Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Dec 5, 2009, at 11:46 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > Other candidates for beginnings and endings.
>
> Maybe as a Miltonian this is all second nature, but isn't the opening
> of Paradise Lost pretty damned great?
>
> And "Call me Ishmael" isn't too shabby either.
The opening of PL is indeed powerful. What I like about the ones I mentioned is the way in which they shock the mind. The switich from "grave discourse" to who fucks who, and the relationship btween narrator & reader forced by realizing that "universally acknowledge" includs YOU, the reader.
I had forgotten Melville's opening. That is a shocker too -- and peerforms about the same task Austen's opening does, and individuating of the reader.
Bentley, in his editorial rescuing of Milton from some supposed villanous scribe, notes that there is something 'wrong' with the final of the poem: "solitary way"! No he says, "SOCIAL way." But Milton is emphasizing the way 'individuals' operating 'outside' of history must by an act of will form social relations. Adam & Eve get married about three time. (The parting in Boox 9 is in a sense a 'new' marriage, being established on new ground, reached after long debate.)
Carrol
>
> Doug
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