The Tenth International Milton Symposium: August 22-26, 2011
Image from IMS10
I don't recall that I've mentioned this before, but I submitted a proposal back in early September to present a paper at the Tenth International Milton Symposium (IMS10), to be held in Tokyo from August 22-26, 2011. As things should happen to turn out, my proposal has been accepted. A recent email confirms:
Thank you for your proposal for a paper to be read at the tenth International Milton Symposium, which has now been considered by members of the Programme Committee. I am pleased to inform you that it has been accepted for inclusion in the programme. Apologies for the slightly tardy response to your submission. See you in Tokyo!I didn't notice any tardiness on their part (I was the one who applied late), but time flies by quickly for me, so fast that another email appeared only a few days later, offering two links:
Please review your names and paper titles now posted on the IMS10 web site here . . . . Also please view the list of plenary speakers for the conference here. We will have the titles for the plenary talks posted soon.If you've clicked on the "names and paper titles," you'll have seen mine:
Milton's 'Awkward' Grecism: "know" with Nominative Participle - Horace Jeffery Hodges, Ewha Womans University, SeoulSome Gypsy Scholar readers might recall that I was looking into this very issue within the past few months (also here). Now that the proposal has been accepted, I reckon I'll have to look into the issue a little bit more.
The last time I posted on this, I was led astray by the erring, errant, arrant, slytherin, pre-Adamitic serpent . . .
Labels: Adam and Eve, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Serpent
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 4:06 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
I'll have to look into the issue a little bit more
Meanwhile you can even improve the theme: Milton's and Popeye's Awkward Grecisms.
Joking aside... in Tokyo, wo-o-o-www! "Vai, sei tutti noi!" (lit.: Go! You're the all of us!)
Tokyo's not so far from Seoul . . . but a lot more expensive (as my longsuffering wife was just a moment ago pointing out).
Jeffery Hodges
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Anyway Milton's "know-eating" formula is not the worst thing one can do to Biblical language. I am right now reading an esoteric book according to which Noah's "Arca" (Ark) was a contracted form for "Arcangelo" (Archangel).
:-D
That, however, could become the subject matter to a real essay / lecture of yours, the more so as your degree thesis was on Gnosticism: The importance of the sound of words in the development of religious concepts. Or, would it be trivial?
Sounds like it would be a lecture on the history of error . . .
Jeffery Hodges
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Well, something more than that, I think.
The Greek Church Fathers thought that "Pascha" (Easter) came from "pascho" (to suffer) and, all in all, it wasn't an error from a theological point of view.
In the Gnostic master Valentine's cosmogony, a great importance [hope I remember correctly] was attached to a female entity called Sigé, i.e. Silence, but of course it depended on the Greek word being feminine. In Italian "Silenzio" is a masculine one.
Or, think of the issue of the Woman's heel crushing the Serpent's head in the Catholic tradition --- just, in Genesis it was written that "he / it" i.e. the Seed would crush it. Etc. etc.
One more very famous example: the tree of Knowledge of good and evil, "arbor mali" in Latin, which could be back-translated as "apple tree". Even Milton, who could read the Bible in Hebrew, accepted this picture!
In the Orthodox tradition, there's the seraphic icon of "Blessed Silence."
Jeffery Hodges
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Actually, Milton considered the fruit a peach.
Just do a search on my blog for "peach" -- you'll find a lot.
Jeffery Hodges
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Very intriguing! Especially because the source is a scholar whose name is Applebaum = Apple Tree! Is he trying to show that it was not his fault?
As I mentioned somewhere in the Milton-L website, according to the Italian scholar Roberto Sanesi, the fruit was a tropical psychotropic one (psychotropical!?), about which Milton could have read in some report from the New World.
This bring us back to the issue of language. In fact, some opinions about the Fruit are based on its shape, features, location (a banana, a pomegranate...), but the most 'convincing' ones are based on a wordplay (apple, peach).
Now, it would perhaps be interesting to find a wider range of 'awkward Grecisms' in PL, besides the verbal structures. The most obvious one being the use of masculine / feminine words where English would simply have "it". And, the BIGGEST Grecism being the poem itself: a heroic saga like Homer's, but in a very different (Christian) context. That's why some very religious and some very anti-religious readers find PL to be 'awkward'...
icon of "Blessed Silence"
Probably the most mysterious icon. I read an essay by Paul Evdokimov.
I don't think that Milton considered the tree psychotropic. I think that he considered the tree sacred until touched, when it became impure.
I've written on this, too.
Jeffery Hodges
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We could use a bit of silence . . . in this noisy world.
Jeffery Hodges
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