Shows
Expanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 100: A Milestone. The Lovers’ and the Fairies’ Conflicts Resolved in Act 4. Duke Theseus’ Famous Speech on the Imagination. But Parallel with It, Bottom’s Speech about a “Bottomless DreamThe action of the play is over by the end of Act 4, culminating in two speeches. One is the renowned speech of Theseus on the imagination—of which he is completely skeptical. The other is Bottom’s soliloquy about having had a “bottomless dream,” which echoes I Corinthians 2:9. The sense of a mysterious power that has shaped the ends of all the characters, including the fairies, a power that works by recreating conflicting opposites into a two-in-one.
2023-02-2637 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 99: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Night-Rule”: The Overturning of Order. But behind the Chaos, a Pattern of Interchanging Opposites.The riotous farce in the middle of the play, courtesy of Puck and the “love juice.” Titania infatuated with Bottom, who has the head of an ass. The male lovers keep changing who they are in love with, resulting in complete confusion. Yet behind all this there is a strange order reflected in imagery of opposites that are yet identified with each other and interchanging.
2023-02-1939 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 98. A Midsummer Night’s Dream as One of the “Green World” Comedies. The Meaning of “Midsummer.” The Marital Discord of Oberon and Titania. Bottom Given the Head of an Ass.In the “green world” comedies of Shakespeare, the action moves from ordinary society out into a wood in which all sorts of transformations happen. The uncertain dating of the play’s action, though “midsummer” is the summer solstice (June 21). Women’s friendship, a theme that Shakespeare is exceptional in regarding as important. The theme of metamorphosis and influence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
2023-02-1237 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 97: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Acts 1 and 2 Continued. The Imagery of the Play: the Moon and Its Many Thematic Associations; the Celtic Imagery of the “Goddess Cultures”Male-female power struggles occur in all four of the play’s sub-plots, even in the comic relief of the “rude mechanicals,” who are preparing a dramatic version of the story of the star-crossed lovers Pyramis and Thisbe out of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The lunar imagery of conflicting opposites: love versus irrational social law; madness versus reason; feminine versus masculine; stable identity versus metamorphosis. The fairies: originally the Faery, out of Celtic mythology, itself emerging out of the feminine imagery of the “Goddess cultures.”
2023-02-0537 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 96: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1. A “Festive Comedy” from Shakespeare’s “Lyrical Period.” The Dating of Shakespeare’s Plays. Four Groups of Characters.A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a “festive comedy,” i.e. associated with seasonal festivals, from Shakespeare’s “lyrical period.” Three interlinked plays all dating from around 1595: Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The contrapuntal plotting of the comedies. Here, four interlinked sub-plots, three of which represent social class distinctions: the ruling class (Theseus and Hippolyta), the well-born elite (the lovers), the working class (the “rude mechanicals,” and the fairies.
2023-01-2937 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 95: An Introduction to Shakespeare. The Self-Effacing Artist. What We Know about Shakespeare, and What We Don’t. The Nature of Comedy.What we know for sure about Shakespeare, contrasted with the numerous speculations and conspiracy theories. The four genres of Shakespearean drama: comedies, tragedies, history plays, romances. The theory of comedy, and comedy’s poor reputation in the critical tradition.
2023-01-2237 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 94: Samson Agonistes, Acts 4 and 5. The Giant Harapha. Samson Pulls the Arena Down upon the Philistines.Comic relief: Samson has mysteriously recovered his high spirits and his martial vigor, and challenges the giant Harapha to single combat. The cowardly Harapha refuses. What has changed Samson? He has resisted temptation and cast off an inward passivity. As a result, obeying another inward “motion,” Samson agrees to go perform for the Philistines, and brings the arena down upon the Philistines, killing himself along with them in the process. Two versions of Christianity, both valid. In one, God is transcendent, in the other, immanent, an inward “motion,” an Inner Light. Milton inclines to the latter, and in doing so is th...
2023-01-1542 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 93: Act 3 of Milton’s Samson Agonistes: Divorce Story. The Bitter Conversation with Dalila.Dalila comes to visit Samson in an attempt at reconciliation. Samson furiously rejects her attempt, abetted by a misogynistic Chorus whose Ode should not be identified as Milton’s own opinion of women. Dalila’s betrayal cannot be justified, but is it possible to view her in part sympathetically, as a woman caught in a power game, trapped in a no-win situation?
2023-01-0837 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 92: Samson Agonistes, Act 2. Samson in Dialogue with His Father, Manoa, Takes Responsibility for Betraying a Secret to Two Wives, Thereby Failing Both His Country and His GodIn Act 1 Samson defends himself to the Chorus: in twice marrying Philistian women, he was following inward “motions” from God. But in Act 2, speaking to his father, Manoa, he takes full responsibility for allowing those women to manipulate and betray him. His mood by the end of the second act is hopeless and near suicidal, and the Chorus, so confident in the first act that God’s ways were justifiable, is severely shaken and finds God’s ways baffling and disturbing.
2023-01-0136 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 91: Christmas Special. Milton’s Nativity Ode, the Greatest of All Christmas Poems. The Paradox of Christianity: The Redemption Is “Now,” but “Not Yet.” The Nativity Is Potentially in Every Moment.Written at the age of 21 while on Christmas break from Cambridge, the Nativity Ode almost amounts to what Milton later called a “brief epic.” Its theme is “our great redemption from above,” the descent of a miraculous power down the vertical axis of being to our fallen world, redeeming in a moment of new Creation. But that moment of redemption is paradoxical—“now,” but “not yet.” And yet now—as there is a “paradise within,” there is a miraculous birth possible at every moment if we look with the inward eye of the spirit, which is to say the imagination.
2022-12-2537 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 90: Milton’s Samson Agonistes, Act 1. Samson’s Justified Marriages to Two Philistian Women. The Choral Ode Justifies God’s Ways—but Not by Reason.Samson justifies his marriages to two Philistian women as commanded by God. Samson’s God is always an internal “motion,” never a projected supernatural figure. Echoing Paradise Lost, the Chorus says that God’s ways are justifiable—but not by reason. The case for a Trickster God, when reason and realism lead only to hopelessness and despair.
