One Word Milton: Free
Milton writes Paradise Lost in order to “justify the ways of God to men” (Milton 1.26). This is frustratingly straightforward, as Milton directly states this pretty early in the poem. Yet at most times, this claim is called into question, particularly when relating to Milton’s portrayal of Satan. Surprising upon the first read, Milton doesn’t paint Satan as the hard and fast devil. He gives Satan an intense personal narrative that causes us to feel empathetic of him. Because of this, suddenly, it becomes fuzzy what Milton’s true purpose is. Where there was one clear answer from the author himself, Milton calls into question his reliability. We now can see many different sides and each one calls into question different pieces of the story that Milton has laid out. We can no longer trust his answers and we have to discover for ourselves what his purpose is. And this, is at the core of Milton’s point. As soon as we notice this, we immediately have power as a reader.
Our focus on literature this year has been as much about the author as it is the text. We forget that every author we have read shows us through the text how they want us to think and what they want us to take away. Milton is no exception. By writing Satan as he did, by subtly opposing himself, by tackling a subject such as the first sin at all, Milton shows us, within the text, not so much through the text, why he wrote the way he did. He provides us information in a particular way, and lets us discover for ourselves why. And by taking the time and energy to understand the how of this and how it works, we have already discovered the purpose we were looking for all along.
In book three, God delivers a long explanation for his actions. For why he doesn’t simply kill off humans, why he allows us to fall, and why he created us how he did initially. Milton writes, through God’s perspective: “I made [humans] just and right, / Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (Milton 3.98-99). And later in that same speech, he mentions freedom again: “I formed them free, and free they must remain, / Till they enthrall themselves” (Milton 3.124-125). The Oxford English Dictionary defines free as: “not in servitude to another,” “not subject to a government which is tyrannous,” and “not subject to the control or influence of something abstract” (OED). This includes God.
We determined that God is not autonomous. He might be our creator, but there are forces that even he must adhere to. One of them being this idea of freedom. Milton writes “[God] made [humans] just and right” (Milton 3.98-99). Milton must have understood the duality of this statement. God created humans so they can be just and right. But also: the act of this creation was just and right. This was God submitting to the authorities of the morals that govern even him, and in the process of creating us as free as he is, submitting to us as well.
Freedom has followed us from our last text to another, and probably to the next one too. One of the biggest takeaways that Greenblatt wrote for us to notice was the hope and freedom inherent in a choice surrounded by authorities. Milton’s subject is so very similar. Just like Greenblatt showed us freedom in the mouth of the oppressing, Milton relates that God created humans as free as possible because it was right by the morals of the universe. It is dialectical and paradoxical to say that the confining rules of morality dictate the creation of freedom, yet this is what we have been struggling with all year. This is what kept us from recognizing Greenblatt’s message and now Milton’s: recognizing freedom where it shouldn’t exist.
Milton understood these definitions, or at least abstract definition of being free and recognized that by creating humans with free will, God also relinquished some control over us. Now Milton has the choice to paint Satan as the wounded character. We have the freedom to listen to our initial, gut reactions to what we are reading and look upon Satan with empathetic eyes. We are reading a story that, straight from the author, is supposed to “justify the ways of God to men” (Milton 1.26). What better way to justify than to actively do and teach and show?
It is imperative that we look beyond what is written on the page and instead look at how it is written. Not understanding why Milton wrote the way he did is almost as bad as not understanding how Milton wrote what he did. He wrote freely, with the hope (because they always go hand in hand) that we understand our freedom and how this realization must always come with the first sin. Yes, we fell. But we were “free to fall” (Milton 3.98-99).
Works Cited:
"free, adj., n., and adv." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/74375. Accessed 13 April 2020.
Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise Lost. London ; New York :Penguin Books, 2000.
Our focus on literature this year has been as much about the author as it is the text. We forget that every author we have read shows us through the text how they want us to think and what they want us to take away. Milton is no exception. By writing Satan as he did, by subtly opposing himself, by tackling a subject such as the first sin at all, Milton shows us, within the text, not so much through the text, why he wrote the way he did. He provides us information in a particular way, and lets us discover for ourselves why. And by taking the time and energy to understand the how of this and how it works, we have already discovered the purpose we were looking for all along.
In book three, God delivers a long explanation for his actions. For why he doesn’t simply kill off humans, why he allows us to fall, and why he created us how he did initially. Milton writes, through God’s perspective: “I made [humans] just and right, / Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (Milton 3.98-99). And later in that same speech, he mentions freedom again: “I formed them free, and free they must remain, / Till they enthrall themselves” (Milton 3.124-125). The Oxford English Dictionary defines free as: “not in servitude to another,” “not subject to a government which is tyrannous,” and “not subject to the control or influence of something abstract” (OED). This includes God.
