προαιρεῖσθαί τε δεῖ ἀδύνατα εἰκότα μᾶλλον ἢ δυνατὰ ἀπίθανα What is convincing though impossible should always be preferred to what is p...

Paradiso 32 comes across as dry and devoid of embellishment when compared with the cantos immediately preceding and the stunning final can...

The Genesis of Desire , a reading of some of the best known stories of Genesis with Avivah Zornberg. Scots-born Zornberg brings a lot to her...

The natural language and ordering of the world as found in Adam and Eve's morning orison, and in Raphael's description of the system...

Latent in Milton's rendering of Paradise in PL V is a richly imagined understanding of the world, humanity, the creator, and the purpos...

Prometheus bound, Laconian black-figure amphoriskos C6th B.C., Vatican City Museums PROMETHEUS was the  Titan god  of forethought and cr...

But  wherfore  all night long shine these, for whom This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes? Eve's question leads to a pa...

Apropos the deep association of silliness and philosophy, Mussy points us to this essay by Simon Critchley . A snippet: "What is ...

As we found yesterday with regard to I Corinthians 11 , it's less easy to "follow" Paul, to read him, than it first might seem...

After situating mankind vis a vis the other living creatures,  Paradise Lost turns to the relation of the sexes in  IV.300 ff : Not equal, ...

Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was all of 23 in 1486 when he published his  900 Theses to the world, proposing to defend them against ...

PL IV 288 ff: Two of far nobler shape erect and tall, Godlike erect, with native Honour clad In naked Majestie seemd Lords of all, [ 290 ]...

In a preceding post, ("The Air Jordan of English Poetry") we looked somewhat closely at an instance where a poetic hairball of al...

If time permits, when we get to Eve's account of her memory of her beginning, we might want to compare it with that of Adam. Adam's ...