2022-12-1836 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 89: Introduction to Milton’s Verse Tragedy Samson Agonistes.An emotionally intense drama of the mind, in which the blind and enslaved Samson confronts the failures of his life and questions the ways of God. Modeled on Classical tragedy, yet also with a hidden 5-act Shakespearean structure. Samson, originally a folktale Trickster rehabilitated into one of the Old Testament judges, is an unlikely-seeming choice for tragic hero. Samson’s opening soliloquy: the theme of despair. Despair at the self-caused ruin of Samson’s own life, including blindness. The play begins in literal and emotional darkness.
2022-12-1137 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 88: Paradise Regained. The Temptation of Athens. The 3rd Temptation: The Pinnacle of the Temple. Jesus Stands, and Thereby Regains Paradise.The third earthly kingdom, Athens, is the temptation of humanism and humanistic culture as a substitute for the spiritual vision of the Bible. The 3rd temptation, to stand on the pinnacle of the Temple, is the temptation to exercise one’s own will and draw upon one’s own power rather than trusting to the will of God. As with all the temptations in Paradise Regained, it is a temptation for all human beings, and the outcome is never assured. God intervenes and sustains Jesus here, but the second time Jesus is raised to a height, during the Crucifixion, it w...
2022-12-0440 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 87: The Temptations of the Earthly Kingdoms. Parthia (warlike power), Rome (civilization, justice), Athens (Classical learning and culture).The suspense of Paradise Regained lies in the fact that Jesus is fully human and vulnerable. The temptations are the temptations that every one of us faces in this world. The ultimate argument of Satan is that to survive in the world you must make a deal with the devil. You must compromise, and can only choose which temptation you will give in to—which will thereafter become your prison. The poem offers a hope that Satan is lying, that there is a way to win through. Jesus rejects, often with dry wit, the temptations of military power (Parthia), imp...
2022-11-2739 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 86: Paradise Regained. The Second Temptation: Temptations of Appetite (Sex, Food, Riches) and Ambition (Glory, Kingdom).Paradise Regained is a profound analysis of human nature, whether or not one is committed to its religious point of view. The enormously expanded second temptation comprises temptations of desire (2a) based on physical appetite rather than need: sex, food as sensuous luxury, riches. These are succeeded by the temptations of ambition (2b): glory and various forms of earthly kingdom, beginning with Parthia, the military kingdom, the kingdom of war, seen as necessary. The suggested need to “buy protection” from such a powerful empire.
2022-11-2037 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 85: The Three Temptations, of Body, Mind, and Spirit. The 2nd Temptation: From Physical Need to Desire: Temptations of Sex, Food, and Riches. The Basis of Jesus’ Refusal.In Milton’s interpretation, the first temptation is that of survival, of physical need. In the 2ndbook, he enormously expands the 2nd temptation into a full range of the temptations of desire, beginning with those desires that have a basis in physical appetite: sex, food, and riches. Jesus’s refusal is not mere ascetic refusal of pleasure. If he accepts Satan’s offers, he is then in Satan’s debt and Satan’s power. He also implicitly would accept the value system and lifestyle implied when such things become one’s first priority.
2022-11-1338 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 84: Milton’s Paradise Regained, Book 1. The First Temptation, “Turn These Stones into Bread.” The Temptation of Physical Necessity, but Also of False Charity, a Spurious Populism.Milton’s Jesus is fully human and vulnerable: there are real stakes in the temptations. But that makes his temptations a model for us. Milton expands the temptations to include the full range of possible human temptation, beginning on the most basic level of physical survival, symbolized by the temptation to turn stones into bread—both for personal survival, but also to feed the hungry. “Man does not live by bread alone” sounds elitist, but is not. Jesus will go on to feed the hungry, but whatever you make your primary value becomes your God.
2022-11-0637 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 83: Paradise Regained. The “Sequel” to Paradise Lost, and an Expansion of Its Vision.While not as famous as Paradise Lost, Milton’s Paradise Regained is not only comparable in artistic quality but continues the expansion of perspective that began in the last two books of Paradise Lost, from tragic fall to divine comedy. Milton’s theory of the “brief epic,” a form that has no Classical model. Paradise Regained is a recreation of the Temptation in the wilderness of Christ by Satan. It is the contest of the hero battling a serpent or monster—but deliteralized. This contest is a debate, a duel of words, the true Word against the lying words of Satan.
2022-10-3137 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 82: Book 12 of Paradise Lost. The Vision of the Fortunate Fall. The Internalization of Paradise.The expansion of vision from tragedy to spiritual comedy. Numerical symbolism of the 12 books. From law to gospel, the letter to the spirit, type to antitype: the vision of Biblical history as one of progressive internalization. The internalization of paradise for Adam and Eve—and also for us.
2022-10-2339 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 81: From Tragic Fall to Divine Comedy. The Redemptive Countermovement of Books 11 and 12 of Paradise Lost.Michael takes Adam to a high mountain and gives him a panoramic view of both space and time. The continuing aftermath of the Fall. Death: the murder of Abel by Cain. Sickness: the vision of the Lazar House. The mysterious episode of the sons of God mating with the daughters of men. The coming of war, and God’s eventual decision to wipe out all but a saving remnant in the Deluge, the end of the first cycle of history.
2022-10-1639 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 80: The Aftermath of the Fall. The Tension between the Human Tragedy and the Divine Comedy. Adam and Eve’s Bleak Despair.The question of why Paradise Lost does not end with Book 9, the fall, or at least with Book 10, the aftermath. The story of Adam and Eve is a tragedy—but the vision of Christianity is a divine comedy, and the poem’s last two books, 11 and 12, will turn the perspective inside out. But that reversal begins with Adam and Eve hitting rock bottom emotionally. Adam’s dark soliloquy and the painful conversation between Adam and Eve, the ultimate question being, why go on living? Why not suicide?
2022-10-0938 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 79: The Fall of Adam. The Consequences of the Fall. The Corruption of Human Nature. The Corruption of Marriage. The Apparent Triumph of Satan.The fall of Adam and the Corruption of Human Nature. Scenes from a marriage: Adam and Eve’s lust and subsequent marital brawl. Book 10: the Son of God confronts Adam and Eve. Satan returns to hell, triumphant—he thinks. The humiliation of the devils, changed into serpents.
