Milton’s Euripides and the superior rationality of the heathen

ABSTRACT

If arguments have always been made either that Milton maintains the primacy of the Bible over classical literature, or that he often presents classical sentiments as congruent with the biblical, one claim that has rarely been made is that Milton is willing to assert the truth of classical literature over that of the Bible. This article argues that there are moments in the canon that show him capable of doing precisely this, with particular reference to the invocation of his favourite Greek dramatist, Euripides. The article considers Milton’s reading and interpretation of Euripides in his early poetry and prose, before examining more closely the citation of Euripides in two of the prose works which bear heavily on the question of how politically and religiously radical Milton was: The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and De Doctrina Christiana. The turn to Euripidean authority over the biblical reveals Milton’s willingness to subject Scripture to the test of pagan wisdom, if he judges that wisdom to have superior claims to rationality. This willingness derives from the development of his ethical thought in the 1630s and early 1640s, and from his understanding of classical, patristic and contemporary authorities, including John Selden.     

以艺术为媒介：贵州山地交往文化视域中的侗戏

侗戏是本民族说唱传统与汉戏融合的艺术结晶;其发展历程也体现出汉侗文化的互动与交融;侗戏表演对于侗族社会具有重要的功能,主要表现在：促进族际交往、深化代际交往和强化寨际交往等方面。在全球化语境中,侗戏应该积极展开与外界的沟通与对话,凸显民族艺术的重要价值。     

Human Rights,Modernity, and Milton’s Areopagitica

Some of the founding documents of our modern human rights culture assert that, by virtue of natural law, the will of God, the will of a Supreme Being, or some kind of natural world order, all humans have a right to civil liberties. In Areopagitica (1644), Milton rejects this way of grounding the claim to civil liberties. Instead, he argues for civil liberties on pragmatic grounds, but also on the premise that members of political societies are entitled to civil liberties from their governors only insofar as those members are rational and virtuous. His argument for civil liberties is also grounded in the view that the proper function of government includes propagating virtue in those it governs, assessing their rationality and moral virtue, and extending civil liberties to them in accordance with this assessment. Arguing in this way, Milton opposes the notion that, simply by virtue of being human, all members of political societies have a specific set of rights which their governments, and indeed all other people on earth, are bound to respect. He thus has more in common with Isocrates and Renaissance humanists than he does with the defenders of our modern human rights culture.     

“Neptune to the Common-wealth of England” (1652): the “Republican Britannia” and the continuity of interests

ABSTRACT

In the seventeenth century, John Kerrigan reminds us, “models of empire did not always turn on monarchy”. In this essay, I trace a vision of “Neptune’s empire” shared by royalists and republicans, binding English national interest to British overseas expansion. I take as my text a poem entitled “Neptune to the Common-wealth of England”, prefixed to Marchamont Nedham’s 1652 English translation of Mare Clausum (1635), John Selden’s response to Mare Liberum (1609) by Hugo Grotius. This minor work is read alongside some equally obscure and more familiar texts in order to point up the ways in which it speaks to persistent cultural and political interests. I trace the afterlife of this verse, its critical reception and its unique status as a fragment that exemplifies the crossover between colonial republic and imperial monarchy at a crucial moment in British history, a moment that, with Brexit, remains resonant.     

从《西厢记·长亭送别》看元杂剧的艺术特色

本文通过对元杂剧《西厢记.长亭送别》的解读,让读者了解和掌握不同于西方戏剧的我国古典戏剧———元杂剧那集曲词、宾白、舞蹈、音乐、美术等多种艺术形式为一体的独特的民族艺术。     

Circean transformation and the poetics of Milton’s Masque

ABSTRACT

Circe’s presence in A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus) invites readers to read both Milton’s Circe and Milton’s own poetic activity through long and intertwined traditions of theology and literary commentary. Stretching from Augustine and Aquinas to the commentaries and translations of Homer and Ovid by Sponde, Sandys, and Chapman, these traditions use Circe to explore and conflate the possibility, the permanence, and the experience of both human and literary transformation. Taken up by Townshend and Jones in their Caroline court masque Tempe Restored, they become essential intertexts for Milton’s Masque. Milton embeds this discourse in his masque – a genre that places metamorphosis at the heart of its poetics – to examine the nature of Renaissance intertextuality and the authorial self and interrogate his own use of Renaissance practices of imitatio and aemulatio. In Comus’ wood, Circean transformation becomes a touchstone for the virtuous soul and the virtuous poet alike.     

