other thoughts on The Dream and Trickster...

The Dream as travel narrative: except this one travels both on Earth and in the heavens- the ship takes him throughout Europe: Denmark, Norway, etc. “After a few days a north wind sprang up and drove the ship between Norway and England…” (p-12) and with the Daemon, instead of to the New World, we're hearing about the heavens “Fifty thousand miles up in the ether lies the island of Levania.” (p-15). In both locations, we read specifics about mileage, winds, the rigors of traveling, how long a journey takes and what the days and nights are like.

So funny, because he mentions the idea that “the whole of Levania does not exceed fourteen hundred German miles in circumference, that is a quarter of our earth.” (p-27) and while this is a comparison, like any other travel narrative makes between what is home and what is foreign, it also includes a qualifier of “German” miles…making the comparison even more specific, than just a comparison using generic distance. (there was a really funny parallel with measurement in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, where one of the character’s is trying to get information and is sidetracked by a monk’s description of various modes of measurement within the same country (tablets, trabucchi, emine, brente and tankards (p-269).

By contrast, its interesting to note that Trickster Travels, in referencing Yuhanna al-Asad and his book The Cosmography and Geography of Africa, mentions that al-Asad didn’t try to give locations using latitude, longitude, or number of days traveled (p-101), but instead attempted to use an estimate o distance in (unquantified) miles. travel narratives, no matter where theya re located or who they involve always try to bring back the idea of how it compares to what the reader knows, and how it can be (in some way) measured and quantified.

Role of Man and Woman/ Paradise Lost

Milton clearly cast Adam and Eve into typical roles. He mentions a few times that he would tell Eve to do somthing and she listens to him and follows his orders. Another time Raphael comes to visit and discusses how the earth was created and sends Eve into another room.

The warning that Raphael gives Adam about Eve being evil puts doubt into his head about her, if he was warned why let her go about her chores on her own. I thought that Milton was contradicting his own writing, everything was being put forth infront of us, if Adam would have continued in his machismo role, she would not have agreed for her to go on her own.

Adams Knowledge

I thought Adam's interest in what was beyond his world was quite intereting, although he didn't "know" much, her still seemed curious about the beyond. He was fascinated abou the other worlds, this also could support that Milton was a Copernican follower. He also describes god as light;
"Hail holy Light, offspring of Heav'n first born,
Or og th' Eternal co-eternal beam
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee, [ 5 ]
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethernal stream"
Act III, line 1-7

Milton's motives and authority

One of the things that intrigues me about Paradise Lost is Milton himself, and his reasons for writing it. We have learned a lot this semester that helps to put this poem in context, much about the period's history and the mindset of the people. But, at the heart of Paradise Lost is John Milton. Why did he choose to take Genesis, a story that has already been told in the Bible, and essentially rewrite it? And given that so many people at this time believed in the Bible and the story of Genesis, based their entire lives on it, in fact, what gives Milton the authority to rewrite it? Why should people read this poem and think critically about it? It seems to me that Milton may have been taking a big risk at the time by choosing this subject matter and doing what he does with it. In book 5, Raphael explains to Adam that there are problems with relating a story of a religious nature with all its mysteries, in a way that can be understood and beleived. I think one of the ways in which Milton reconciles these problems of authority is through the use of his muse. Several times in Paradise Lost, Milton invokes a muse to tell his story. While the poem is partially based on Genesis, it is also largely a product of Milton's imagination. By invoking the muses, Milton manages to make the poem a divinely inspired peice and it is perhaps this that gives him the authority. To what extent did Milton beleive in this divine inspiration? How much of it was just an oppertunity for social and religious commentary? I'm not sure, but it seems likely that it was a combination of the two. Regardless of his motives, Milton does seem to be successful in acheiving a great authority over such a controversial topic.

God respected Man's Integrity

Man's fall is in a lot of ways paralllel to the fall of Lucifer.Lucifer sought to usurp the glory of God and achieved darkness.This applies to Man as well,"affecting Godhead and so losing all"( III,206).Man was created to stand in personal integrity and work within his own realization but not some one else's potential.His goal is defined by Raphael, "which best may serve to glorify the maker, and infer Thee also happier" ( III,99).But man also must respect his own integrity.His fall came through improper self assertion,"Oft times nothing profits more Than self esteem, grounded on just right Well managed ( VIII ,571-73).The direction given to human life is within human choice as Eve tells the serpent, "we live law to ourselves,our reason is our law"(IX,653-54).Another aspect of divine respect for man's integrity is the establishment of "pleasant labor," the task of tending the universe as a garden within the harmony of God," Man hath his daily work of body or mind appointed , which declares his dignity... while other animals remain unactive , and of their doing God takes no account,( IV,618-22)