2022-10-0236 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 78: Satan Returns to the Garden and Possesses the Serpent. Adam and Eve Have a Marital Rift as Eve Insists on Going Off by Herself. The Temptation and Fall of Eve, and Her Inward CorruptionBook 9, the climax of Paradise Lost, an epic without a true epic hero, which is why Milton will have to go on to Paradise Regained. Satan returns, no longer the titanic rebel, reduced to animal disguise and low cunning. A scene of marital discord as Eve insists in going off alone. She is accosted by the talking serpent, beguiled, and eats the fruit. The immediate corruption of her nature.
2022-09-2538 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 77: Adam’s Emotional Dependency upon Eve. The Sex Life of the Angels. Book 9: The Opening Invocation, Another Personal Moment. Who Is the Hero of the Epic?The unexpectedly jarring end of Adam’s conversation with Raphael, where he confesses an emotional dependency upon Eve and is sharply criticized for it. It is this hidden weakness that brings about the Fall. The superior sex life of angels, with their spiritual bodies. The Invocation of Book 9, the moment of the Fall. Milton’s methods of composing poetry. The old conundrum: who is the hero of Paradise Lost?
2022-09-1838 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 76: The Theme of Education in Paradise Lost. Book Learning Versus Life Learning. Adam Tells Raphael the Story of His Creation—What It Felt Like to Come into Being.Book 8 falls into symmetrical halves, one concerned with unanswered questions about cosmology, the other with the creation of Adam and his relationship with Eve. These are unified by the theme of education, a primary theme in all Milton’s work. Raphael tells Adam that what matters is not speculative learning but life learning. Adam tells Raphael of his creation, but, strikingly, what it felt like from the inside. His naming of the animals: names as the essential identity of what is named.
2022-09-1137 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 75: Raphael and Adam Discuss “Saving the Appearances,” the Attempts to Save the Old Astronomical Model. The Distinction between Theoretical Knowledge and Practical Knowledge.Books 7 and 8 were originally one book, divided in the poem’s second edition. Book 7 is what we know, from Scripture. The first half of Book 8 is what was still speculative and up for grabs. “Saving the appearances”: the term used by scholars of that time to salvage the old geocentric model. God’s refusal to make known the answer to certain questions—really because Milton doesn’t know the answers. The distinction between theoretical knowledge and the practical life knowledge that is what we really need.
2022-09-0436 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 74: Milton’s Account of Creation in Book 7. A Recreation, Not a Mere Paraphrase. Sublime Poetry and a Vision of Upward Metamorphosis.Milton does not just paraphrase Genesis. While faithful to it, he recreates it in the light of his own vision of the upward metamorphosis, matter leaping up the vertical axis of being towards spirit. He also gives or implies his own answers to questions about the Creation that have arisen of the centuries.
2022-08-2837 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 73: Book 7 of Paradise Lost, the Book of Creation. Invocation to the Muse at This Halfway Point. Milton’s Dark Personal Circumstances. The Son as the Traditional Active Agent of Creation.Following both the Odyssey and the Aeneid, the epic falls into two halves, one wandering and one stationary. Here, we are halfway, and the poem returns to earth. Another invocation to the Muse, and a reference to Milton’s personal circumstances, dark in every way. The Son as the traditional active agent of the Creation, Michelangelo notwithstanding. God’s insistence that at the end of time, earth will be changed to heaven and vice versa, “one Kingdom.”
2022-08-2138 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 72: Paradise Lost, Book 6. The Third and Climactic Day of the War in Heaven. The Triumph of the Son. Why Does God Put His Good Angels through the Ordeal of This War?The Son rides out on the third day of the war in heaven in his chariot, and the rebel angels cast themselves into hell in terror. Why does God allow this war to happen, since he could have eliminated the rebel angels in an instant? Perhaps in order to teach: to provide an illuminating reversal of perspective, from heroic tragedy to divine comedy, and a reversal of mood from our own self-centered misery.
2022-08-1437 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 71: Satan Gathers the Rebel Host in Book 5. Abdiel, the One Loyal Angel. Book 6: The War in Heaven, Day 1. The Satanic Host Lose Badly. Satan Invents Gunpowder and Cannon Overnight.God announces in the middle of Book 5 that he has begotten a Son who shall rule over the angels. Satan revolts and gathers rebel angels, the only holdout being Abdiel. On the first day of battle, Abdiel strikes the first blow, and the battle goes badly for the rebels. Michael wounds Satan. Night falls, and to recoup their fortunes Satan invents gunpowder and cannon.
2022-08-0737 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 70: Milton’s Anti-Authoritarian View that the Chain of Being Is Not Fixed but in Process of Vertical Spiritual Evolution. The Chronological Starting Point of Paradise Lost.Milton’s vision of the entire universe as undergoing a process of vertical spiritual evolution, upward from matter to spiritualized matter, has profound social implications. It implies that the Chain of Being is not fixed, and that human nature might by the end of time become so spiritualized that God will, as the Son says in Book 3, lay his royal sceptre by, for God will then be “all in all,” a New Testament phrase that could imply the identity of God and man, “united as one individual soul.” Historically, a fixed chain of authority has been attractive to the churches as...
2022-07-3139 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 69: Why Angels Eat Lunch: the Affirmation of the Body and the Senses through a Vision of the Spiritualization of Matter, a Repudiation of Western DualismRaphael arrives in the Garden of Eden to talk with Adam and Eve. When asked if angels eat, he enthusiastically affirms that they do—and enjoy it too. Milton is defending the real belief of Christianity, which is not that of a disembodied soul that eventually transcends the body and the physical world, but the spiritualization of matter, a process that the entire universe, from the elements through the natural world through the human world undergoes. If humanity had not fallen, it would not have remained in its fixed, subordinate position. Their physical nature spiritualized, human beings would have be...
