Thanks to many colleagues for this wonderful thread. I've been in and
out of town lately and have only been able to do gathering, no
hunting, but I can already see that this important and deeply serious
and illuminating discussion will keep me busy for a long time when I
get back into the real time of my supposed retirement. It's a
privilege to be on this list. Gratefully, Harry
>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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