In this episode, Marissa talks with Dr. Ari Friedlander (University of Mississippi) about sexuality and gender in book 4 of Paradise Lost. Here are some resources to support your listening:
Terminology:
- wanton (e.g., Paradise Lost 4.306): 17th-century meanings range from rebellious to reckless, from playful and carefree to lustful and promiscuous (“wanton, adj. and n.” OED Online. December 2020. Oxford University Press.)
- prelapsarian: Generally, a state of innocence. In specific relation to Paradise Lost, before the fall of humanity as related in Genesis
- postlapsarian: Generally, a state of sin and guilt. In specific relation to Paradise Lost, after Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God.
References:
- Check out Milton’s initial outline for a play titled Adam Unparadised on the website Darkness Visible, a website on John Milton by Christ’s College at Cambridge University.
- Michel Foucault, author of Discipline and Punish (original French publ., 1975; trans. into English, 1977) and A History of Sexuality (1976-1984; 1978-1986). Click here for the entry on Foucault in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- “Methought I saw my late espoused saint”: This sonnet may be accessed on The John Milton Reading Room as Sonnet 23 in Milton’s Poems (1673).
Select bibliography:
- Ari Friedlander. “Roguery and Reproduction in The Winter’s Tale.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, and Race, edited by Valerie Traub. 491-505. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
- Ari Friedlander, Melissa E. Sanchez, and Will Stockton, eds. “Desiring History and Historicizing Desire.” Special Issue of Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (2016).
- David Glimp. Increase and Multiply: Governing Cultural Reproduction in Early Modern England. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
- Melissa Sanchez. Erotic Subjects: The Sexuality of Politics in Early Modern English Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
[Episode music courtesy of http://www.bensound.com]
Marissa Greenberg 