First real class on Spenser, with attention to Milton

Published: Jan. 23, 2011, 7:29 p.m.

b'This is the first real class of the semester.\\xa0 We think a little bit about what allegory would mean, for Spenser and for Milton, by starting out with a reading of Milton\'s Sonnet 23 ("Methought I saw my late espous\\xe9d saint") -- the allegorical appearance of love, sweetness, goodness in her person.\\xa0 In Spenserian and Miltonic allegory, it\'s not that figures who are present represent abstractions: it\'s that abstraction becomes present as and in the other person.\\xa0 Sort of Levinasian, though I don\'t say so in the Podcast.'