Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity

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University of Delaware Press, 2003 - 259 pàgines
'Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity' is a study of the challenge intersubjective experience poses to doctrinal formulations of difference. Focusing on 'Paradise Lost' and 'Samson Agonistes' and using feminist and relational psychoanalytic theory, the project examines representations of looking, working, eating, conversing, and touching, to argue that encounters between selves in 'threshold space' dismantle the binary oppositions that support categorical thinking. A key term throughout the study is recognition, defined as the capacity to tolerate both sameness and difference between separate selves. Recognition of likeness-in-difference thus undermines the exclusionary logic of patriarchal and poitical hierarchies. Both Eve and Dalila demonstrate the ability to respect the borders of the other while seeking out similarity, but where 'Paradise Lost' depicts the eventual achievements of intersubjective understanding between Adam and Eve after the fall, 'Samson Agonistes' records its failure when Samson, maintaining the boundaries of difference, refuses Dalila's effort to make contact.

Des de l'interior del llibre

Continguts

On Looking
33
Labor Pains Creation and Work in the Garden
68
No ingrateful food Eating as Interconnection
106
Getting the Last Word The Verbal Touching of Talk
139
Dalilas Touch Disability and Recognition in Samson Agonistes
175
Epilogue
208
Notes
213
Bibliography
241
Index
253
Copyright

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Passatges populars

Pàgina 128 - What choice to choose for delicacy best, What order so contrived as not to mix Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change: Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields In India East or West, or middle shore In Pontus or the Punic coast, or where...
Pàgina 158 - Yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.
Pàgina 100 - Yon flowery arbours, yonder alleys green, Our walk at noon, with branches overgrown, That mock our scant manuring, and require More hands than ours to lop their wanton growth: Those blossoms also and those dropping gums, That lie bestrewn unsightly and unsmooth, Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with ease: Meanwhile, as nature wills, night bids us rest.
Pàgina 95 - Sole partner, and sole part, of all these joys, Dearer thyself than all ; needs must the Power That made us, and for us this ample world, Be infinitely good, and of his good As liberal and free as infinite; That rais'd us from the dust, and plac'd us here In all this happiness...
Pàgina 41 - What thou seest, What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself, With thee it came and goes : but follow me, And I will bring thee where no shadow stays Thy coming, and thy soft embraces ; he Whose image thou art, him thou shalt enjoy Inseparably thine ; to him shalt bear Multitudes like thyself, and thence be called Mother of human race.
Pàgina 46 - Return, fair Eve; Whom fliest thou ? Whom thou fliest, of him thou art, His flesh, his bone, to give thee being I lent Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart, Substantial life, to have thee by my side Henceforth an individual solace dear: Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim My other half.
Pàgina 191 - I was a fool, too rash, and quite mistaken In what I thought would have succeeded best. Let me obtain forgiveness of thee, Samson, Afford me place to show what...
Pàgina 77 - Be gathered now, ye waters under Heaven, Into one place, and let dry land appear!' Immediately the mountains huge appear Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave Into the clouds ; their tops...
Pàgina 43 - Mother of human race.' What could I do, But follow straight, invisibly thus led? Till I espied thee, fair, indeed, and tall, Under a platan; yet methought less fair, Less winning soft, less amiably mild, Than that smooth watery image.

Sobre l'autor (2003)

Susannah B. Mintz is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University, and received her Ph.D. from Rice University in 1996. She has taught at Wittenberg University and St. John's University in New York City, and is Assistant Professor of English at Skidmore College

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