Epic Poetry and Psychological Complexity (was NPPF Canto 1: 1-4 some random notes)

[Tim Strzechowski]

> Reason requires weighing and examining alternatives.

Yes it does, and Eve fails to do this when you forgets everything she's been
told by God, Adam, and Raphael and allows herself to side wholly with what
the Serpent tells her.  She engages in intellectual discourse with the
Serpent, but loses sight of what she's been told up to that point.  Hence, a
momentary lapse of reason.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002C1W/qid%3D1059167102/sr%3D11-1
/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-2922103-1428818

> Reason doesn't require
> one to be correct, just to examine.

To a degree, it requires both.

> Accepting what one is told without
> questioning is called "faith" and is often likened to being blind.

And speaking of Lolita . . .
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000056JYB/qid=1059167194/sr=2-1/ref=
sr_2_1/002-2922103-1428818

>
> Well I'm not arguing dogma, just the facts presented in a story, but the
story
> I've focused on is not Milton's version, but my own understanding of the
> Biblical account.  So we may well be speaking across each other.

I was just speaking for myself, actually.

Yes, part of the problem here is that you are focused on the Old Testament
account, and I'm focused on the Milton account.  Significant differences,
especially when discussing something like reader/poem dynamics.  In the OT,
God's justice is determined by blind obedience (faith), whereas Milton
provides subplot and additions of his own invention to establish God's due
process and Justice.

I prefer to argue Milton in this thread, because we can better avoid
theological dogma and stick to secular literary analysis.

>
> Like I said, I'm not really arguing Milton, but I guess I agree with his
Satan.
>  Milton's God doesn't take responsibility for the beings and world that he
> created.

Sure He does.  Milton's God provides for prelapsarian man, even when He sees
Satan flying toward the world (Book 3), even when he grants mankind grace,
and even when he sends Michael to the garden after the fall (Books 11 and
12). Milton's God is fair and consistent.  Tough love.  Hard to swallow, but
true.

> And he could easily have fixed the mess after it happened (I know,
> that's supposedly Jesus' job, but it come a little late).

He *does* fix it, David.  He sends the Son. He provides all mankind with
reason, free will, grace, etc.

Would you put a
> child into a kitchen with an electric stovetop on at full throttle and
tell the
> child, "Don't touch that?"  If the child touched it you would bear some
> responsibility.
>

The child in your example, I think it's fair to assume, is too young to
fully exercise reason.

Adam and Eve were fully capable of exercising that reason, and didn't.

I understand your example and what you are striving to prove, but it's not
the same as the Milton account.  Your example doesn't really work, I'm
afraid.

Respectfully,

Tim