2022-07-2438 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 68: Milton’s Bold Affirmation of Human Sexuality. Satan Plants a Dream of Temptation in Eve’s Mind While She Sleeps. The Confrontation of Satan with Gabriel and His Angelic Sentry.Milton’s bold defense of human sexuality against a tradition going back at least to Augustine regarding sexual desire as a necessary evil. Satan whispers into the ear of sleeping Eve, planting a dream of temptation and eating of the forbidden fruit, appealing to her will to power and latent desire to be a “Goddess.” Gabriel and his watch accost Satan, but God holds up his golden balances, which tip against Satan, who flees at the end of book 4. In book 5, God sends the angel Raphael down to have lunch with Adam and Eve in the garden.
2022-07-1737 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 67: The Spirit vs. the Letter of the Law in Milton’s Treatment of Women, Love, and Sexuality in Book 4 of Paradise Lost.The most sexist and patriarchal passages of Paradise Lostare usually a statement of Christian doctrine. Milton does what he can to liberalize doctrine by stressing the spirit of the law over the letter. This leads him to, first, an eloquent praise of human sexuality, denying the Augustinian doctrine that sexual desire is a product of the Fall; second, to a denial that Adam’s “rule” over Eve involves coercion; third, that Eve’s “narcissism” is, yes, partly a weakness (the weakness by which Satan undoes her) and yet also gives her an attractive independence, which both scares and attracts the male. It...
2022-07-1036 min
Expanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 66: The Portrayal of Eve. Milton’s Attempt to Liberalize the Sexism Both of His Time and of the New Testament. Milton’s Personal History: Three Wives, Three Daughters. The Divorce Tracts.Milton attempts to liberalize the teachings about gender that were historically founded on the story of Eve in Genesis (see Elaine Pagels’ brilliant Adam, Eve, and the Serpent). But he does not break with them entirely, which would have meant breaking with the Bible itself. Milton’s complex personal history of three marriages, the first of which was highly troubled in its beginnings and inspired him to write four pamphlets arguing for freedom of divorce, although he and Mary Powell were never divorced and she went on to bear all three of his daughters. How much does his personal expe...
2022-07-0338 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 65: Milton’s Complex Cosmos and Its “Many Worlds.” Satan Deceives the Angel of the Sun, Lands on Earth, and Addresses the Sun in a Soliloquy Revealing His Inwardly Tormented State.Milton’s complex cosmos, his knowledge of the “many worlds” of modern Galilean astronomy. Satan lands on the sun and deceives Uriel, the angel of the sun, travels to Earth and the Garden of Eden, where he looks up at the sun from which he has just descended and, thinking himself alone and unseen, launches into a soliloquy that shows that the titanic rebel of the first two books was just a pose. In actuality, he knows he is wrong, and is consumed with nihilistic despair. The opening lines may be the first part of the poem to be compos...
2022-06-2637 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp, 64: Milton’s Attempted Liberalization of the Christian Doctrines of Predestination and the Atonement. Then a Moment of Satire: The Limbo of Vanities or Paradise of Fools.Despite the frequent prejudice against Milton, his view of the difficult problems of Christian theology were more liberal than all but a few people in his time, perhaps any time. He revises the doctrine of predestination to mean that God gives sufficient grace to all to be saved, and only then puts the burden on us of using our free will to choose. He revises the view of the Atonement, the sacrifice of the Son to the Father to atone for human sin, by saying that at the end of time God will put by his ruling sceptre and...
2022-06-1939 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 63: God’s Foreknowing Speech in Book 3 of Paradise Lost. The Most Difficult Issue in Christianity: the Conflict between Human Free Will and Predestination.God’s speech from his throne in Book 3 lays out the most difficult problem in Christian theology, the conflict between human free will and the doctrine, stated by Paul in Romans 8-9, that God predestines every human being either to salvation or damnation before we are even born. The Father pronounces humanity guilt, “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall,” but how can that be reconciled with the idea that we are saved only by God’s grace, which he withholds from some for reasons no one knows? Milton’s daring liberalization of predestination, in which everyone is given suff...
2022-06-1237 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 62: The Satiric Episode of Satan’s Family Reunion with Sin and Death. Satan’s Wild Journey through Chaos. The Beautiful and Moving Personal Invocation that Opens Book 3.The bizarre, satiric reunion of Satan with his daughter, Sin, and their offspring, Death, a parody of the Trinity, among other things. The shift of style to allegory for satiric purposes. Satan’s journey through Chaos on his way to earth. Chaos as “the deep” of Genesis 1, but also the Chaos of the Creation myths of Hesiod, Ovid, and Lucretius. The surreal picture of an undignified Satan having to fly, creep, swim, as Chaos turns moment by moment from solid to liquid to gas. The moving personal invocation to God as an inward light at the opening of Book 3, compen...
2022-06-0536 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 61: The Debate of the Devils in Hell. Satan’s Departure for Earth. The Devils Attempts to Pass the Time in Hell. Satan Encounters Sin and Death at the Gates of Hell.Milton’s analysis of why revolutions fail: what Blake called the “mind forg’d manacles” that imprison the would-be revolutionaries within. Moloch, Belial, and Mammon represent various false attitudes that subvert any revolution, good or bad—as they did in the French Revolution in the Romantic period, as they did in the Sixties. The devils’ attempt to pass the time while Satan goes on his spying expedition: the various ways people try to distract themselves from their sense of life’s meaningless futility.
2022-05-3037 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 60: The Catalogue of Devils as the Pagan Deities. The Building of Pandaemonium, Palace of the Devils. The Role of the Reader of Paradise Lost.The incantatory epic catalogue of pagan deities that the Devils will later become in human history. The discovery of gold by Mammon, and the building of Pandaemonium, the palace of the Devils, by Mulciber. The deceptively beautiful story of Mulciber’s fall, suddenly revealed as a lie. Milton’s demand for active interpretation, the responsibility of the reader of Paradise Lost.
2022-05-2236 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 59: Paradise Lost, Book 1. Satan and the Rebel Angels in Hell after the War in Heaven. The Dramatic Intensity of Paradise Lost. Satan’s Powerful Speeches of Defiance.The epic plunges in medias res, into the middle of things, and begins in the aftermath of the war in heaven. Satan and the rebel angels lie stunned on a burning lake in hell. Satan rouses his second-in-command, Beelzebub, and delivers two famous speeches of great dramatic power. Paradise Lost was originally conceived as a drama, and retains many dramatic features. Satan has been a strangely attractive figure to many intelligent readers, including famous ones like Blake and Shelley. Why is this so in an epic that wants to justify the ways of God to men?