Authority - Subject Relationship

I remember my first day of high school (a million years ago) when my English teacher was reviewing the rules of the classroom and how we (the students) were expected to behave and interact with each other. I specifically remember him saying that he wanted us to treat him appropriately although he wasn't going to demand respect from us. As a kid I thought this was an interesting idea. Up to that point, I had always been told to respect my teachers simply because they were the authority in the classroom. Mr. Wood was the first teacher/authority I knew who understood that real respect was something to be earned and not demanded. We, the students, had a choice to make... We had the freedom to respect him or not.

For some reason I have always been interested in issues pertaining to power and control (not sure if this is good). For this reason, the following passage from Book V stands out for me.

God made thee perfect, not immutable;
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power, or ordained thy will
By nature free, not overruled by fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity;
Our voluntary service he requires,
Not our necessitated, such with him
Finds no acceptance, nor can find, for how
Can hearts be free, be tried whether they serve
Willing or no, who will but what they must
By destiny, and can no other choose? (V.524-534)

When I think of 17th century England, I am automatically engaged with a society that was struggling with issues of power and control. I think the concept of the absolute sovereign is very interesting and very convenient (in terms of controlling the masses). Although Milton is concerned with obedience to the divine authority in the above passage, the concept can clearly be used with authority to the governing body. Milton addresses the relationship between the authority and the subject. I believe he is stating that obedience is only valuable when the subject has the choice. If the subject chooses obedience, than that authority has the internal (conscience) and the external (voice, action) obedience of the subject. When the subject is forced to obey, the authority has only the external obedience.

Hell as more than just a place

I was intrigued by one aspect of the first group of books in Paradise Lost: the idea of hell as not "only" a geographical locale, but one of the mind as well.

To wit: "The mind is its own place and in itself/Can make a Heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven"

The footnotes for this section have a lot to say about how Satan's "heretical" talk here can be traced to Amaury de Bene of the 13th century and the Stoics and the idea that heaven and hell are states of mind rather than places. But it's also interesting, as the footnotes note, that within this you can see the idea that heaven and hell exist within one's own self. It's interesting that this vaguely heretical idea can exist within the scope of legitimate theological paradigms.

In Book IV Satan says "Which way I fly is hell;myself am hell" (Line 75). This first stood out to me because Robert Lowell cribbed it for Skunk Hour, which I knew before, but had never read the line in its' surrounding context.

The Lowell line in context: "A car radio bleats, "Love, O careless Love...." I hear/my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,/as if my hand were at its throat..../I myself am hell;/nobody's here–"

In Lowell's poem, the speaker is not in hell, merely a declining Maine sea town. But like Satan, the speaker is in a torment of his own minds making. Only in this case, the depression of Lowell's speaker, unlike Satan, is a jarring but important insertion into the ordinary flow of the poem. It isn't what the poem is about, but it is what the poem becomes about, which is what makes it important. The torment of Satan is complicated: within the same group of lines where he proclaims himself a hell, he laments the lack of room for repentance or pardon, a dread of shame and an opening, lower deep which we never really see or hear explained. Satan's anomie and depression seem understandable here, indeed even sympathetic, like Lowell's narrator, but his characterization, as it unfolds throughout the rest of the books, seems to paint him as a decidedly unsympathetic character, one who wants to destroy innocence.

When Our Reason Fails Us

As we have seen with our other 17th century readings, many scientists and writers in this time period believed that truth could be attained through the use of reason. Galileo and Kepler use scientific reason in an attempt to better understand the universe. We see with Galileo's rhetoric, however, that the purpose for such reasoning is to assist humans in their pursuit to comprehend the divine. For instance, Galileo's telescope brings him nearly divine eyesight. Reason is important in Paradise Lost as well. Raphael reminds Adam that humans have free will and can choose whether or not they should obey God. Raphael tells Adam that humans can only understand God, heaven and divinity through obedience. Later, Adam states, "to know / That which before is lies in daily life / Is the prime wisdom," implying that the key to internal happiness lies within man and the terrestrial world he inhabits. One does not need to look to the cosmos for satisfaction. But human reason is complicated, and at times, prohibits human from understanding the world intuitively. Additionally, human reason is flawed--the process of reasoning itself is untainted but the information one is processing can be false. Therefore, Eve's desire to understand the divine (and perhaps become divine herself) combined with her reasoning of Satan's lies lead her to initiate the Fall. Perhaps in a postlapsarian world we cannot know God through intuition. The possibility escapes us. Instead the very process that secured our mortality is reactivated in the hopes that we can better comprehend the universe.

