Notes

response paper: anything I find interesting about the readings
moderately informal discussions, conforming to rules of proper grammar,
logical structures, 300 words, intelligent paragraphing, real argument
no lecture summary, or descriptions of the poems without issues.

spend a good hour on it. every written piece typed and sent in form of pdf, syllabus, etc.
left margin 2 inches in, move right hand margin over
when you title file the first word in the title of the pdf file: Reed 315 blahblahblah
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Christ's nativity, star called Lucifer
stasis, ecstasy, out of time. pure peace, fulfillment and joy. radical consummation of every good promise. starts in stanza six. sun halting in stanza 7, St. Augustine, connexion between sun and god.
he is an inferior version of something truly divine.
starting stanza 8, Book of Revelation, heavenly spheres. looking toward the end of sinful world. and the creation of the universe. the music heard that hour was not heard since genesis. possible either to go back to the golden age, or create it again. new fresh innocent beginning, or that we were at the end of time. There is something wrong with hoping to go to the very beginning or the very end. No shortcut. even though there is a moment that chimes with the beginning and end of the world even though its in sympathy with that you cant get there yet; you must go through the pain. the stars just want to stop they are transfixed looking at the Christ-child until god said gtfo. There's a temptation in wanting to avoid the still-coming horrors and trials of life (boooo). Stanza 19, the baby is the occasion for all this stuff that was happening peripheral.

"the oracles are dumb" - dumb in this sense means unable to speak "the oracles have been silenced"

//Apollo, the first god mentioned losing his power, is the god of the sun//

Sense of army retreating; Milton doesn't even need to do anything. the pagan gods do not fight, they give up, weeping. they know they are done. the earth losing its magic. Deference to Christ, Milton represents this as pathos. Why is he feeling remorse and regret for pagan gods? "i thought he was supposed to be championing Christ's return.

Emotionally, tonally, quite odd. there was something there and now it is draining away.
he'd just turned 21 when he wrote this. He spent his whole life learning greek latin, their mythologies. he said the time for that is past, and meanwhile invoking it. as late as Paradise Regained. Each time Milton is done invoking the Musa (pagan gods) and then revoking them, it is //painful//. Mentions compulsively the extensive mythologies.

the origin of religion. Traces of old traditions even in Genesis (historically Judaism and Christianity were built on polytheistic tradition they tried to replace (lol))

the language "remembers" the earlier gods condensed into god and jesus.

the dumbing of the oracles, with lack of triumphalism and sound of remorse amounts to a collective elegy and exorcism. I, speaking for jesus, hereby cast out these demons. they are now demons, sent forth & cast out.

There are several exorcisms in Milton. Repudiations of things too. When he's not exorcising, he's repudiating.

Origins of the dumbing of the oracles has a complex history. #s of ways this story.
Spenser; Faerie Queene, shepherd's calendar. In Plutarch, and others. The dumbing of the oracles was because of Christ's birth. Elsewhere Christ is called the one, true oracle. They were sailors on the boat hearing a voice crying from an empty island that Pan was dead. The Greek Pan means all encompassing, and also pan and satan.

Another version, the oracles dumbed at Christ's death. Pan's birth and death = birth and death of Christ. birth of satan. Points in all directions simultaneously. We can't necessarily distinguished between Christ and satan in the poem stylized to commemorate Christ's birth.

sonnet 23 methought I saw my late espoused saint