2022-05-1536 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 58: Paradise Lost: the Famous Opening Invocation. The Meaning of “Things Unattempted Yet.” The Actual Order of Events in the Epic, Recounted Out of Order in the Poem.Milton’s extraordinary achievement, writing his epic at the end of his life when he was old and blind, the Puritan revolution defeated. His choice of a Biblical rather than Arthurian subject. The famous Invocation, invoking a Muse that is really a symbol for divine inspiration. The real chronology of the poem’s events, though they are recounted out of order. The beginning “in the middle of things” in Book 1, with Satan and the rebel angels in hell just after their defeat in the war in heaven.
2022-05-0838 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 57: Prelude to Paradise Lost. The Rewards of Reading Milton: the Musicality of the Verse, the Encyclopedic Vision, the Revolutionary Point of ViewThe rewards of reading Milton with or without a religious commitment. The magnificence of verse informed by a sophisticated knowledge of music. Milton’s sense of a total vision in which the Bible, Classical mythology and literature, and other writers, from Plato to Shakespeare, form an interconnected whole, what Northrop Frye calls the order of words. You can get a whole humanistic education from studying Milton. Milton’s revolutionary values in religion, politics, and the domestic realm. God as an Inner Light or inward presence, a main source of the later Romantic theory of the imagination. Milton’s part in the...
2022-05-0138 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 56: Book 24, the Meeting of Priam and Achilles. Achilles’ New and Unexpected Humanity and Compassion, His True Moment of GreatnessAchilles still grieves for Patroclus while the gods debate on Olympus. Zeus sends Iris down to arrange for Priam to go to Achilles and collect his son’s body. The tough, irascible Priam and his equally tough wife, Hecuba. Hermes, in disguise, conducts Priam to Achilles’ tent. Priam’s heart-rending speech, which stirs a new and unexpected compassion in Achilles. The mystery of Achilles’ new humanity. The parable of the two jars of Zeus. The return of the body, and the speeches of three women: Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen. The final line of the poem given to the noble Hector.
2022-04-2536 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 55: The Final Showdown. Hector Runs, but Finally Faces Achilles and Is Mortally Wounded.The building suspense between book 18, when Achilles learns of the death of Patroclus, and book 22, in which Achilles and Hector engage in the final showdown. Achilles is lured off the battlefield to give the two armies time to clear the field, the Trojans going back inside their walls. All of Troy begs Hector to come inside, but the heroic code demands that he refuse. But he panics, and runs from Achilles three times around the wall of Troy. What do we think of this? Even if we do not subscribe to the heroic code, do we think less of...
2022-04-1737 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 54: The Workshop of Hephaestus and the Shield of Achilles with Its Intricate Design. Achilles Prepares for Battle. Briseis Mourns Patroclus. Achilles’ Horse Prophesies His Death.Achilles goes to the ramparts and cries his chilling war cry three times to scare off the Trojans, so that the Achaeans get Patroclus’s body back—but minus Achilles’ armor that Patroclus had been wearing. Hector refuses to retreat, a refusal he will live long enough to regret. Thetis goes to the wondrous workshop of Hephaestus on Mt. Olympus to get armor for her son. The elaborate ekphrasis, or description of a work of art inside another work of art, detailing the scenes on the shield of Achilles. What is the artistic purpose of this description, which interrupts the na...
2022-04-1037 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 53: Patroclus in Achilles’ Armor Goes into Battle and Is Killed by Hector. The Fight for the Body. The Death of Sarpedon and the Famous Speech of Zeus about Fate. Achilles’ Grief.Patroclus begs Achilles to let him go into battle wearing Achilles’ armor so that the Trojans will panic, thinking it is Achilles. Achilles does so on the condition that Patroclus not try to take Troy on his own or go up against Hector. He disobeys and is killed by Hector. Zeus ponders whether to go against fate and save his son Sarpedon, but gives in and Sarpedon also dies. Antilochus breaks the news of Patroclus’ death to Achilles, whose weeping brings his mother Thetis from the ocean with her sea nymphs. She goes to Mt. Olympus to get new armo...
2022-04-0434 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 52: The Horrors of War and the Value of the Heroic Code. Hera Seduces Zeus to Distract Him. The Trojans Breach the Ramparts and Try to Set Fire to the Ships.Sarpedon’s famous speech to Glaucus in Book 12 affirming the heroic code of fighting for “glory” because no one escapes death. Is there anything we can still admire in the heroic code? The spirit of competition and striving for excellence and self-transcendence. The need for a “moral equivalent of war.” Hera seduces Zeus in Book 14 to distract him, but the Trojans eventually breach the ramparts and try to set fire to the ships, which are defended single-handedly by giant Ajax.
2022-03-2735 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 51: The Embassy to Achilles in Book 9. The Psychology of Achilles and His Refusal to Return to Battle. Books 10 and 11: The Spying Expedition and Major Achaean Players Taken Out with Injuries.Book 9 is a crucial moment in the Iliad. Consisting of nothing but talk, it is nevertheless the turning point towards inevitable fatality, as Achilles refuses to return to battle. The speeches in which he refuses are fascinating but difficult, because he seems to be doubting the value of the heroic code by which he has lived his entire life. With no help forthcoming from their greatest warrior, the Achaeans try to figure out their options. While it is still night, Odysseus and Diomedes go on a spying expedition to the Trojan camp. They encounter the unlucky Trojan counter-spy Dolon...
2022-03-2037 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 50: The Tide of Battle Turns. The Achaeans Driven Back to Their Own Defensive Walls. A Second Assembly Called to Deal with This Emergency.Zeus begins fulfilling his promise to Thetis to make the Achaeans lose. Giant Ajax helps prevent a complete rout, fighting a battle with Hector. Anachronisms in the text show the changing methods of warfare between the time of the Trojan War and Homer’s own time. Zeus warns the other deities not to interfere: the famous simile of the golden chain. Three times he curbs the attempt of Diomedes, who is experiencing his moment of aristeia, or self-transcending excellence, to take Troy directly. Night falls at the end of Book 8. The late-night emergency assembly of Book 9, in which Agamemnon pr...