Eve and Redemption

The more I read Paradise Lost, the more I am intrigued with Eve. The transition of Eve's character as the poem progresses is much more apparent than that of Adam, or even Satan. She starts off as the doting wife, moves forward as ambition rears its head, becomes a seducer herself and then finally the more repentant of the pair.

Although historically Satan and Eve are blamed for the Fall and that may be true to a large extent, Eve's attempt at redemption is much more significant than Adam's. In fact she is willing to die childless in order to save mankind, thus she becomes much more like the Son of God than even Adam.

Kepler, Bruno & Galileo

(Post from 8/11 - I was not able to log onto the blog on that date.) Although I appreciated the creative structure of Kepler's Somnium and the purpose of the text, I had a hard time reading it. This may be because of my lack of knowledge with regard to Kepler and astronomy. I did some online research to get a grasp of who Kepler was, so the text would make more sense to me. I won't repeat what everyone already knows; however, I did find
that this text is sometimes described as the first work of science fiction. Kind of interesting.

I was more interested in reading about Galileo and Bruno; these two were bold. I am of course familiar with Galileo, but I do not know very much about Bruno. I have been to Rome a couple of times, so I am sure that I have seen his statue at Campo de Fiori, but I was too overwhelmed to remember it. I think it is interesting that Bruno wanted to use science to unite the protestants and catholics in Europe.

With regard to Galileo, I enjoyed reading The Starry Messenger. It was interesting to read about the discovery of things that seems so obvious to us now. I found the text easy to follow, and I felt as if I was receiving a mini-lesson in earth science class. With regard to the Letter to Christina, I like the way in which Galileo lays out his argument. He does a good job of directly addressing the conflict between science and religion. Because I have little to no religious background, I rarely think about this. However, Galileo's text clearly conveys how difficult it was to put forth new ideas during a time when unpopular ideas were disregarded because they might destroy the order of things. I immediately saw the connection between Galileo and Milton's Paradise Lost. If I remember correctly, in Paradise Lost the quest for knowledge is not encouraged...but we will get to that on Wednesday.

satan, predestination, england as ancient isreal...rambling

so, i may be totally off the mark, but I keep feeling like Satan is also railing against the entire concept of predestination and free will (or lack of it). If God is completely in control, and Satan can't wrest any of that power away, then even though he is rebelling against the power of God, he is also rebelling against the idea that he, Satan, will never be able to control his own destiny because God in his onmipotence is in control of all things, all events. So, maybe, for Satan, the frustration of God being all powerful, and of Satan having no power, is, in a sense, equal to having no free will.

And you can look at not having any free will as the absolute control of a monarch in power (the people, like Satan, have no control). So, the people railing against the king and his total control is comparable to Satan railing against predestination and God and so, maybe, in that context, that could be why Satan is a bit sympathetic.

On the other hand, if the fall of Satan can represent the fall of man as a whole through the sin of Adam and Eve and the eating of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, then can it also represent the fall of England and a disappointment on a grand scale that Milton might have felt with the political and moral turn his country was taking?

And then, if England is the land of the Isrealites, the English, Milton's countrymen, would be comparable to the ancient Isrealites. So, then, who is Moses of the first few lines of Paradise Lost leading the country to the Promised Land? Is it his Cromwell taking England from across a religious and political desert (as formerly controlled by the monarchy) to a Promised Land where monarchy has no control? Then it would be a symbolic trip (of 20 years or whatever) through events of politics and civil unrest, etc. instead of a literal 40 year wandering through the desert. So then, would the fall of satan, (also-mankind -so also england) be the return to a monarchy and the Restoration of the king?
So maybe the Restoration is really the fall or Hell itself? ??? i'm just saying...

worldmaking and astronomy

As I began doing the readings for this week, I paused for a moment to consider the material in the context of this course. Bruno's discussion of Copernicus and whether or not the earth was the center of the universe and Galileo's discussion of how he came about some of his discoveries is all very fascinating stuff, but after reading exstensively on conquests, the new world and Indians for the past few weeks, on the surface it did not seem to fit. When so far we have been reading about how the modern world came to be, gradually introducing more lands, new rulers, and different wars, being very much focused on land and places, why now do we turn to the sky? I'm not entirely sure I know, but for me, the transition was not all that difficult in fact. It seems to me that we have been going through the progression of the world, and how it has come to be what it is today and it is not simply the expansion of land and political power, but also the progression of human thought that plays a large role in world making. Reading about Galileo was interesting because I felt like I was litsening to a great mind at work. It was fascinating to see the facts and knowledge that we know now, unfold and come into being. This class has taught me a lot about history but in doing that it has forced me to think about the beginning of civilization, how we got to point B from point A, beginning with the most basic of things. So when we think about world making it goes further than the rise and fall of different empires. We must also consider how the human mind has been able to grasp things over centuries.

