Podcast Pedagogy Marissa Greenberg

In this episode of Promiscuous Listening, Marissa talks with Dr. Rachel Trubowitz (University of New Hampshire) about death and renewal in the final two books of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Particular attention is given to Eve's role in the epic's concluding lessons about Jesus's death and Christian salvation. For Milton, “Jesus son of Mary second Eve” (10.183) descends spiritually on the maternal line rather than genealogically through the paternal bloodline. In this way, as Dr. Trubowitz puts it, "Bloodline and primogeniture (male birthright) play no role in defining Jesus’s sovereignty" in Paradise Lost -- nor should they, according to Milton, in England's governance.

Resources for this episode: 

- John Milton, The Passion (1645, 1673) 

- John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671)

- Pope John Paul XXIII led the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, including its “repudiate[ion of] the ancient charge of collective Jewish guilt in the death of Jesus."

- Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” King James Bible via Bible Gateway.

- The description of the final books of Paradise Lost as an “undigested lump of futurity” comes from C.S. Lewis’s A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford University Press, 1947).

- Check out this contemporary engraving on the British Museum website of Charles II’s exhumation and posthumous execution of Oliver Cromwell’s body.

More about our guest, Dr. Rachel Trubowitz, Professor of English and former President of the Milton Society of America (website)

In addition to her many publications on gender and race in Milton and his contemporaries, Dr. Trubowitz’s current work focuses on mathematics in early modern English literature and culture. Here’s a sampling of her recent scholarship:

- “Reading Milton and Newton in the Radical Reformation: Poetry, Mathematics, and Religion.” ELH: English Literary History 84, no. 1 (2017): 33-62.

- “The Consolation of Natural Philosophy: Margaret Cavendish and the English Revolution Book.” The Oxford Handbook of Literature & the English Revolution, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 656-668.

- Nature and Nurture in Seventeenth-Century English Literature. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2012.

- “’’The People of Asia and with Them the Jews’: Israel, Asia, and England in Milton's Writing.” Milton and the Jews, edited by Douglas A. Brooks. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 151-177.

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Lara Dodds (Mississippi State University) about sex and gender in Paradise Lost. Our conversation focuses on Eve and book 10, but it also ranges to other figures, including Sin, and other books in Milton's epic. 

Here are some resources to support your listening:

References:

- Enjambment: “The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped.” (Poetry Foundation)

- Definitions and examples of the rhetorical figures synecdoche, epithet (see epitheton), and irony may be found on Silva Rhetoricae 

- Joseph Swetnam, The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women (1615). Read the full text – as well as link to Rachel Speght’s response, A Mouzell for Melastomas (1617) – here. 

- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818): Read more about the connection between these two texts on the British Library website.

Select bibliography:

- Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

- Thomas H. Luxon, Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage, and Friendship. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2005.

- Lara Dodds, “Women’s History, Gender History, and Milton Studies.” Milton Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2014): 172-178.

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Debapriya Sarkar (University of Connecticut) theories of knowledge, early modern science, and the fall as experimentation in book 9 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

References:


The Royal Society's office website.
Learn more about and read Thomas Shadwell’s The Virtuoso (1676), a dramatic satire of the Royal Society, at this online exhibition from King's College, London.
Learn more about Sir Francis Bacon from the good folks at the BBC.
Margaret Cavendish, including open-access editions of The Blazing World, in which Cavendish portrays the female scientist asking questions, is the subject of Digital Cavendish: A Scholarly Collaborative, an amazing new digital humanities project.

Select scholarship:


Joanna Picciotto, Labors of Innocence in Early Modern England (Harvard University Press, 2010).
Debapriya Sarkar, “’Sad Experiment’ in Paradise Lost: Epic Knowledge and Evental Poetics,” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 26, no. 4 (2014): 368-388. Winner of the 2015 Schachterle Essay Prize from the Society for Literature, Sciences, and the Arts.

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Mary Grace Elliott (Kennesaw State University) about knowledge in book 8 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:


Here’s a link to the passage in Isaiah that we discuss.
Check out the definitions of “concoction” that we discuss.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]

In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Angelica Duran (Purdue University) about creation in book 7 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

Terminology:


The four-fold way of biblical interpretation: literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogical
Hexameron: the six days of creation

Editions and Images:


Two open-access editions of the 1611 edition of the King James Version (KJV)/Authorized Version (AU): http://www.biblegateway.org and https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/
John Milton’s family Bible (at the British Library).
William Blake’s “The Ancient of Days” (1794) (at the British Museum).
Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, with foldout images (at the University of Reading).

Selection of Dr. Duran’s scholarship:


(Editor) The King James Bible: Across Borders and Centuries. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. 2014.
The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2007.
Milton Among the Spaniards. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2020.
“Not Either-Or but Rather Both-And: Using Both Material and Electronic Resources.” Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives, edited by Heidi Brayman Hackel and Ian Frederick Moulton. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2015. 162-170.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]

In this episode, Marissa talks with ancient military historian Dr. Paul Bardunias about warfare and martial bodies in book 6 of Paradise Lost.

Here are some resources to support your listening:

References:


Jacques de Gheyn's military drill manual Wapenhandelinghe van Roers Musquetten ende Speissen (1607) was translated and published in England as The Exercise of Arms. View its famous plates on the online collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Milton’s sonnets to Fairfax, Cromwell, and Vane may be read on The John Milton Reading Room website under the heading of Uncollected Sonnets – respectively, 15, 16, and 17.
Check out Dr. Bardunias modeling Abdiel's movements at Paradise Lost 6.186-198.

Select bibliography:


Paul M. Bardunias and Fred Eugene Ray, Jr. Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016.
David H. Lawrence. The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645.Leiden: Brill, 2009.

[Episode music courtesy of www.bensound.com]