We determined that God is not autonomous. He might be our creator, but there are forces that even he must adhere to. One of them being this idea of freedom. Milton writes “[God] made [humans] just and right” (Milton 3.98-99). Milton must have understood the duality of this statement. God created humans so they can be just and right. But also: the act of this creation was just and right. This was God submitting to the authorities of the morals that govern even him, and in the process of creating us as free as he is, submitting to us as well.
Freedom has followed us from our last text to another, and probably to the next one too. One of the biggest takeaways that Greenblatt wrote for us to notice was the hope and freedom inherent in a choice surrounded by authorities. Milton’s subject is so very similar. Just like Greenblatt showed us freedom in the mouth of the oppressing, Milton relates that God created humans as free as possible because it was right by the morals of the universe. It is dialectical and paradoxical to say that the confining rules of morality dictate the creation of freedom, yet this is what we have been struggling with all year. This is what kept us from recognizing Greenblatt’s message and now Milton’s: recognizing freedom where it shouldn’t exist.
Milton understood these definitions, or at least abstract definition of being free and recognized that by creating humans with free will, God also relinquished some control over us. Now Milton has the choice to paint Satan as the wounded character. We have the freedom to listen to our initial, gut reactions to what we are reading and look upon Satan with empathetic eyes. We are reading a story that, straight from the author, is supposed to “justify the ways of God to men” (Milton 1.26). What better way to justify than to actively do and teach and show?
It is imperative that we look beyond what is written on the page and instead look at how it is written. Not understanding why Milton wrote the way he did is almost as bad as not understanding how Milton wrote what he did. He wrote freely, with the hope (because they always go hand in hand) that we understand our freedom and how this realization must always come with the first sin. Yes, we fell. But we were “free to fall” (Milton 3.98-99).
Works Cited:
"free, adj., n., and adv." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/74375. Accessed 13 April 2020.
Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise Lost. London ; New York :Penguin Books, 2000.
Forming the Connection from Greenblatt to ScottCreating the Connection:
Earlier this week, in class, we brainstormed ideas for our rewrite. During this time, I had a couple of ideas and looking back on them right before I started writing, most of them didn’t make a ton of sense. But I settled on the connection between the two writers being about their take on “freedom with guidelines.” This idea of freedom is actually why, during an activity the first week of class, I had said I liked Greenblatt the best out of the three authors. In this paper, I discussed the idea of freedom to choose and the freedom to voluntarily submit to an authority. This was the first time in class that I felt comfortable and confident with an idea to talk for an extended time on it so I wanted to write my final paper on this idea. For Scott, it actually wasn’t too hard to find the connection to this idea. It was simply a small step forward from his final argument to realize that freedom to choose was everywhere he talked about. And guidelines were easily there, much easier than Greenblatt’s guidelines, which were more moments without freedom than boundaries with the freedom to choose our path. Once I started writing and I fully connected this idea with Scott, I discovered another interesting point. The main argument that we “discovered” or agreed upon for Scott was: better your life by using criticism to reflect on your aesthetic experiences. And his definition for an aesthetic experience is: “a series of discrete moments of contemplation and surrender.” When looking up the definition of surrender I found an entry that said: “cease resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority.” (Lexico powered by Oxford) I looked it up because another connection that I was thinking about writing about the voluntary nature of each of their methods. You must submit to an authority. This is a requirement but the authority you submit to is your choice, which is where the power that we have comes into play. And you must reflect on these aesthetic experiences to change your life and within the definition that A. O. Scott provided, the voluntary nature shows itself again through the word surrender, in the exact same way that Greenblatt used it. If the connection I wrote about is to weak or my peer editors don’t take to it the way that I did, than I will probably change to this crazy connection. |
Refining the Connection:
Through peer reviewing, a couple of areas of improvement stood out to me. In much of my writing, I use long sentences with many tumbling phrases, some with commas, some without. I noticed that some of these sentences in specific parts worked while others didn’t. And while reading aloud, the commas I used seemed off in many places while there were other areas where I could add more to structure the sentence better. When talking about Greenblatt’s purpose and argument, the longer sentences helped display the apparent hopelessness of his subject. I tried to contrast this with shorter, simple sentences next to focus on what was more important: the feeling of hope he portrayed in the epilogue and preface. However in other places, this style was more distracting than additive. Another area of improvement is with the tone of the piece. I did not quite use a completely formal tone throughout the analysis but there were times in the first draft that I was more informal than I believe I should be. These are the main improvements I made in this draft. After finishing the final piece, I still wish I would have been able to include more ideas and connections. This assignment asked for only one, the most important one, but I thought of others throughout this writing process. For example, in Scott, his definition of aesthetic experiences uses language that could directly tie it into Greenblatt’s 10 conditions of self-fashioning. If I could do this assignment again, I would have a tough time picking just one central connection, but I believe I would be able to connect them in different interesting ways which could be fun. |
Connecting Greenblatt and Scott
Within “Better Living Through Criticism” and “Renaissance Self-Fashioning,” the authors, A. O. Scott and Stephen Greenblatt respectively, teach the reader how to change their lives by changing their approach to living it. For Scott, the way to better our lives is to use criticism to reflect on our aesthetic experiences, characterized as “series of discrete moments of contemplation and surrender.” This reflection on these crucial experiences is how we can discover for ourselves how to improve. In Greenblatt’s perspective, alternatively, we must first understand the forces and systems at play in our life and in society, described as authorities and aliens, before changing. Once we understand this, even though it becomes evident our communal dream of autonomous agency is simply such, this dream simply needs to be adjusted. We still have agency, but we can only fully use it and understand this power of choice we live our lives with if we understand the systems in place around us. By reading both pieces, it becomes clear that the underlying, agreed upon, method to better our lives revolves around the notion of freedom. With guidelines.
