Harasz lecture on Milton, Blake, and God.

1. WHO WAS JOHN MILTON
1608-1674
?

2. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)
and The New Reform Army

3. Aeropagitica 1644

4. Paradise Lost 1667

5. Blank Verse and Religious
Traditions
 The Verse
 “The Measure is English Heroic Verse without
Rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of
Virgil in Latin; the Rhyme being no necessary
Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good
Verse, in longer works especially, but the
invention of a barbarous age…”

6. Poetry and Theodicy
 Instruct me for thou know’st; Thou
from the first/ Wast present, and with
mighty wings outspread/ Dove-like
sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss/ And
mad’st it pregnant: What in me is
dark/ Illumine, what is low raise and
support;/ That to the heighth of this
great Argument/ I may assert Eternal
Providence/ and justify the ways of
God to men.

7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iZhLDo09D68
Milton’s God

8. God’s “Umpire Conscience”
“Thus while God spake,
ambrosial fragrance
fill’d / All Heaven”
Some I have chose of
peculiar Grace/ Elect
above the rest; So is my
will: / The rest shall Hear
me call…/ To pray,
repent, And bring
obedience due… / And I
will place within them
as a guide/ My Umpire
Conscience…
To expiate his Treason…
The rigid satisfaction,
death for death.

9. The Romantic Obsession with
Paradise Lost

10. William Blake: Engraver,
Poet, Painter, Visionary
 1757-1827

11. Blake’s Illustrations of
Milton’s Paradise Lost

12. Emanuel Swedenborg and Blake
1688-1772

13. The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell

14. The Text-Image & Laocoön

15. Blake’s God & Popular
http://Johnny Depp- William Blake
Culture

16. Blake and Allen Ginsberg
http://Blake and Ginsberg
http://Howl
http://Nurse's Song