Milton's Telescope Trope: Vision and Spiritual Wisdom

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1937, is about a African american girl named Janie Crawford who grew up in a white household. Through her transition to womanhood she wanted to experience true love, which set her on a quest to do so. Her grandmother arranged a marriage for her, which Janie wasn't so happy about. The story follows her growing as a person and her many experiences with her marriages. Each impacting her emotionally and making her the woman she becomes at the end of the book. Towards the ending of her book, after being harmed emotionally, and sometimes physically by her past husbands she meets a man named Tea Cake, much younger than her. She fell in love with him and

Desire, like blindness, has taken over. The poet also uses hateful diction by using the words “snare” (1), “scum” (2), and “evils” (3) to describe desire. This helps develop the sense of regret the speaker feels from getting involved with desire, because had he known how it would make him feel, he would have never fallen for its trap. The effects of desire are mentioned by creating an image of a mess through the phrase “web of will” (4). The image of a never ending spider web shows that it is not clear how its affects have begun, or when it will end.

“L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso”, both by Milton, are companion poems. The first describes the happy, joyful man and the second depicts a melancholy, studious, observant man. Both poems adopt similar imagery, meter, and rhyme scheme. The similarities within each poem make analyzing their differences a challenge. An aspect of both poems that is both comparable and succinctly different is the allusion to Orpheus and his wife Eurydice.

   The diverse imagery found in Shakespeare’s drama Othello represents a world all by itself. And this world of imagery contributes to the prevailing sentiment of pain and suffering and unpleasantness.

John Hollander in his introduction to The Gazer’s Spirit defines ekphrastic poems as “those which involve descriptions or other sorts of visual representations of works of art” (Hollander, 4). James Heffernan in his essay “Ekphrasis and Representation,” which presents a more detailed study of the definition of ekphrasis, has a similar but more concise definition of ekphrasis as “the verbal representation of graphic representation” (Heffernan, 299). Heffernan goes on to say that ekphrasis “releases the narrative impulse that graphic art typically checks” (Heffernan, 304). By analysing poems written on Peter Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus, this paper studies several different aspects of ekphrastic poetry. Firstly, it studies the manner in which ekphrasis not only describes a piece of art, but does so by translating the techniques used in the graphic medium to the poetic medium. Secondly, it examines the use of the piece of art as a device for the poet to create his own suggestions, interpretations and moral judgments that may differ from the artist’s style and instead fit into the style of the poet’s other works. Lastly, the paper examines the manner in which these interpretations often lead to other ekphrastic conversations that do not respond to the painting, as much as they respond to the poem about the painting, leading to several gazes: the gaze of the original painter, the gaze of the poet, the gaze of other poets on the gaze of the poet, and the gaze of the reader.

The second quatrain reveals the speaker’s destination and further explores the hardship he meets on his metaphorical journey. The speaker continues the traveling imagery by saying his thoughts “Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee” (6), with “thee” referring to his lover to whom he addresses the poem. The description of the pilgrimage as “zealous” further strengthens the parallels between literal travel and his thinking, illustrating the speaker’s passionate feelings about his lover, and his determination to make the taxing “journey” indicates his complete devotion to his partner. The use of the word “pilgrimage” also intensifies this sense of devotion; because people often go on pilgrimages for religious place, the speaker describes his commitment to his lover as strong as one to religion. The speaker then introduces the image of darkness by saying,

Burke’s examination of all seven qualities of the sublime relates to sight: terror, power, vastness, infinity, succession and uniformity relates to what can be seen, while obscurity relates to what cannot be seen. In addition to the content of his writing, Burke’s use of language and diction, for example, with words and phrases like “[l]ook” (Burke 5) and “[w]ithout all doubt” (3) (which implies clarity) also reinforces the element of ‘sight’ in his text. For Burke, the power of the sublime object or landscape lies in its ability to overwhelm the viewer’s mental faculties and impose upon them feelings of the sublime. Here, the viewer is positioned as a subject upon which the sublime landscape impresses its image and sublimity, rather than one that is actively participating in the creation of this sublime experience. This passivity is highlighted by Burke who states that the sublime requires some form of mediation of “distance” (4) and remoteness. Following the explication of the observer’s passive role in the sublime experience, this essay will move on to affirm the subordinate

“Paradise Lost”. Milton’s epic tale of Paradise Lost has become biblical folklore and even Christians who have not fully read the Bible rely upon the representations and indulgences that Milton presented through his embellishments of fact. Milton’s paradise lost is considered by critics to be one of the greatest literary cannons of all time and is undoubtedly a source of debate with no foregone conclusion other than who’s side is Milton really on, God’s or Satan’s.