For Greenblatt, the concept of freedom is clearly and directly tied into his subject. In his epilogue, he relates his main topic, self-fashioning, to freedom saying: “to abandon self-fashioning is to abandon the craving for freedom.” This is crucial to his argument because the heart of his writing reveals the most depressing idea imaginable. All of these forces are pressing in on us and in the end we must choose between them as to which one to devote our lives to; our lifelong yearning for autonomous agency is simply a lie that we tell ourselves to keep moving forward and to ignore all of this. Yet he finishes on a lighter note? And not just any lighter note, quite possibly the one that could lift our spirits the most. He ends discussing our innate, and very human, craving for freedom. Greenblatt is telling us as readers that we have the choice to choose our path. And this freedom of choice is his highlight throughout the book, not the system that is forcing us to choose, that has power over us and won’t let us live free of it. This choice of which authority, or even alien, to voluntarily submit to is most powerful because all of the consequences, good and bad, of our lives, originate at these choices we make. The dialectical nature of this described system is complicated; this system that constrains us from being unimaginably free, and binds us between and within opposing authorities and aliens presents us with the freedom to choose our path. The only way to truly comprehend the magnitude of this power we have been given, that we take advantage of, is to understand and reflect upon this governing system of guidelines and live our lives with purpose worthy of this power.
|
"this system that constrains us from being unimaginably free, and binds us between and within opposing authorities and aliens presents us with the freedom to choose our path"
|
For Scott, it is more challenging to see the freedom his method provides. This freedom is hidden within his instructions to reflect upon these aesthetic experiences and use them to change our lives. In reflection, there is the choice of what to reflect on, which aesthetic experiences does the individual deem more influential than the others. This is up to us, no system or higher power will tell us which one will lead us down the “correct” road. There is then the choice of what to take out of each experience. These moments that leave us powerfully struck are filled with knowledge and light that will illuminate the path if we only choose to see it. There is also freedom in the end, to use fully this knowledge we have learned from the reflecting or barely to use it to guide our future self. The underlying choice may be hidden within his argument, but the guidelines Scott describes are clearer. In discovering Scott’s argument, the guidelines reveal themselves within each of the steps: criticize, reflect, change. To better our lives we are restricted to completing these steps. Within them we are free to explore and take what we can but we must perform them to receive the desired effect.
|
This central theme is not simply a random detail that happened to be included in both books. In both of the pieces, this idea of freedom with some restrictions is ingrained into the central argument. In describing how to better our lives, it is important, vital, to understand the freedom that we currently have and will continue to have. These methods won’t take that away from us; in some ways they give us more.
Summer Reading At-A-Glance:
Over the summer we read excerpts from three texts: “Better Living Through Criticism” by A. O. Scott, “A More Beautiful Question” by Warren Berger, and “Renaissance Self-Fashioning” by Stephen Greenblatt. Throughout the process of creating a concept map and a description of the map, I tried to capture the overarching themes of each of these three texts and simplify them. By doing this, more and more overlaps and connections formed between the texts, even though that covered completely different topics. This surprised me that the whole excerpt from A. O. Scott’s book about criticism could be connected to and intertwined with a piece about writing a book that is about making a character and making yourself. I learned that not everything that was obvious was necessarily the most important lesson but that as you pruned away the hyperbole and metaphor you would finally arrive at the truly important lesson. I also learned through this summer work process that other people think very differently than me, and that we draw drastically different conclusions from the same readings. Based on how I think and the general lens and philosophy I view the world through, I arrived at the conclusion that these pieces highlighted the cynicism of human nature. Through this summer work, I learned about the possible interconnected of extremely distinct texts, but I also discovered more about myself than I ever planned on.
