity is tyrannical, or an eddy saying the river is a tyrant for flowing with the natural law. If Satan chose to act in love instead of his twisted hatred he would find his opposition to God would dissolve in mercy and forgiveness.
My comment refers to the way that Satan sees god, which is most certainly as a tyrant. In fact a tyrant is only a tyrant depending on what side of the tyranny you're on. If you're a loyal angel standing beside god then everything god does is love. If you're a loyal angel following Satan than everything god does is tyranny.

Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:56 am
by Ibid
DWill wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:
Ibid wrote:Satan as the tragic anti-hero striving against a tyranny that he cannot possibly succeed against.
This description of God as a tyrant is not right. A tyrant acts for self interest, whereas God supports acts of love. It is rather like saying the law of gravity is tyrannical, or an eddy saying the river is a tyrant for flowing with the natural law. If Satan chose to act in love instead of his twisted hatred he would find his opposition to God would dissolve in mercy and forgiveness.
This relates to the "Satan hero" perception that you rejected in the first PL thread. I think we have to judge this matter in terms of Milton's artistic control of the ideas of the poem through his characterizations. The Satan hero view came about not because anyone could really think that in the poem's action, or in the explicit views of Milton the poet/editorialist, Satan comes out anywhere near the top. It is a function of human qualities with which Milton does invest Satan (in the first two books, anyway), qualities that in other contexts (poems, stories) have clearly been heroic. The parallel with Prometheus has been drawn. Perhaps, to the ancient Greeks, Prometheus' act of stealing fire from the gods was an act of impiety. For us modern readers, Prometheus is courageous and a friend to man. Readers of PL who have little liking for God, as characterized by Milton, may be drawn away to the relatively more recognizable human qualities in Satan, and find these admirable in a tragic sense. Even in Satan's determination to "harm" the human race, revisionists may see a service of sorts: we became fully human only when we were expelled from the garden. Before that, we appeared to be similar to Homer's lotus eaters.
This is an excellent interpretation.

Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 2:03 pm
by DWill
SATAN'S POWER, OXYMORONS, EPIC SIMILIES, AND THE FATE OF THE CLASSICAL GODS

1. In Book I, there are quite a few examples of Satan's unquenchable resolve to oppose the supposedly unopposable. Milton needed to make Satan formidable for the epic, and he did, before progressively degrading him in later books. Some later readers, despite Satan's professed desire to do evil and to exalt hatred, found something more impressive in this character than what they saw in the character of God.

What though the field be lost? [ 105 ]
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might [ 110 ]
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deifie his power,
Who from the terrour of this Arm so late
Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath [ 115 ]
This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods
And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,
***********************************
Fall'n Cherube, to be weak is miserable
Doing or Suffering: but of this be sure,
To do ought good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight, [ 160 ]
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his Providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;

2. When I first studied this poem, I was introduced to the origiinal meaning of the word "oxymoron," meaning two words in apparent contradiction forming a startling new meaning. The most famous example is "darkness visible", but Milton studs the poem with numerous of these rhetorical devices (like "stedfast hate). I'm always disappointed when I see "oxymoron" used in the sense of "two words that don't belong together, a contradiction in terms." A true oxymoron does make sense.

3. For some, one of the pleasures of this or any epic will be in the similies. Everything needs to be outsized in an epic, the similies no exception. In a way, epic similies remind me of the the entries in that yearly contest...is it the Bulwer-Lytton contest ("On a dark and stormy night"...)?...where the contestants often spin out these elaborate, awful similies. Only in the case of the good epic writers, they're not awful, or at least I enjoy them.

His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm'd [ 305 ]
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carkases [ 310 ]
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood,
Under amazement of thir hideous change

Jeez, now that is epic.

4. Milton was an interesting mix of Renaissance man and Puritan. He knew classical literature and mythology backwards and forwards, and he used classical mythical references very frequently in his poems before PL. He uses some of this still in PL, for example invoking the "heavenly Muse," Urania, in the beginning. Yet in this poem he follows a convention that held that the fallen angels found new purpose (only by God's sufferance, of course) as the false gods of the Old Testament and Greek myth. But this does point out that in Milton's time, demons were apparently as real as the angels and God. Whereas, by "false gods," I would tend to think of "gods that aren't really there."

Nor had they yet among the Sons of Eve
Got them new Names, till wandring ore the Earth, [ 365 ]
Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man,
By falsities and lyes the greatest part
Of Mankind they corrupted to forsake
God thir Creator, and th' invisible
Glory of him that made them, to transform [ 370 ]
Oft to the Image of a Brute, adorn'd
With gay Religions full of Pomp and Gold,
And Devils to adore for Deities:
Then were they known to men by various Names,
And various Idols through the Heathen World

6. So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay (209)

This is just an example my old professor pointed out of how Milton marries sound and sense with his use of the heroic line--a string of monosyllabic words with inverted word order.[/i]

Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 3:33 pm
by Robert Tulip
Readers of PL who have little liking for God, as characterized by Milton, may be drawn away to the relatively more recognizable human qualities in Satan, and find these admirable in a tragic sense. Even in Satan's determination to "harm" the human race, revisionists may see a service of sorts: we became fully human only when we were expelled from the garden. Before that, we appeared to be similar to Homer's lotus eaters.
Thanks Will. Satan is admirable in a sick kind of way. Following up the discussion with Tom on the Opening Comments thread, Satan is necessary to test out God and the angels and make them show their identity in the crucible of opposition, showing human freedom as involving real choice and responsibility. Tom and I were talking there about whether technology is a good thing, with Tom likening the Tree of Knowledge to a Tree of Technology. This likening of the fall to Promethean technological progress can easily look like the sort of pious attitude which sees all change as bad, as in your mention of the lotus eaters. The chance to try out satanic approaches is part of human freedom. The hope is that the chastening failure of evil can bring people to see that the path of God is good, and can help us to find good innovations within the multitude of bad things.
It makes no sense to say that God is good except as a unified loving merciful energy that works as a dynamic force in the world. The nature and existence of such an energy is hotly contested, and in Milton's day the puritans and papists slugged it out, both claiming absolute divine mandate. The narrow chain to heaven and the broad highway to hell are metaphors for how the path of corruption is attractive but destructive, while the path to heaven is extremely difficult to find, but is necessary for salvation.
The hope is for an absolute good. When Satan calls God a tyrant he is simply wrong, arguing a false relativism between good and evil. Satan would say that, wouldn't he.