Professor Oscar James Campbell said that through imagery Shakespeare “made his figurative language intensely an auditor’s response to particular situations and also used it to create and individualize his characters.” Bradley showed that the imagery helped to intensify certain themes (for example, the animal imagery in ‘Hamlet’ and the fire imagery in Coriolanus’) in the plays. Spurgeon demonstrated that the “Cluster” of imagery and certain “recruitment images” revealed Shakespeare’s “personality, temperament and thought,” together with the “themes and characters of the plays”. Clemen showed that through imagery, Shakespeare reveals characteristic features of his characters and the atmosphere of the play. Such study of imagery is purposeful and pertinent. But claims such as the purpose of imagery in Shakespeare is to probe the “transcendental realities, or, the imagery is inalienably related to a “developing pattern”, or, Shakespeare’s play is a poem where characters are non-existent, sound rather preposterous and make us legitimately think that the critic is “using the façade of the Cavendish to hide a convective of impressionist anarchists”. F.E. Halliday

When having prior knowledge of The Aeneid while reading Paradise Lost, it is almost difficult to disregard the parallels which Milton draws, according to Hannah Smith. (“Milton's Paradise Lost and Virgil's Aeneid”) Some of the most obvious

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” the power of nature is underestimated. Aspects of the natural world are depicted in an extreme, otherworldly and almost unfathomable form, and serve as indicators for a journey into a world that is within nature, but simultaneously borders on the supernatural. Common elements of the natural world are intensified and serve as symbolic, rather than everyday elements. Their exaggerated forms signify a break from a more familiar, assumed understanding of nature, which man thought he could predict and control, to a more powerful force. The protagonist in “A Descent into the Maelstrom” attempts to use reasoning and science to prepare to map out nature’s workings, which proves to be unreliable as he encounters natural forces that surround supernatural events. The end result is that a reliance on the principles of science and reason are exchanged for a renewed understanding of the powerful role of nature and its relation with the cosmic. Through the sailor’s changed perspective after encountering the maelstrom, the reader is able to see the relationship between the nature of the cosmos and man’s place in it. It is through the comparative theme of the cosmic versus the small that Poe challenges the favored prevalence of scientific thinking that stemmed from the Enlightenment.

Throughout the poem of Paradise Lost, gender inequality is visible in the relationship between Eve and the male characters. Upon a closer look, one can see that, in a nuanced manner, the poem challenges much of the Eve’s discrimination. Common interpretations during the time period depicted Eve as a weak-minded, subservient, or evil woman. Instead of following a similar pattern, Milton goes so far as to defend Eve by forming a relatable and persuasive Satan and describing the positives of the Fall suggesting that it was necessary. Paradise Lost brings to light the common patriarchal ideas prevalent in the seventeenth century as well as the Creation Story’s sexist plot by developing admirable traits in the

These are some of the chosen lines of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s from his poetic work; I will start my claim to peruse my viewpoint by above mention reference because it is relevant about the subject matter, in addition, these are from the poem of “The Lady of Shalott.” Then the second thing is, it’s about mythical LANDSCAPE - among Tennyson's finest achievements that symbolize states of human consciousness; the dreamlike quality of his vision, combined with his ability to see at close range with preternatural clarity and detail, rendered his dreams more vivid than our realities. Ultimately it will get me to explore the THEMES of REALITY and FANTASY from his poetic diction.

Firstly, “Paradise Lost” is a long epic poem by John Milton begins with the proposition of justification of God’s way to man with nice invocation to the Muses. And another epic poem titled “The Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spenser follows the same manner. The subject matters in both of the epic poems are grand. Like the epic poems, the poem “The Rape of the Lock” opens with the proposition of the subject matter and Pope’s invocation to the Muses to help him compose the literary art. Such a grand treatment of a trivial subject matter like the clipping of the lock of Belinda provokes laughter when the poet says:

The most striking and famous one is the comparison of man who travels and his beloved who stays at home to a pair of compasses in ‘A Valediction Of Forbidding Mourning’. Here soul of the beloved is like the fixed foot of compasses as by her inborn nature she stays at home whereas the soul of the lover is like the other foot of compasses which moves beyond the center to complete a circle of journey.