[Milton-L] Symposium on Milton's Samson

[James Rovira]

Harold --

Fish has been intentionalist all along -- or at least most of the time
-- in my reading of him.  Milton intended us to get sucked in my Satan
in the early chapters of PL so that we could change our opinion of him
later on.  Milton intends to create a certain type of reader in his
Areopagitica -- not to defend free speech, but to create a certain
kind of reader.  Quite a bit of intentionalist language even slips
into deconstructions of text.  Press these deconstructors and they'll
say they're just using shorthand, but my suspicion is that they're
either being undisciplined or don't know the meaning of their own
words -- just using catchphrases to sound current.

Anyway, look over Surprised by Sin again and tell me if you don't see
any intentionalist language.  I seem to recall some when I read it.
Don't have a copy now.

Jim R

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Harold Skulsky <hskulsky at smith.edu> wrote:
>
> The Fish of yore I knew and despised was a fellow traveler of Rorty at
> his nihilistic worst, given to shamelessly outré manipulations of
> whatever text was at his mercy — in short, the phenomenally popular
> operator of a three-card monte game whose time had come. The Fish on
> display in the current little talk is a cuddly elder statesman, a
> venerable teddybear of old-fashioned historical intentionalism (is
> Hirsch still with us?), gently rapping the knuckles of anachronists and
> other poachers in the margins of other men's books, and leaving behind a
> tinkle of mild but affectionate laughter. Perhaps the miraculous
> transformation is merely another (unremarkable) reminder that what goes
> around comes around. Still, I can't resist the suspicion that there is
> something afoot here — something important that eludes me.