On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 14:24:29 -0500 tom bishop <[log in to unmask]> writes:
> >About giants.
> >
> >Satan in PL is 36 feet high or so ("many a rood").
>
> If a Norwegian pine the size of a ship's mast is "but a wand" to
> Satan's spear, then he's a hell of a lot higher than 36 feet.
Following the description of his shield, the size of Satan and his spear
has to be intentionally ambiguous. The shield is large like the moon
viewed through a telescope, which in a sense is as small as the eyepiece.
But if you take the comparison with the moon literally, you have to know
how big the moon really is (or guess) and then adjust everything else to
scale. This would, of course, make the mast and tree descriptions absurd
understatements. What we really seem to be getting from Milton is the
meaninglessness of scale and proportion terms without a standard to
relate them to. The angels compose "af forest huge of spears . . . of
depth immeasurable." The futility of trying to pin down the sizes is
clearest at the end of the book when the whole crew "In bigness to
surpass Earth's Giant Sons" (how big were they?) shrinks to "less than
smallest dwarfs (how small?), in narrow room throng numberless, like the
Pigmean Race . . . or Faery Elves." (Of course, if you side with
Professor Tolkien on elves, they were not short at all, but taller than
most men.) Finally we are told that the "incorporeal Spirits to smallest
forms / Reduc'd thir shapes immense, and were at large (ha ha!) / Though
without number still. . ." Pandaemonium is huge, but its occupants have
to become small to fit into it. The last lines about the Seraphs and
Cherubims, who are "in thir own dimensions like themselves," make the
joke hard to miss: this is a Derridean hell with infinite chains of empty
signifiers. The same point is made when Satan infects Eve with the desire
"to know" without any clear object or purpose ever specified. -Dan Knauss
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