[Milton-L] Re: Milton-L Digest, Vol 22, Issue 19
Herbert Berkowitz
herberq at gci.net
Mon Sep 22 14:51:53 EDT 2008
On Sep 22, 2008, at 10:50 AM, milton-l-request at lists.richmond.edu wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. RE: "Making Milton Matter" (Peter C. Herman)
> 2. Re: Making Milton Matter To . . . (Diane McColley)
> 3. RE: Making Milton Matter To . . . (Schwartz, Louis)
> 4. RE: Making Milton Matter To . . . (Campbell, W. Gardner)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:17:37 -0700
> From: "Peter C. Herman" <herman2 at mail.sdsu.edu>
> Subject: RE: [Milton-L] "Making Milton Matter"
> To: John Milton Discussion List <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080922101523.0360ccd0 at mail.sdsu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> I agree with everything Prof. Bauman says except the opening
> statement, "we can't make Milton matter . . . ." We make Milton
> matter precisely by helping our students understand the "stupendous
> things" Prof. Bauman peerlessly outlines. We make Milton matter, in
> other words, by doing our jobs well.
>
> Peter C. Herman
>
>
>> ---- Original message ----
>>> Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 10:15:53 -0400
>>> From: Michael Bauman <mbauman at hillsdale.edu>
>>> Subject: RE: [Milton-L] "Making Milton Matter"
>>> To: John Milton Discussion List <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
>>>
>>> Friends,
>>> So far as I can see, we can't make Milton matter, or make Milton
>> relevant, anymore than we can make the sun rise in the morning or
>> set again at night. He already does matter, and he already is
>> relevant, though some folks don't yet know it. Milton matters and
>> is relevant because his life and works inform and enlighten us
>> about what it's like to be a human being in a fallen world, a
>> condition to which we all are subject. He knows the burdens of
>> blindness, of grief, of guilt, of fractured homes, of oppressive
>> authority, and of determined opposition. Life has few agonies or
>> triumphs that he has not met. He knows the joys of friendship, of
>> love, of faithfulness, and of achievement. He knows full well, and
>> he communicates both memorably and effectively about, the enduring
>> virtues of courage, endurance, purposefulness, and faith, as well
>> the the fundamental importance of a relentless pursuit of truth
>> against all odds. He knows both the beauty and the burdens of high
>> obligat!
>> i!
>>> on. If I cannot communicate the power and the relevance of those
>> stupendous things, I am in the wrong profession.
>>>
>>> Michael
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu
>> [milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Carrol Cox [cbcox at ilstu.edu
>> ]
>>> Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2008 7:47 AM
>>> To: John Milton Discussion List
>>> Subject: [Milton-L] "Making Milton Matter"???? was Smokey
>>> Mountain...
>>>
>>> Salwa Khoddam wrote:
>>>>
>>>> [CLIPI] I teach Milton and I find it
>>>> difficult to persuade my students that Milton matters, despite my
>>>> evident
>>>> passion for this great writer. A few suggestions would help me a
>> great deal.
>>>
>>> I don't understand this concern to "make" Milton matter -- in fact
>>> it
>>> seems hardly coherent to me.
>>>
>>> In the first place, this is merely a special case of "Making
>>> Literature
>>> Matter," and as Northrop Frye remarked a half-century ago,
>>> defenses of
>>> poetry are seldom persuasive to anyone who isn't already inside the
>>> ramparts. Those persuaded don't need to be because they already
>>> are, and
>>> those who need to be persuaded will not be because the premises
>>> won't be
>>> intelligible to them.
>>>
>>> A certain proportion of the population will like to read.
>>>
>>> A certain proportion of that sub-population will discover that
>>> they like
>>> to read Milton.
>>>
>>> He will matter to them, in the f uture as in the past. What point is
>>> there in trying to MAKE him matter?
>>>
>>> Carrol
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
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>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:18:04 -0700
> From: Diane McColley <dmccolley at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Making Milton Matter To . . .