2022-03-1337 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEpisode 49: The Complex and Enigmatic Characterization of Paris and Helen in Book 6; the Character of Big Ajax in Book 7, Dueling with Hector; Paris’s Refusal to Return Helen to the Achaeans.The difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of judging Paris and Helen, in Book 6 and elsewhere. Are they selfish and manipulative, self-deluding—or genuinely compelled by the will of the gods and fate? They seem as contradictory and enigmatic as people often do in real life. In Book 7, Big Ajax (contrasted with Little Ajax), a major figure in the Iliad, fights a duel with Hector, but inconclusively. Paris refuses to give Helen back to the Achaeans.
2022-03-0636 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 48: Diomedes, the Noble Alternative to Achilles. Hector with His Wife Andromache and Their Son Astyanax, a Loving Family.Zeus procrastinates fulfilling his promise to make the Greeks temporarily lose, and due to the leadership of Diomedes the Trojans are driven back against their own walls and are in danger of losing the war. Diomedes, the quiet team player, a contrast to the difficult Achilles. Hector comes inside the walls of Troy, and, as he is leaving meets his wife Andromache and their small son. Andromache begs Hector to stay, but Hector shows himself trapped by the demands of the heroic code. And the audience knows that adherence to the code will eventually kill him and doom his...
2022-02-2636 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 47: The Contest between Paris and Menelaus; the Complex Character of Helen of TroyHand to hand combat between Paris and Menelaus to settle the issue of who gets Helen. Paris, the beautiful lover who wears a leopard skin, is badly outmatched but rescued by Aphrodite, who orders Helen to join him in the bedroom and threatens her when Helen tries to refuse. The mystery of Helen’s character, complex, ambiguous. Another complex question: the role of the gods in the Iliad. Sometimes they can be taken non-literally as symbols of inner psychological forces and conflicts.
2022-02-2135 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 46: The Heroic Code of Honor and the Result of the Quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, Spreading All the Way to Mt. OlympusThe society of the Iliad as an example of what some social scientists have called a “shame culture,” in which men are driven by the need for status in a peer group. Failing to achieve it, they are “shamed.” We are ostensibly a “guilt culture,” driven by individual conscience rather than outward social pressure, but in fact there are many similar tendencies in our culture. The rage of Achilles spreads all the way to Mt. Olympus and results in a quarrel between Zeus and Hera, defused buy Hephaestus, the smith of the gods and a fascinating anomalous deity.
2022-02-1336 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 44: The Iliad, Book 1. The Rage of Achilles, and the Heroic Code of Honor That Leads to Tragic ConflictThe explosively dramatic opening of the Iliad, starting with its first word, “Rage!” Two men fighting over a woman, who is a “war prize.” And yet, according to what scholars call the heroic code of honor, neither man can back down, for fear of public shame, for fear of looking weak. Being “reasonable” is not permitted by their culture’s value system, and that is the tragedy.
2022-02-0637 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 44: Introduction to Homer’s Iliad. What Is Still Relevant about the Iliad. The Many Mysteries Surrounding the Poem and the Poet.What is still relevant about the Iliad today: the rich, complex characterization and the theme of anger, revenge, and justice. The many mysteries: Was there a “Homer”? Was there a Trojan War? The real Troy, excavated by Heinrich Schliemann. The plot background: Helen of Troy.
2022-01-3038 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 43: The Climactic Episodes of Virgil’s Aeneid: The Showdown between Turnus and AeneasDiomedes’ speech admitting that the Trojan War had been wrong. The tragedy of Camilla, the great woman warrior. The suicide of Queen Amata. Jupiter forbids Juno and Turnus’s sister Juturna from interfering further. The final showdown between Turnus and Aeneas. Turnus, wounded, begs for mercy—but Aeneas sees the belt of young Pallas, worn by Turnus as a war prize, and in the last four lines of the epic kills Turnus in a fit of blind rage.
2022-01-2335 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 42: The Hope of Breaking the Ironic Cycle of History. But the Price Paid for that Achievement.The theme of the Aeneid, explicitly announced in crucial passages, is the hope of escaping from history as an ironic cycle, the hope that the tragedy of the fall of Troy does not have to become the model for all of human history. Virgil hoped that Augustus could establish not just a more just society but one that would bring justice and civilization to the whole world, that history might become progressive. But he does not minimize the cost, and focuses upon the deaths of a number of innocent, idealistic young men as representing the price to be paid...
2022-01-1636 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 41: The Aeneid’s Complex Vision: The Wish for a Just War and a Just Peace Versus the Tragic Realities.Aeneas is in one way an imperialist, establishing his people in a foreign land despite the resistance of its native peoples. Yet he longs for a just war and a just peace, wishing that this conflict might be a war to end war, renouncing any intention of dominating the Italian peoples. Virgil clearly intends a parallel with Augustus, who conquered his own version of Turnus, Mark Antony, and wished to end decades of civil war and establish justice. But Virgil counterpoises this ideal against the reality of war, of the death especially of young men cut off in their...
2022-01-0936 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 40: The New World, and Juno as the Spirit of Negation. Queen Amata and Turnus Possessed by the Fury Allecto.Aeneas and the Sibyl leave the Underworld by the Gate of Ivory. The new world of Italy, and the native people there. Aeneas forms an alliance with King Latinus, to be sealed by marriage with Lavinia, but Juno sends the Fury Allecto to demonically possess Queen Amata and Turnus. Against the progressive vision of history that Anchises spoke of in the Underworld, Juno represents the vision of history as an ironic cycle, so that Aeneas is the new Paris, and the new Troy will suffer the same fate as the old.
2022-01-0236 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 39: The Great Visionary System of Virgil’s Underworld in Book 6 of the Aeneid.Aeneas meets with his father Anchises in Elysium in the Underworld. Anchises’s speech expands the Aeneid into a cosmic dimension, with a World Soul instead of a creator deity, a system of rewards for the good and punishments of evildoers, then reincarnation in this world. The mystery of where Virgil derived this imagery. Finally, a vision of Aeneas’s descendants, culminating in Augustus Caesar.