Imagining Otherwise: Autism,Neuroaesthetics and Contemporary Performance

Abstract

Perspectives on the phenomenology of the autistic experience are presented with particular reference to the imagination in autism and what may be conceptualized as ‘neurodivergent aesthetics’. Drawing upon a research project that explored the potential of drama as an ‘intervention’ in autism, an attempt is made to de-mythologize the condition by challenging stereotypes and by suggesting that the multimodalities of performance offer an appropriate space for ‘encounters’ with autistic states of being while also questioning the dualisms which distinguish between the aesthetic and non-aesthetic.     

“课本剧表演”走进聋生的语文教学课堂

课本剧可以激发聋生学好语文的兴趣,能培养学生的活动能力、组织能力、创造能力、增强聋生的口语表达能力以及加深对课本、对生活的理解,增加与教材、社会的互动,使聋生能做到学以致用。进而提高学生的综合素质。     

Roman Comedy in Humanities Courses

The article reviews the situation of the critical edition of the “entremeses” and other comic short plays of Calderon, highlighting numerous textual and interpretative problems in the current editions, and proposing solutions for establishing the correct text of many passages. It also provides a number of explanations that clarify other references.     

Paul’s Euripides,Greek tragedy and Hebrew antiquity in Paradise Regain’d

ABSTRACT

The exchange between Satan and Jesus in Book IV of Paradise Regained is the first substantial account of tragedy in John Milton’s 1671 volume. In his response to Satan’s Athenian temptation, Jesus offers an alternative to the more familiar defence of tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes. Here, Jesus invokes the Hebrew prehistory of Attic tragedy, expanding Milton’s tragic archive beyond the antique Athenians themselves, drawing instead upon Clement of Alexandria and Socrates of Constantinople – both of whom support Milton’s idiosyncratic belief that Paul quoted Euripides at I Corinthians 15:33. And where Clement and Socrates support this tragic provenance, they also address the vexed relationship between Christian faith and heathen learning. Far from showing contempt for Athenian art or erudition, Milton invokes these Patristic sources to enable readers to locate Jesus’ critical response in a dynamic relationship to the relevant preface to Samson Agonistes.     

“Draw thy rapier,for we’ll have a bout”: duelling on the early modern stage

In Early Modern England, duelling was a serious business. Or so it would seem. Not so, I would suggest, for early modern playwrights, for whom the conventions of duelling and the newly established honour culture that underpinned it provided material for all kinds of comedy, from slapstick silliness to piercing satire and bitterly ironic scorn. Through close-readings in dramatic texts of the period, I suggest that dramatists laugh at and encourage their audiences to laugh at duelling and duellists throughout the period 1599–1630, and that they use duels which are inappropriately staged as a way of interrogating duelling practices and theories, and the values which lie behind them.     

‘The vehicle he has chosen’: Pointing out the theatricality of Caleb Williams

This article challenges the critical view that Godwin's association with the theatre is limited to the ill-fated Antonio (1800), and argues that the theatrical world was extremely important to Godwin the writer and political reformer. It considers Caleb Williams (1794) in this theatrical context and suggests a reading of it as a ‘theatrical novel’ in the light of St. Dunstan (1790), Godwin's historical tragedy. It argues that the novel is structured in such a manner that it reflects contemporary dramatic technique, especially in its incorporation of the practice peculiar to the Georgian stage known as ‘pointing’. I will suggest that this deliberate attempt to ‘narrativize’ this performative technique in fictional prose has profound implications in terms of explaining how Godwin saw his novel interact with its reader and is consistent with the philosophy of Political Justice.