It's been a few days, but I'd like to reply to Ted's very unglib comment.
I have hesitated to put in my own two cents' worth, although I'm not sure
why--maybe the fear of losing friends? seeming too conservative? too
British despite my Irish ancestors in County Cork? Yes, reading people who
have done bad and even atrocious things is a real problem, but if I
couldn't live with cognitive and even moral dissonance I'd get out of the
humanities and into, say, astrophysics (those people study subjects they
can't do anything about). My response to this thread, aside from
depression, is double: first, there are no good guys from all points of
view. Mother Theresa was down on birth control, and has many who think
she's right; Jefferson owned slaves, which Aristotle would have found OK;
Thomas More helped put heretics to death, but their co-religionists were
to do the same to Catholics; Jacques Louis David helped with the Terror in
France (I could defend him, if asked, although many wouldn't); and if
Elizabeth had let the Spanish take over Ireland (which was one of her
fears) and then ally themselves with the Guise in France, the Reformation
in England might have been crushed--which of course many people then and
even fairly recently would have thought a good thing. I was recently
reading a facsimile of Elizabeth Singer, beautifully edited by Jennifer
Richards, and enjoying her vigorously feminist poetry (politically
correct) when I turned the page and there was a poem on King William III
congratulating him for killing lots and lots of England's enemies at the
Battle of the Boyne. Ouch. I don't mean to be an utter moral relativist,
but I do think that from one point of view Cecil and the queen could be
thought irresponsible if they did not try to protect themselves against
the possibility of the Spanish in Ireland. History is tragedy, and often
not just the first time but the repetition. I think Spenser knew this.
This does not exempt us from ethical judgment but for me it makes
judgments complicated. Second, I was dismayed to read one comment (I
forget whose) that taking pleasure from Spenser might be unethical. I see
the point, but it seems to me that the only reason this isn't like St.
Jerome on pagan literature--it is wrong to enjoy books by people who
believe in gods who are demons at worst and imaginary at best--is that
most of us don't mind pagans and do mind colonialism. We are in danger, I
suspect, of a political version of Puritanism: down on pleasure if there
is even a whiff of what we reject. We are also in danger of a certain
smugness. I wonder what awful things we are doing that seem just fine to
us at the moment. So I'm going to go right on taking pleasure from
Spenser, sypmathizing with Eizabeth's fears even as I remember what she
and Spenser did to the Irish. And I'll enjoy More even as I know he would
have wanted me killed. And enjoy, for that matter, the music of Henry VIII
who killed More. Sorry to natter on, but I really am discouraged. Anne
Prescott
> May I recommend a brief book that touches on many of the issues that
> have been raised recently. It's by Father Owen Lee and its title is
> Wagner: The Terrible Man and his Truthful Art. It's very brief, but
> it's well worth reading.
>
> Incidentally, if we decided to eliminate from our reading lists any
> works whose authors were in one way or another morally reprehensible,
> we'd have plenty of time to engage in other pursuits. I don't mean that
> to sound glib. It's a real problem for me.
>
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