2021-12-2636 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp.38: The Quest to Reach Italy. The Entrance to the Underworld and the Cumaean Sibyl.The struggle to reach the goal. Funeral games for Anchises. The women set fire to the ships because they don’t want to go on. The death of Palinurus, “one life given for many.” The mysterious imagery of the entrance to the underworld, created by Daedalus. The Cumaean Sibyl, Aeneas’s guide, and the golden bough, talisman that Aeneas needs to take with him on his journey.
2021-12-1937 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 37: The Tragic Love Affair of Dido and Aeneas. The Aeneid: Cyclical Pessimism vs. the Hopeful Vision of Possible ProgressThe famous tragic love affair between the passionate, impulsive Dido and the restrained, disciplined, responsible Aeneas. Dido’s madness and suicide. The Aeneid’s greatness lies in its double vision: cyclical pessimism and progressive optimism held in creative tension.
2021-12-1238 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 36: The Wanderings of Aeneas after the Fall of TroyAeneas loses his loving wife Creusa at the end of Book 2, and wanders with his people for seven years, comparable to the Wanderings of Odysseus, for the entirety of Book 3. His father Anchises dies at the end of Book 3.
2021-12-0537 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 35: The Trojan Horse and the Fall of TroyAeneas, taken in by Queen Dido of Carthage, recounts his adventures, beginning with a vivid, book-length account of the fall of Troy.
2021-11-2835 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 34: Virgil’s Aeneid and Its Providential Vision of History. Two Exiles: Aeneas and Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Their Tragic Destiny.Jupiter’s long speech to Venus about the glorious destiny of the line descending from her son Aeneas, the future history of Rome. Aeneas and his people land and are taken in by Dido, Queen of Carthage, in what should be a happy ending—but which the audience knows will end in tragedy. The happy ending is for a future Rome, not for Aeneas personally, who knows only self-sacrifice and loss.
2021-11-2135 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 33: The Opening and Book 1 of Virgil’s Aeneid: The Quest for a New HomeA new type of hero, “duty-bound” Aeneas, sacrificing himself for a higher cause, not merely for a future home for his people but for the cause of law, order, and higher civilization. The unique organization of the Aeneid through a series of parallels with Homer’s epics.
2021-11-1435 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 32: Introduction to Virgil’s Aeneid: The Story ContinuesVirgil’s life and career. The Aeneid influenced by Virgil’s experience of anarchy and civil war as the Roman Republic crumbles. The rise of Caesar Augustus, first Roman Emperor: the promise of law, order, and civilization. But at what cost? The “Virgilian melancholy.”
2021-11-0737 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 31: The Controversy Over Book 24. Drawing It All Together: The Total Thematic Pattern of the Odyssey. Odysseus in Later Literature.Is Book 24 by another, and inferior poet? Is there any artistic necessity for it? Is there a total thematic pattern to the Odyssey that draws together all the various themes we have been tracing? The fascinating character of Odysseus in later literature, up to our own time.
2021-10-3136 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 30: The Bow Contest, the Showdown, and the Aftermath. Penelope’s Trick and the Reunion with OdysseusThe suitors’ self-humiliation, unable even to draw Odysseus’ bow. Odysseus shoots through 12 axe heads. The battle with the suitors and its aftermath. The hanging of the 12 treacherous maids, and the disposal of Melanthios. Penelope tricks Odysseus but proves he is really her husband. The joyful reunion.
2021-10-2431 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 29: How Odysseus Got His Name: The Episode of the Scar. The Bow Contest.The famous episode telling how Odysseus was given his significant name by his grandfather Autolycus, a thief. Setting up strategies ahead of time to even the odds against the suitors. The bow contest.
2021-10-1736 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 28: The Reunion of Father and Son; Plotting and Disguises; Odysseus’s Old Dog Argos.The moving and yet psychologically complex reunion of father and son in the hut of Eumaios. Devising strategies to make up for being greatly outnumbered. Odysseus meets his old dog Argos, a wonderful tearjerker in the midst of a heroic epic.
2021-10-1035 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 27: Athena’s Regard for Odysseus as Trickster and Liar; the Working-Class Hero Eumaios the Swineherd; Telemachus Returns to Ithaca.Athena, in a famous scene, puts Odysseus on a level of equality with herself—as storyteller, liar, trickster. The power of stories that shape people’s view of reality. Eumaios the swineherd as a genuinely good man of lower-class origins. The return of Telemachus to Ithaca.
2021-10-0335 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 26: Odysseus Returns to Ithaca, the Halfway Point of the OdysseyThe Wanderings, Books 9-12, suggest an underlying pattern of symbolic death to an old identity and birth of a new, often at a point of crisis in mid-life, as is true of both Odysseus and Dante in the Divine Comedy. For Odysseus, this involves a coming to terms with the feminine, portrayed by a remarkable spectrum of female figures ranging from the ideal to the ambiguous to the evil. The landing on Ithaca: the sense of a nexus of realities, of Odysseus crossing from the mythlike, dreamlike world of the Wanderings to the realistic world of his home island.
2021-09-2635 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 25: The Mythical Patterns of the OdysseyPossible mythical patterns of death and rebirth to a new identity underlying the Odyssey, especially in the Wanderings, patterns that are universally human and not limited to exceptional heroes.
2021-09-1938 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 24: Homer’s Odyssey. The Wanderings, continued. Descent to Hades, the Land of the Dead.A brief recap of the first six episodes of the Wanderings: the Kikones, the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops, Aeolus (god of the winds), the Lestrygonians, Circe. The central episode of the Wanderings, the descent to Hades. Meetings with Elpenor, the seer Tiresias, Odysseus’ mother Antiklea, Agamemnon.
2021-09-1236 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 23: The Wanderings, Books 9-12. The Kikones, the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops.For the four books of the Wanderings, Odysseus acts as his own bard and recounts retroactively his ten years of trial and adventure since the fall of Troy. Recurrent themes tie together these seemingly disparate episodes, including resistance to temptation, the virtue of active striving, and the contrast between civilization and savagery.
