| "Downcast Eyes" on a Downward Path to Wisdom Contributor(s): Mansur, Miriam (Author) |
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ISBN: 3639320581 ISBN-13: 9783639320589 Publisher: VDM Verlag OUR PRICE: $69.77 Product Type: Paperback Published: December 2010 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Language Arts & Disciplines | Literacy |
| Physical Information: 0.39" H x 6" W x 9" (0.56 lbs) 168 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In this study, the visual metaphors of John Milton's Paradise Lost are analyzed and read through the poststructuralist perspective of Jacques Derrida on the issue of vision/blindness. To establish the contextualization for the dialogue on this issue, Martin Jay's book Downcast Eyes serves as a far- reaching guide from the early allusions on sight up to a poststructuralist/postmodern view. A careful reading of the visual metaphors of Paradise Lost will prove that, in this epic poem of the seventeenth century, the dialectics of traditional philosophy on the issue of vision/blindness should be placed "under erasure" with the cancellation of the literal eye and the insertion of the figural "I". To attain such operation, I propose that the exercise of sight undergoes a process of interiorization that resembles the going inwardly through a "downward path to wisdom".I also propose that the abovementioned operation, the simultaneous cancellation of the eye and insertion of the "I", is accomplished in the epic through a "darkness visible" perspective in the establishment of an (in) stance in the matters of interpretation. |