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Imperfect Sense : The Predicament of Milton's Irony / Victoria Silver.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©2001Description: 1 online resource (432 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781400824113
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 821/.4 21
LOC classification:
  • PR3562 .S54 2001eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- ONE. Introduction -- TWO. Milton's God -- THREE. Milton's Text -- FOUR. Milton's Speaker -- FIVE. Milton's Devil -- SIX. Milton's Eden -- NOTES -- INDEX
Summary: Why do we hate Milton's God? Victoria Silver reengages with a perennial problem in Milton studies, one whose genealogy dates back at least to the Romantics, but which finds its most cogent modern expression in William Empson's revulsion at Milton's God and Stanley Fish's defense. Thoroughly reexamining Milton's theology and its sources in Luther and Calvin, as well as theoretical parallels in the works of Wittgenstein, Cavell, Adorno, and Benjamin, Silver contends that this repugnance is not extrinsic but deliberately cultivated in the theodicy of Paradise Lost. From the vantage of a world riven by injustice, deity can appear to contradict its own revelation, with the result that we experience a God divided against himself. For as Job found in his sufferings, that God appears more ruse than redeemer. Milton's irony recreates this religious predicament in Paradise Lost to the intractable perplexity of his readers, who have in their turn fashioned an equally dissociated Milton--at once unconscious and calculating, heterodox and doctrinaire, heroic and intolerable. Silver argues that, ultimately, these contrary Gods and antithetical Miltons arise from the sense we want to give the speaker's justification, which rather than ratifying our assumptions of meaning and the incoherence they foster, seeks fundamentally to reform them and thus to justify God's ways.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400824113

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- ONE. Introduction -- TWO. Milton's God -- THREE. Milton's Text -- FOUR. Milton's Speaker -- FIVE. Milton's Devil -- SIX. Milton's Eden -- NOTES -- INDEX

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Why do we hate Milton's God? Victoria Silver reengages with a perennial problem in Milton studies, one whose genealogy dates back at least to the Romantics, but which finds its most cogent modern expression in William Empson's revulsion at Milton's God and Stanley Fish's defense. Thoroughly reexamining Milton's theology and its sources in Luther and Calvin, as well as theoretical parallels in the works of Wittgenstein, Cavell, Adorno, and Benjamin, Silver contends that this repugnance is not extrinsic but deliberately cultivated in the theodicy of Paradise Lost. From the vantage of a world riven by injustice, deity can appear to contradict its own revelation, with the result that we experience a God divided against himself. For as Job found in his sufferings, that God appears more ruse than redeemer. Milton's irony recreates this religious predicament in Paradise Lost to the intractable perplexity of his readers, who have in their turn fashioned an equally dissociated Milton--at once unconscious and calculating, heterodox and doctrinaire, heroic and intolerable. Silver argues that, ultimately, these contrary Gods and antithetical Miltons arise from the sense we want to give the speaker's justification, which rather than ratifying our assumptions of meaning and the incoherence they foster, seeks fundamentally to reform them and thus to justify God's ways.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Aug 2021)