I writed a paragraph.
That's not a big deal. I have, altogether, written hundreds if not thousands of paragraphs since I've been working on Milton. Today I got my draft down from sixty pages to about forty, and need to shorten it some more. (This is not the first draft that has come out at sixty pages. I completely threw that one out and have a new thesis now. WHY am I not writing my dissertation on Milton again? Oh yea. I want to be a medievalist. And do this all over again with a work that was not written in modern English. or, actually, several of them. whimper.)
but just now, I think I wrote the very last paragraph that will appear in the body of teh paper proper. What comes next is conclusion; I might finally actually be within sight of the end of this motherfucker. (This, by the way, is why those of you who offered to read it over have not received it. I keep thinking I'm almost done and it keeps on not being true). So, in celebration, here is the LAST MOTHERFUCKING PARAGRAPH before I start CONCLUDING.
The result of his heterosexualized coupling is Death, whose formlessness is a central characteristic:
The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.
(II.666-673)
It is hard to say where his body begins and ends; it is equally hard to say if he possesses any form at all. Instead, his body, or his image, is a collection of analogies and similes; it can only seem rather than register as an entity with a proper form, body, or substance. His generation links hetero desire with insuperable division, parturition with violence, heterosex with rape, and appetite with insatiety..The amorphous horror that is Death foreshadows Raphael’s description of angelic bodies. Where angels mix in individual bodies that nevertheless allow mutual and collateral interpenetration, making love without “obstacle . . . / Of membrane, joynt, or limb” (VIII.624-625), Death’s shapeless form is not “[d]istinguishable in member, joynt, or limb” (II.668). Unconstrained mixing becomes incest as Satan copulates with his own progeny; unhierarchized mingling becomes violence as Sin’s offspring rapes his own mother; the melting together of unencumbered bodies becomes gnawing and tearing as Sin and Death produce animalistic offspring that chew Sin’s bowels; parity give way to an endless power struggle. In Death, desire becomes lack, and “no satiety” (cite) becomes eternal famine (cite). Death’s undifferentiated body -- created and driven by unmoderated appetites, intrinsically volatile -- devolves. The angelic fall is figured as divided self, and that division is literalized in the fixity of female gender to the body of Sin. And when humanity’s error of intemperance allows death into the world, death becomes the only means to unfix the human body, Christ the only means to restore order to the rational soul.
(you cannot stealz it because it is forthcoming, and because the above comparison has already been cited in print with my name on it. )
but just now, I think I wrote the very last paragraph that will appear in the body of teh paper proper. What comes next is conclusion; I might finally actually be within sight of the end of this motherfucker. (This, by the way, is why those of you who offered to read it over have not received it. I keep thinking I'm almost done and it keeps on not being true). So, in celebration, here is the LAST MOTHERFUCKING PARAGRAPH before I start CONCLUDING.
The result of his heterosexualized coupling is Death, whose formlessness is a central characteristic:
The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.
(II.666-673)
It is hard to say where his body begins and ends; it is equally hard to say if he possesses any form at all. Instead, his body, or his image, is a collection of analogies and similes; it can only seem rather than register as an entity with a proper form, body, or substance. His generation links hetero desire with insuperable division, parturition with violence, heterosex with rape, and appetite with insatiety..The amorphous horror that is Death foreshadows Raphael’s description of angelic bodies. Where angels mix in individual bodies that nevertheless allow mutual and collateral interpenetration, making love without “obstacle . . . / Of membrane, joynt, or limb” (VIII.624-625), Death’s shapeless form is not “[d]istinguishable in member, joynt, or limb” (II.668). Unconstrained mixing becomes incest as Satan copulates with his own progeny; unhierarchized mingling becomes violence as Sin’s offspring rapes his own mother; the melting together of unencumbered bodies becomes gnawing and tearing as Sin and Death produce animalistic offspring that chew Sin’s bowels; parity give way to an endless power struggle. In Death, desire becomes lack, and “no satiety” (cite) becomes eternal famine (cite). Death’s undifferentiated body -- created and driven by unmoderated appetites, intrinsically volatile -- devolves. The angelic fall is figured as divided self, and that division is literalized in the fixity of female gender to the body of Sin. And when humanity’s error of intemperance allows death into the world, death becomes the only means to unfix the human body, Christ the only means to restore order to the rational soul.
(you cannot stealz it because it is forthcoming, and because the above comparison has already been cited in print with my name on it. )