[Milton-L] RE: Dennis Danielson's quiet voice

[Watt, James]

Thank you, Dennis Danielson, for an elegant piece of humanist prose.  I believe
Milton's intellect sometimes is, as you suggest, rather cock-sure.  It's clear, too,
that he had a powerful sense of justice and struggled mightily with his God in
pursuit of precisely that ideal.  I love Milton as much for his clarity as for his
elegance, but mostly I have come to love him through William Blake's powerful
admiration for him as an artist and as a man.  I believe most of the quarrel with
the great puritan is with his courage and determination, qualities much disparaged
these days in favor of cynicism and elasticity.  Like Lord Byron said of Southey's
epics, Milton's critics will be read when Homer has been forgotten.

ciao and all blessings on you and your work

James Watt
Allegra Stewart Professor of English [Emeritus]

________________________________________
From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Dennis Danielson [danielso at interchange.ubc.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 11:00 PM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Justify God?

Dear Miltonists,

Sometimes "justify" means exculpate. Sometimes it just means "make sense
of." It's something most aware people try to do in some measure, I would
think. I first pondered theodicy in a serious intellectual way while
reading Albert Camus. But then a year later, when I was 22, my only
sister was killed in a traffic accident, and "making sense of things"
(God, the world, my own life) took on a new urgency. Milton helped me
work through some of that, for which I was and still am humbly grateful.
He didn't solve the problem in any comprehensive or thoroughgoing way.
But within the capacity of an amazing story that intersects with various
genres, theologies, cosmologies, and historical currents--and conveys
penetrating sights and tastes of evil and good, horror and beauty--I'd
still say he does an impressive job.

I haven't reread Milton's Good God in quite some time. I think it's
quite plausible, however, that the rather uppity thirty-year-old who
wrote it may have sounded more cock-sure that was warranted. Still,
that's sometimes how one gets a good argument going. I could name a
couple of other, much more recent books engaging Milton's theodicy whose
authors likewise sound more cock-sure that the strength of their cases
warrants.

But let that pass. If anyone wants anything more long-winded from me,
you're welcome to contact me off-line and I'll send you a Word-file of
MGG, Chapter 1, which offers a conceptual framework within which to
consider Milton's justification of the ways of God.

Shalom,
Dennis D

--
Dennis Danielson
Professor and Head
Department of English
University of British Columbia
#397 - 1873 East Mall
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z1
telephone: 604-822-3174
Author: The First Copernican
WEB: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/ddaniels/
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