The Raveling and Unraveling of British Tradition

Woden’s Day, January 22: The Lady of Cambridge

EQ: Why did John Milton believe that Good Christians needBad Books?

Welcome! Gather DANGEROUS MINDS,pen/pencil, paper, wits!

Opening Freewrite: Dangerous Minds II

Lecture/Presentation: John Milton, Right Reason, Good Christians, Bad Books

John Milton, Areopagitica
Students read excerpts individually or in groups

Closing Freewrite: Quoting Areopagitica

ELACC12RL-RI1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis

ELACC12RL-RI2: Analyze two or more themes or central ideas of text

ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop ELACC12RL6: Distinguish what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant

ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text

ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal British texts

ELACC12RL10: Read and comprehend complex literature independently and proficiently.

ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas

ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience

ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames

ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions

Opening Freewrite (50 words): Dangerous Minds II

Yesterday you wrote on this question:

“Are there ideas that should never be published?”

I asked you to answer “yes” or “no”:

WHY is a particular idea so horrible that we must forbid?

Or –

WHY must even horrible ideas be discussed?

Today, look at the answer you gave yesterday – and nowarguetheopposite point of view.

SUBMIT FREEWRITE; PICK UP PACKET

John Milton (1603 - 1674)

Raised a Puritan; memorizes Bible; reads EVERYTHING
1625: CambridgeUniversity
“The Lady of Cambridge”
Expelled for beating up a prof
Gets readmitted b/c awesome

1628 - 1640: Travels Europe, esp. Italy; meets dissidents, free thinkers, scientists (Galileo )
1640: Returns to England; writes pamphlets for Puritans
Doctrine … of Divorce
Areopagitica (free speech)
Tenure of Kings (there is no “Divine Right”; regicide OK)

John Milton (1603 - 1674)

1650: Blindness becomes total
1660: Sick of Puritans, Parliament invites Charles II to return as King; he orders Milton imprisoned, writings burned
1660-1666: Blind, disgraced, impoverished, in sickbed,Milton composes, revises, edits 12,000 lines of Paradise Lostin his head, and dictates it in its entirety to his daughters.
1667: Paradise Lost published to instant, universal praise
1674: Paradise Lost published in final form; Milton dies

John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)

Milton is a Puritan, a Radical Christian dedicated to bringing about God’s literal Kingdom on Earth (theocracy).

Like other Puritans, Milton believed that Christians areindividuallyresponsible for an intentional relationshipwith God through“Right Reason,” which God gave man as the means to find His Will in scripture, nature, the self.
Right Reason isn’t “natural” or passive like conscience;must be developed by hard mental work.
Unlike many Puritans, Milton believed in Free Will: we can know God’s Truth only if we seek it actively and choose it.
SO -- why didMilton believe that Good Christians NEED Evil Books? To find out – read Areopagitica.

John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)

By the start of the seventeenth century a confluence of cultural, technological and economic forces created a new form of media, the pamphlet. They could be producedand distributed much more cheaply and quickly than books or plays, andcould more easily shape public opinion in a city with thousands of literate folk eager to govern themselves. They operated, in other words, the same way that talk radio, cable TV and the internet do today.Parliament saw this as a threat to order, and the Puritan Christians who dominated Parliament were also worried that pamphlets with the “wrong” ideas would corrupt the minds and souls of the people. So in the summer of 1643 Parliament passed a law requiring all publications – pamphlets, books, whatever – to be licensed by Parliament before being distributed. This would have meant that only pamphlets approved by Parliament, and supporting the Civil War against the King, could be published.

John Milton was an enthusiastic Puritan who fully supported Parliament, but unlike most Puritans he believed that service to God required us to think freely. He believed that Reason had to be developed by hard work, and that the freedom to wrestle with hostile and even sinful ideas, and then to choose the Good, was absolutely necessary to salvation. He wrote Areopagitica as a protest to Parliament’s law, and made a passionate Christian argument against censorship which demanded that even “evil” ideas had to be available if “good” was to mean anything. The document laid the foundation for every discussion of free speech ever since.

Milton begins Areopagitica by praising Parliament for recognizing that books are important. In fact, he argues, books are even more precious than the people who write them:

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them….Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. ‘Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; but revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil.

As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice, with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness….

Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to removesin by removing the matter of sin …. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. Banish allobjects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste, that came nothither so ….Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how muchwe thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue: for the matter of themboth is the same; remove that, and ye remove them both alike.

CLOZE: The Lady of Cambridge

John Milton was born in the year ______and died in ______.
In his youth Milton memorized ______and read almost ______.
He got what nickname at University?
Perhaps for this reason, he did what that got him temporarily expelled?
He traveled widely, and in ______he met ______, a famous ______.
His most important pamphlets were about ______, ______and ______.
From what physical disability did Milton suffer?
In 1660, Milton was put into ______by ______because ______.
Poor, disgraced, and dying, Milton composed the ______lines of Paradise Lost not by writing them down but by composing them in his ______and doing what?
Milton believed that ______– the ability to discover God’s will – is not “natural,” but must be developed by ______.
Unlike many Puritans, Milton believed in ______, and that we can experience righteousness only if we ______good over evil – and therefore, ______must be available (and rejected) as a ______if virtue is to be meaningful.

Reading Guide: John Milton, Areopagitica

Questions 1-4 are answered in the italicized introduction;

6-14 are answered in the selections from Areopagitica itself.

What advantages did pamphlets have over books and plays?
Why did Parliament’s Puritans consider pamphlets a threat?
What law did Parliament pass in 1643 that caused Milton to write Areopagitica?
According to Milton, “He who destroys a good book kills ______itself, kills the ______of ______., as it were, in the ______”
Milton continues: “No age can restore a ______, whereof perhaps there is no great ______; but revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a ______.”

So, according to Milton, which is worse: killing a man or killing a book?
Miltonwrites that “Good and Evil …in the field of this world grow up together almost ______.”
According to Milton, “He that can ______and ______, with all her ______and seeming ______, and yet ______, and yet ______, and yet ______that which is truly better, he is the true ______.”
Milton say he “cannot praise a ______and ______.”
Milton writes, “Assuredly we bring not ______into the world, we bring ______much rather; that which ______us is ______, and ______is by what is ______.”
Milton writes that virtue which has never faced evil is “but a ______virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an ______whiteness.”
According to Milton, the “benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read” is that we may “______into the regions of ______and ______.”
Milton says that it is a mistake to suppose that we can “remove sin by removing” what?
He writes, “Banish all objects of ______, shut up all ______in the severest ______that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them ______that came not hither so.”

Closing Freewrite / Reading Journal

Write a brief piece in which you respond to a particular passage from Milton’s Areopagitica. This is, essentially, a Reading Journal – quoted passage and 100 words’ reflection – with this difference: FORMAT and INTEGRATE the passage correctly (don’t worry about citing). Due before class Monday (you can email it).