So from now on out I'm focused on #DevilDiss all the time. As I work through research and situate chapters and argument I plan on posting blog notes about the product and process I work through. These will generally be rough pieces of writing but this will allow me to have my thoughts in one place, and keep notes and links together in addition to Zotero and my hand-written notes, color-coded flashcards, and annotated books and articles.
I'm hoping this tracking will help me not only track the minutiae but also keep my eye on the big picture.
Today I started digging into my Milton chapter.
- Anglo-Saxonists were more Gregorian than Augustinian (countering Lockett). Emphasis on materiality which we see in the I-not I of the folkloric devil.
- This dovetails with Milton's material theory (Dobranski 2012:89).
- Milton's "anti-masque" A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle with Comus =/= clown but is actual threat, as continuation of me reading devil figures through Bakhtinian lens (Dobranski 2012: 58)
- There's also a connection here to Faeie Queen. Allegory, Milton's original intent of Arthurian epic (but need to figure out a way to sidestep authorial intent here).
- As part of argument about "folk" in Milton's writing want to find map of publishing houses and research about readership and material production. Am thinking re: overlaying a map. Twitter reference pointed me towards this which I'll have to explore: http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.htm
- Was originally thinking I would just gesture back to Comus and ahead to Paradise Regained as way to dovetail and frame Paradise Lost within Milton's other works but now see that I have to situate amongst his prose works, although I think internal citations and footnotes will do a lot of this heavy lifting for me. Also this means CH 4 will focus on 16th and 17th prose tracts/pamphlets and exclude Milton since they'll be referenced here.
- In particular: Tenure of Kings (1649, although some say 1650), Pro populo Anglicano defensio (1651), The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)
- Think I want to start chapter with this "Milton was a man who wanted nothing but the best for his nation."
- focus on the fact that we don't need to make assumptions about what Milton thought (authorial intent) because he told us in his prose tracts. Examine The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth
- Also from Gabriel Roberts on darkness visible, "his political views cannot be easily separate either from his religious beliefs or from his poetry."
- divine rule over monarchy
- situate PL "which rest upon the kind of context we have in mind" YES THIS!
- Satan as "political voice" I would add OF THE PEOPLE
- fallen angels = Cromwell supports = folk?
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