Bruno- No New Discoveries

The debate of whether or not something is considered a new discovery really interested me. He brought in a good point by stating how Columbus might have "discovered" but there were already people there so how could it have been discovered.

Kepler's Dream - based on reality yet fantastical and fascinating

Kepler's dream is really fantastical yet very scientific in its basis and depth. I am not a science major so I found myself mystified at first.It took me a little while to figure out what he was trying to convey. The dream is a highly imaginative work.Kepler dreaming of himself as a youth living in Thule with his mother, who is somehow in touch with spirits from distant lands like Levania.

In his description of the places and details of Levania which is really a geographical description, he also lists out his own astronomical findings. He describes the activities of the sun and the earth if one saw them from the moon.He talks about day and night,the seasons and even the hemispheres .Kepler was the one to discover that the path of the earth is elliptical and not circular. The example of the moon is really to explain to laypersons the motion of the earth.

Bruno - In Praise of Reason

Bruno's praise of Copernicus and his discussion of cosmology, I noticed, is prefaced by a fairly involved praising of "reason". His reasoning, and dismissal of what he sees as clouding or preventing development of cosmology seems to presage ideas you see in the Enlightenment. However, I'm not well versed in much of the period, so I can't say exactly how Bruno fits in between it and the Renaissance. I just found the rhetoric, profoundly interesting, it being a refutation of what had come before.

Also interesting is how he reconciles his ideas of God, what he sees as disproven concepts of the cosmos, and the scientific principles that he sees operating in the cosmos. It reminds me very much of Christian scientists (not Christian Scientists mind you) I know who could go to work every day, researching human muscle cells, go home to bible study, and reconcile and even merge the two worlds. You would think that "science" and religion would be mutually exclusive in cases like Bruno, especially faced with religious persecution.

A Whole New World

The dialogue format of The Ash Wednesday Supper works quite well in terms of expressing the underlying views expressed. Bruno is able to ask and then answer the inevitable questions which would follow his support of a heliocentric cosmos.

Bruno’s insistence not only of an infinite universe, but of an infinitely inhabited world seems to me an extraordinary belief for an individual living during his time. It was blasphemous enough to believe in a heliocentric cosmos, but by asserting there were worlds out there which were inhabited, might have been enough to convince the Catholic Church that Bruno was disavowing a belief in God. Who were these inhabitants and what was their relation to God?

I was also quite intrigued by the writing style and the contents of Kepler’s Somnium. By formatting it as a tale about a young man and his odd mother, Kepler is able to put forth his own theories about the cosmos. It becomes a story about his own beliefs infused in a science fiction story sure to cause readers to revaluate their own beliefs.

And finally, I really enjoyed reading the works of Galileo. As an avid viewer of the Science channel, I have watched several programs concerning Galileo’s theories, so it was finally great to read his own words. I was particularly fascinated by the description of his spyglass. Imagine finally seeing the craters of the moon for the first time, and in 1610!

Aureng-Zebe

One thing that struck me about Aureng-Zebe:

Despite it's direct invocation of Tamburlaine (Aureng-Zebe and Morat being described as his spiritual descendants, wanting to conquer much) the scale and focus of the production seems much different. Dryden takes as his setting the Middle East but it is only a backdrop for the political and romantic maneuvering and backstabbing that goes on within a small geographical area.

Even the majority of the best dialogue is more focused on this aim: repudiations of outspokenly loud declarations of virtue, "life is but a cheat", "bounding of wishes" etc.

The point I guess I'm making is that it seems Dryden would have this play be a spiritual descendant of the type of Middle Eastern kingmaking we see in Tamburlaine, but he is only nominally concerned with his setting, rather, his energy is more focused on the language of his drama. I like it.