> To: John Milton Discussion List <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
> Message-ID: <c35af8cdb8cae1e7e3d8f9117d795f07 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> I love this statement. Also I have found Milton engaging students by
> promoting discussions of his poems, if the class is small enough, not
> by posing questions but by passing around 3 x 5 cards on which each
> student asks a question about a particular line or verse-paragraph,
> giving line numbers; then sorting the cards by line numbers and
> reading
> them aloud. The variety of responses students come up with to each
> other's questions or observations lead to engagement and convince
> students of the richness of the text.
>
> On Sep 22, 2008, at 10:12 AM, Gregory Machacek wrote:
>
>> All of the other disciplines are -ologies; they talk about things.
>> We
>> philologists (and the philosophers) love something. What we have
>> loved,
>> others will love, and we will teach them how. And we will teach them
>> how
>> precisely *by* loving.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:38:54 -0400
> From: "Schwartz, Louis" <lschwart at richmond.edu>
> Subject: RE: [Milton-L] Making Milton Matter To . . .
> To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
> Message-ID:
> <73DFFE8D0060554ABED9B8FA0388902D019C6E54 at leda.richmond.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> Thank you, Gregory. That's beautiful and true.
>
> Here is your brain: ...
>
> And here is your brain on Milton: insert favorite passage AND READ
> CAREFULLY AND IMAGINATIVELY (like this....).
>
> This morning in my seminar it was Comus being ravished from pleasing
> slumber and sweet madness to sober certainty and waking bliss (and not
> quite getting all the way there).
>
> Last week it was "Wanton heed and giddy cunning"
>
> And that's just the first couple of weeks.
>
> Later on, we'll be wrestling, as Gardner put it, and the stakes will
> be
> getting higher. A temple will be built, but not finished, another
> will
> fall, the earth will moan, chaos petrify, breasts will meet through a
> veil of hair. Hateful things will be said, and tears wept--and wiped.
> And wept again. Already I'm no longer always the first one to grab
> hold
> and grapple. In fact, I've been thrown to the mat a couple times.
> Who's that standing on the pinnacle? Who's that falling?
>
> When I'm worked up about these things, the last thing I'm thinking
> about
> is anyone for whom it might not matter. That peculiar intensity, that
> sense of mastery and being mastered, of being embraced and expelled,
> of
> embracing and expelling, teaching and being taught, is the only
> argument
> I've got.
>
> Is there a better one?
>
> L.
>
> ===========================
> Louis Schwartz
> Associate Professor of English
> University of Richmond
> Richmond, VA 23173
> (804) 289-8315
> lschwart at richmond.edu
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu
> [mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Gregory
> Machacek
> Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 1:13 PM
> To: John Milton Discussion List
> Subject: [Milton-L] Making Milton Matter To . . .
>
> It seems to me that the phrasing in the original posting has
> occasioned
> some of the disagreement here. It suggests an either/or binary.
> Either
> Milton matters or he doesn't. So Michael Bauman's argues that Milton
> "already does matter," whereas many others speak of how Milton doesn't
> initially seem to matter to students, and they take it as their job to
> "make" him matter to them.
>
> Bauman is right. Milton already does matter . . . to some people.
> But
> the
> other posters are right as well. Milton doesn't initially matter to
> many
> of our students. Can he be *made* to matter? Probably not, if we
> imagine
> that making as involving explicit persuasion. I find that the more
> strenuously you work to convince students that something matters, the
> more
> their defenses go up, and the *less* inclined they are to believe you.
> They'll pretend to value it, for a semester, because you are grading
> them,
> but once the semester is over, they'll think of its value as suspect,
> precisely because you felt you had to make a case for it.
>
> I've started to think of my pedagogy as boiling down to "valuing
> Milton
> in
> front of students." I don't try to convince them to value Milton. I
> don't
> even explain why I myself value Milton. I don't even so much any
> more,
> as
> James Rovira, does, try to relate Milton to something they do already
> value. I just sit in front of them and do it, value Milton. I
> enthuse
> over passages. I get carried away developing interpretations. I show
> students myself loving Milton.
>
> One of Girard's insights is that we value something in large measure
> because we see someone else valuing it. Insofar as I try to make
> Milton
> matter, I do so by dramatizing for students what it looks like to have
> Milton matter to one.
