Milton and Science: Depictions of the Universe and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Paradise Lost

            For being a poem about “Man’s first disobedience,” John Milton’s Paradise Lost contains a great deal of scientific discourse. There are a few scientific oddities in the poem, such as Adam understanding how the sun’s “gathered beams / Reflected may with matter sere foment” through a lens, considering the earliest known lens, of unknown purpose, dates to around 3000 BC (Milton 10:1070-1071; Kramer). Adam’s avid interest in and grasp of cosmology also seems unusual or perhaps implausible given his short lifespan of about a month. Despite their eccentricity, such anachronisms function as narrative inroads that Milton uses to address some of the salient and controversial scientific issues of his day. Ultimately, the different ways Milton depicts the universe of Paradise Lost provide valuable insight into what he is trying to say about the pursuit of knowledge and what he means by “Man’s first disobedience.”

“Alas, who may truste thys world?”: Malory’s Conception of Earthly Knighthood and Christian Living

Author's note: my ideas about Malory’s work have shifted quite a bit since I wrote this essay, and a good deal of evidence from Le Morte Darthur suggests exactly the opposite of what I assert in this piece: though Le Morte Darthur is explicitly religious, almost exclusively promulgating the ideals of Christian living, a strong, fundamental undercurrent throughout the work suggests that it is the earthly life of the knights and, by extension, earthly life in general that matters most to Malory; the continual focus on Lancelot, Galahad’s relative inactivity in the narrative, and the consistent reduction of didactic proselytizing from his source material suggests that Malory’s main priority in the Morte is not to disseminate any kind of overtly religious message. Furthermore, the genre within which Malory is working, primarily that of romance, glorifies adventure, heroism, magic, and amorous relationships, ideas that frequently run contrary to Christian idealism.

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            While Sir Thomas Malory does not explicitly declare his overarching purpose for writing Le Morte Darthur anywhere within his text, his narrative about Arthur and the knights of the Round Table follows a clear trajectory showing the decline of earthly knighthood and the ascendency of Christian living. The drastic nature of this progression is seen through the circumstances in the first and last few pages of Le Morte Darthur: the book begins by describing a king besieging the castle of a rival warlord while also seeking the aid of a magician in order to ravish the warlord’s attractive wife, and the book ends with the remnant of Round Table knights discarding their arms and devoting the remainder of their life to the church. Between these two drastically opposed circumstances is a gradual progression from secular to Christian that involves all the characters in Malory’s work and culminates in a peaceful restoration of order brought about by the Round Table knights’ unequivocal devotion to heavenly, Christian living.

"Occupy" Etymology and the Occupy Movement

            Those of us interested in how the words we use every day arrived in the lexicon are a unique and, well, strange bunch. Most digging into etymology just reveals old meanings and forms of words long forgotten, but once in a while that digging can inform modern usage in unexpected ways. The history of the word “occupy,” for example, evidences a bit of both the archaic and the unusual.

            Unbeknownst to most people, we are constantly throwing around words that at one time referred to things of a sexual nature. Few realize that saying something is “quaint” would have shocked those of Chaucer’s day since the word originally referred to certain, generally unmentionable, parts of the female anatomy that Andrew Marvell may or may not have been aware of when he explained that “worms shall try / that long preserv’d virginity, / And your quaint honour turn to dust” (lines 27-29). Like the ignorant and unaware first-time homeowners describing their quaint dream homes, the Occupy protesters are probably blissfully unaware of the older, more tawdry meaning of their movement’s moniker.

Wanderlust: A Short Journey

“On a walking tour you are absolutely detached. You stop where you like and go on when you like. As long as it lasts you need consider no one and consult no one but yourself” – C. S. Lewis’ Dr. Ransom


      Optimistically, I make something like six dollars per hour of actual work as an adjunct English professor. I’m sure people close to me are sick of hearing about this by now, but I keep hoping that someone somewhere will someday do something about this. As a result of my low wages, my fiancé and I share a car that she pays for entirely because she is incredibly generous and makes a little bit (read: about five times) more than I do. Once in a while, our schedules become so convoluted that there is no possible way for us to share the car and both get to our destinations. On one particular day, I was going to have a formal informal meeting with one of my bosses. With the vague idea that my fiancé had an appointment of some kind, I ended up suggesting a lunch meeting at a location close to the place we work. This location also happens to be fairly close to where I live. By fairly close, I mean a little over two miles.