Not sure what to think

I approached this weeks reading with a bit of excitement, having been pretty interested in the travel narratives so far. I was especially intrigued to see that not only would we have an excerpt from Leo Africanus, but the Davis reading, which would, I assumed, give us more insight into Africanus' life. After reading a little background online and discovering that very little is known about Leo Africanus, it made me even more interested to read Trickster Travels, thinking perhaps that Davis knew something no one else did. And I tried to get into the reading, I really did. And I'm not sure why it was so difficult for me. The more I read, it became clear that a lot of what is written is surrounded by maybes and probablys. Davis attempts to get at the root of Africanus' life by bringing in a lot of history and mentions many people, making it difficult at times to keep everyone straight. Perhaps this was a difficulty only I encountered. The fact that people's names were sentences long did not help the reading flow, but of course this is something that cannot be helped. All was not lost though. Despite this particular reading's style failure to lure and hook me the whole way, I certainly found myself interested in learning some of the background story of the man whose excerpt we read in the Mancall reading. His life as a captured diplomat was fascinating. While he is known for his journey's to Africa, it seemed as though his journey did not end there. His knowledge made him an interesting man to many people and as a result he was taken to different places and worked with so many different people. It was also interesting to get a further glimpse into the process of getting and recording history in Africanus' time.

Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness and the Natalie Zamon Davis's conception of Africa

I really enjoyed all the raedings this weekend. They were all different and all enlightening in their own way. Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness was really fascinating. I feel it is really unique and teachable. I definitely want to teach it some day. It is fascinating to read about the English superiority and the place of King James in the scheme of things. It was Queen Anne for whom the Masque was written as she wanted to be seen as a blak woman. The lines, "As of Phaeton that fired the world.." were interesting as they convey the white presumption that black people were miserable as the sun had blackened them. Also interesting was to note that the sun is actually King James in "Britannia who makes all tongues sing..."The King can possibly cure them of their physical wounds as well as political displacement.The image of a hundred torch bearers around the Black God Niger dressed in silver and azure sounds compelling. I wished every minute that I could see the Masque. On your left is the image of the Masque I found in a painting.Its pretty close to what I had in mind for the torch bearers.


Davis' Conception of Africa made fascinating reading as well. Chapter 5 of Trickster Travels did the trick for me, the earlier chapters did not. I liked finding out that Africa comes from Ifriqiya although I also read other versions of its name making. It was also interesting to read the debate on Egypt on Page 129 .Here are a few other stories around the name Africa from wikipedia.org:

• the 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.
• the Latin word aprica, meaning "sunny", mentioned by Isidore of Seville (sixth century) in Etymologiae XIV.5.2
• the Greek word aphrike, meaning "without cold." This was proposed by historian Leo Africanus (1488–1554), who suggested the Greek word phrike (φρίκη, meaning "cold and horror"), combined with the privative prefix "a-", thus indicating a land free of cold and horror.
• Massey, in 1881, derived an etymology from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, "the birthplace."^[8]

The Irish female name Aifric is sometimes Anglicised as Africa, but the personal name is unrelated to the geonym

Redefining Centrality

I was most intrigued by Natalie Zevon Davis' account of Leo Africanus in Rome and her description of cultural exchanges within the city. It seemed that as Rome attempted to claim new peripheral lands and kingdoms for Christendom the Romans were incorporating different cultural practices in interesting ways. Obviously all outsiders and prisoners of Rome were to become Catholic, but Christian authorities did not simply ignore the cultural practices, religions and languages of the Muslims and Jews in Rome. This, of course, serves a strategic purpose; the Pope and his advisors needed to know about other cultures, kingdoms and empires in order to gain power over them, but the types of information the authorities required allowed for former Muslim and Jewish prisoners to serve a defined purpose in Rome. By writing about Africa and creating a trilingual dictionary, Leo Africanus enfolded aspects of others cultures into Roman culture. It's not that the Romans were tolerate of other cultures, but their inquiry into other worlds made it so that some hybridity of cultures was allowed--through language for instance. I found it interesting that, despite his important scholarly role, Leo Africanus could not be considered a top advisor because of his cultural background. The central power, Rome, is incorporating aspects of peripheral cultures into their culture but only by allowing them to diffuse into the dominant culture.

More believable

Although I have read all of the travel narratives so far believing less than 50% of the descriptions, there is something in the writings of Leo Africanus which rang more true than those previous. It comes from the two stories he imbedded in his narrative-one concerning the beating of a man by a friend and the other concerning an Amphibian. Africanus seems to have gone out of his way, more than the others, to add credibility to his tales. In this way he attempts to he solidify his position as a historian -one who does not gloss over facts to appeal to either his former countrymen or his benefactors.