>
> All of the other disciplines are -ologies; they talk about things. We
> philologists (and the philosophers) love something. What we have
> loved,
> others will love, and we will teach them how. And we will teach them
> how
> precisely *by* loving.
>
> If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever
> loved.
>
>
> Greg Machacek
> Professor of English
> Marist College
>
> _______________________________________________
> Milton-L mailing list
> Milton-L at lists.richmond.edu
> Manage your list membership and access list archives at
> http://lists.richmond.edu/mailman/listinfo/milton-l
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:48:22 -0500
> From: "Campbell, W. Gardner" <Gardner_Campbell at baylor.edu>
> Subject: RE: [Milton-L] Making Milton Matter To . . .
> To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
> Message-ID:
> <6963214EDC4B2144853A8391F493D648075D176C at FS-EXCHANGE2.baylor.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> This is very beautifully put and I am grateful for it.
>
> Yet my students still ask, implicitly or explicitly, whether Milton
> is a great poet because I love his work, or whether I love his work
> because he is a great poet. It seems to me that this question of the
> nature of (literary) value lies within the initial question. Whether
> they say it aloud or not, many students think that Milton matters
> mostly (or only) because generations of academics have said so. They
> also, and rightly, experience many things in their own lives that do
> matter to them to which academia pays no attention (outside of trend
> studies, or perhaps contempt). So the question of mattering becomes
> a very interesting and uneasy contact zone between personal
> conviction and a larger philosophical case.
>
> If students believe we are loving that which is truly good, and that
> they too may grow to love it (or, as often happens, be smitten right
> away if they are ready), then the mattering is meaningful.
>
> Gardner
>
> Dr. Gardner Campbell
> Director, Academy for Teaching and Learning
> Assoc. Prof. of Literature and Media, Honors College
> Baylor University
> One Bear Place, Box 97189
> Waco, TX 76798
> 254.710.3412
> www.gardnercampbell.net
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu on behalf of Gregory
> Machacek
> Sent: Mon 9/22/2008 12:12 PM
> To: John Milton Discussion List
> Subject: [Milton-L] Making Milton Matter To . . .
>
>
>
> It seems to me that the phrasing in the original posting has
> occasioned
> some of the disagreement here. It suggests an either/or binary.
> Either
> Milton matters or he doesn't. So Michael Bauman's argues that Milton
> "already does matter," whereas many others speak of how Milton doesn't
> initially seem to matter to students, and they take it as their job to
> "make" him matter to them.
>
> Bauman is right. Milton already does matter . . . to some people.
> But the
> other posters are right as well. Milton doesn't initially matter to
> many
> of our students. Can he be *made* to matter? Probably not, if we
> imagine
> that making as involving explicit persuasion. I find that the more
> strenuously you work to convince students that something matters,
> the more
> their defenses go up, and the *less* inclined they are to believe you.
> They'll pretend to value it, for a semester, because you are grading
> them,
> but once the semester is over, they'll think of its value as suspect,
> precisely because you felt you had to make a case for it.
>
> I've started to think of my pedagogy as boiling down to "valuing
> Milton in
> front of students." I don't try to convince them to value Milton.
> I don't
> even explain why I myself value Milton. I don't even so much any
> more, as
> James Rovira, does, try to relate Milton to something they do already
> value. I just sit in front of them and do it, value Milton. I
> enthuse
> over passages. I get carried away developing interpretations. I show
> students myself loving Milton.
>
> One of Girard's insights is that we value something in large measure
> because we see someone else valuing it. Insofar as I try to make
> Milton
> matter, I do so by dramatizing for students what it looks like to have
> Milton matter to one.
>
> All of the other disciplines are -ologies; they talk about things. We
> philologists (and the philosophers) love something. What we have
> loved,
> others will love, and we will teach them how. And we will teach
> them how
> precisely *by* loving.
>
> If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever
> loved.
>
>
> Greg Machacek
> Professor of English
> Marist College
>
> _______________________________________________
> Milton-L mailing list
> Milton-L at lists.richmond.edu
> Manage your list membership and access list archives at http://lists.richmond.edu/mailman/listinfo/milton-l
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