2021-09-0538 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 22: The Big Party for Odysseus and the Songs of the BardThe ideal society of the Phaiakians throws a party in honor of their guest, in which Odysseus outperforms the younger men, and the blind bard Demodokos sings three times, making Odysseus weep for the past.
2021-08-2936 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 21: The High Comedy of the Odyssey: Odysseus and the Teenager, NausikaaBook 6, a wonderful comic interlude in which Odysseus, naked from the storm and wearing only an olive bush, has to befriend and get help from Nausikaa, the young princess of the Phaiakians.
2021-08-2235 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 20: Calypso’s Paradisal Island. Odysseus’ Heroic Refusal of ImmortalityOdysseus’ 7 years captive on Calypso’s island. Sexual politics in the Odyssey. Odysseus’ most heroic act: choosing life and its trials over immortality.
2021-08-1536 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 19: Telemachus Visits Menelaus and Helen, and Learns about MarriageTelemachus finds that there is more to becoming a man than being a warrior. The Odyssey is a peacetime epic, and during his visits to Nestor in Pylos and Menelaus and Helen in Lakedaimon that it is necessary to learn the skills of social interaction. He is also given a lesson on the complexities of marriage.
2021-08-0835 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 18: Becoming a Man: Telemachus Confronts the SuitorsThe psychology of masculinity. Manhood is not merely chronological, but has to be achieved. The suitors and the complicated question of the rules of succession to the kingship in Homeric times.
2021-08-0136 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 17: Homer’s Odyssey, Book 1: Telemachus and His Coming of AgeThe complex structure of the Odyssey. “Who has known his own engendering?” Telemachus’s troubled search for his own identity in relationship to his unknown parent, a timeless human dilemma.
2021-07-2537 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 16: Introduction to Homer and the OdysseyThe fascinating mysteries of Troy and Homer. The Odyssey as a comic epic. Odysseus as Trickster, the polytropos, or man of many turnings.
2021-07-1838 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 15: The Ending of the Divine Comedy: The Vision of God as “All in All”A series of emblematic visions, each expanding beyond the limits of the last, culminating in Dante’s ultimate vision of God as the circumference of all things, binding the universe together in beautiful order and all-embracing love, whose symbol is the circle.
2021-07-1136 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 14: Paradiso, Cantos 19-20: Predestination, the Hardest Christian DoctrineIn the sphere of Jupiter, Dante is lectured by the Eagle of Justice about predestination, the mystery of why God saves some people and damns others by giving or withholding his grace.
2021-07-0435 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 13: Paradiso, Canto 1, continued. The ascent to the heavenly spheres.Dante and Beatrice rise into the spiritual realm. Beatrice lectures Dante on the nature of that realm. Intellect and love as God’s twofold image in both nature and human nature.
2021-06-2736 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 12: Purgatorio, Cantos 30-33: Reunion with Beatrice. Paradiso, Canto 1: Imagining the Experience of HeavenReunion in the Garden of Eden and Beatrice’s anger over Dante’s “infidelity.”
Ways of imagining Heaven, an experience beyond time.
2021-06-2036 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 11: The Purgatorio and the theme of reunion. The use and abuse of art. The achievement of true freedom.The theme of reunion begins, as Dante meets his dead friend Casella. Casella, a musician, performs a poem by Dante that he has set to music, until they are interrupted by Cato, who tells them to stop wasting time. Art can be redemptive or escapist depending on how it is used. At the top of the mountain, Virgil tells Dante he has achieved the only true freedom, which is internal and disciplined, not a mere absence of external rules.
2021-06-1337 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 10: Dante’s Purgatorio and the Hope of Self-TransformationRecreation as the real promise of Christianity: we can change; we can be recreated through trial, an insight not dependent on literal belief in Christian doctrine. The role of education in the purgatorial or recreative process, and the role of the arts in education.
2021-06-0637 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 9: Purgatorio, Canto 1: The Hope of a Purgatorial LifeEaster Sunday, 1300: the 7-story mountain of Purgatory, and image of the human hope of transformation through trial and suffering, whether in this life or the next.
2021-05-3036 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 8: Inferno, Cantos 33 and 34: Satan and the Worst Sinners in History, the BetrayersWhy is betrayal the worst of all sins, far worse than murder? The psychological nature of evil, the rending of the bonds of human interconnection, the essence of damnation.
2021-05-2335 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 7: Inferno, Canto 26: The Ulysses Canto. Forbidden KnowledgeThe thrilling famous speech of Ulysses, questing for experience and knowledge. What is forbidden knowledge? Knowledge sought for selfish reasons, including power. The real forbidden knowledge is of our true motives, about which we lie not only to others but to ourselves.
2021-05-1634 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 6: The Complexities of LoveCanto 5, continued: The tension between romantic and spiritual love in Dante.
Canto 15: The mutual affection and respect between Dante and his former teacher (and father figure) Brunetto Latini, punished for homosexuality.
2021-05-0936 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 5: The Nature of Evil. The Damnation of the UnbaptizedA psychological speculation on the motive for human evil that does not depend on religious commitment.The damnation of unbaptized infants and virtuous pagans: the acceptance of tragedy within the divine comedy.
2021-05-0236 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 4: Romantic Love Continued, and the Vestibule of the UncommittedThe problems of ideal romantic love, which we still wrestle with. The issue of commitment, of taking a stand, which we also still wrestle with.
2021-04-2538 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 3: The Invention of Romantic LoveCanto 2 of The Divine Comedy, in which Dante, as reluctant as any hobbit, is induced by Virgil to embark upon his quest by speaking of Dante’s love Beatrice Portinari, a real woman, though loved according to the new conventions called Courtly Love, from which descend our ideas that romantic love can save you when nothing else can.
2021-04-1839 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp 2: In the Dark Wood: Dante’s Mid-life Crisis and OursCanto 1 of The Divine Comedy: in mid-life, we suddenly realize we are “lost in the woods,” and no longer know “the way.”
2021-04-1134 minExpanding Eyes: A Visionary EducationEp. 1: The Expanded Vision of the ImaginationIntroduction to the “Expanding Eyes” podcast series and to its first subject, Dante’s Divine Comedy, completed exactly 700 years ago in 1321.
2021-03-2833 min