>I agree!
>Anne, your comment is lethal and beautiful. How do you get the time? tpr
>
>[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> 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.
>> >
--
Meredith Anne Skura
Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English
English Department MS-30
Rice University
6100 South Main St
Houston, Texas 77005-1892
713/348/2467 (phone and voice-mail)
713/348/5991 (fax)
|