The Cynicism of Human Nature, A Persuasive Descriptive Piece:
To fully tie all of texts together in Popova’s style, I started by looking at a main point each piece used to convey their main point. And then I started to see similarities between them and so I kept connecting each new point to others until I broadened them to a single, underlying idea. This main, underlying point is not just shared by all of the texts in some obscure way, but is at the heart of the single point I took from each piece. Some of the original similarities between the three texts are creativity and the idea of valuing society. In “Better Living Through Criticism,” A. O. Scott explores how there would be no art without creativity: without people creatively thinking outside of the box to make exhibits like Abramovic’s, there would be no advancement in art. And “A Most Beautiful Question” and “Renaissance Self Fashioning” explore the creativity required in finding yourself and allowing others, mainly children, to find themselves, and developing your own character.
The value of society is also huge in all of these pieces. If this specific value wasn’t held dear, people, like Warren Berger wouldn’t care about young children being neglected by having their questions suppressed. And as Greenblatt wrote “to abandon self-fashioning is to abandon the craving for freedom, and to let go of one’s stubborn hold upon selfhood . . . is to die.” To Greenblatt, even freedom wouldn’t exist without the concept of self-fashioning and the inherent right to choose who you are.
But there is more to Popova’s BrainPickings than just stating the similarities between seemingly different ideas or books and various famous people. She also synthesizes them into a single point and idea and she uses the preliminary similarities to guide that principle. So, in trying to emulate her style, I drew the conclusions that each text and each similarity were conveying the themes of the necessity of understanding self-image and the betterment of society. These conclusions were logically drawn from the similarities listed and discussed above with the addition of staying true to ourselves and the goal of the betterment of society. From this, and through my personal lens of the world, the conclusion I drew from the texts, was the inherent need in society for cynicism of human nature. This is specifically portrayed through the necessity of critics Scott’s piece, the questioning nature of the world and its policies in “A More Beautiful Question” and in Greenblatt’s writing, the need to mold yourself into a role that is both true to yourself and fits into society. And to fully uniquely conform to society, you have to critique human nature, assume the worst and prepare your future self to make a difference within it.
The value of society is also huge in all of these pieces. If this specific value wasn’t held dear, people, like Warren Berger wouldn’t care about young children being neglected by having their questions suppressed. And as Greenblatt wrote “to abandon self-fashioning is to abandon the craving for freedom, and to let go of one’s stubborn hold upon selfhood . . . is to die.” To Greenblatt, even freedom wouldn’t exist without the concept of self-fashioning and the inherent right to choose who you are.
But there is more to Popova’s BrainPickings than just stating the similarities between seemingly different ideas or books and various famous people. She also synthesizes them into a single point and idea and she uses the preliminary similarities to guide that principle. So, in trying to emulate her style, I drew the conclusions that each text and each similarity were conveying the themes of the necessity of understanding self-image and the betterment of society. These conclusions were logically drawn from the similarities listed and discussed above with the addition of staying true to ourselves and the goal of the betterment of society. From this, and through my personal lens of the world, the conclusion I drew from the texts, was the inherent need in society for cynicism of human nature. This is specifically portrayed through the necessity of critics Scott’s piece, the questioning nature of the world and its policies in “A More Beautiful Question” and in Greenblatt’s writing, the need to mold yourself into a role that is both true to yourself and fits into society. And to fully uniquely conform to society, you have to critique human nature, assume the worst and prepare your future self to make a difference within it.
Rhetorical Analysis of Popova:
In her “brainpickings,” Maria Popova writes with a variety of captivating techniques that help to draw in and keep readers and convey her message much more effectively than a plain article. Popova uses quotations everywhere: right underneath the title, in between paragraphs, in place of paragraphs. The quote directly under the title helps to draw browsing readers into the article by adding a little mystery. They’ll have to keep on reading to find out who said it. And the break between normal, article paragraphs with quotes and the replacement of traditional explication with more direct, easy to understand quotes, gives the piece a more personable feel by making it seem like the author of the quotes, Descartes, a French philosopher, is talking directly to the reader. Popova also designed the article very purposefully with the use of various colors and fonts. She also offsets some of the longer quotes to really give it a different vibe than a stereotypical, “here is your information in flowery language” article, instead the focus is on long, in context, direct quotations in order to keep the topic centered. The final tactic that Popova effectively has in her article is the placement of related images. These images aren’t exact copies of what Descartes is quoted, but instead related pictures and paintings that the reader truly has to read and understand the passage to understand how it all fits. And once they understand the images after reading the article they will be pulled in for other great pieces that Maria Popova has written.