Review of "V for Vendetta"

Classfellow Iain brought this review of V for Vendetta by an Office Hour. He was captivated, as I became also, by the audacity of these closing lines:

Will audiences follow him, cheering the implicit detonation of America's institutions? Or will they find it all a bit...jejune? Coming out of V for Vendetta, a friend of mine called it ''radical'' and ''subversive.'' He was awestruck with disbelief that a film with a harlequin terrorist as its hero could actually be released by a major American studio. I was awestruck at his naïveté in a world where fight-the-power anarchy is now marketed as a fashionable identity statement — by the corporations that helped raise a generation on bands like Rage Against the Machine, by the armchair-leftist
bloggers who flog the same righteousness day after day. V for Vendetta has a playful-demon vitality, but it's designed to let political adolescents of every age congratulate themselves. It's rage against the machine by the machine.

Notwithstanding, of course, the Hobbsean characteristic of the film, & its modern personification of the Seventeenth Century's famous son, Guy Fawkes, makes it more than worth our viewing of it.
(With a tug of the forelock to the Presentation from wednesday's seminar that traces the Milton-Metaphysicals Love theme through the film.)

Class at "The Libertine"?

I've heard that several of our class are going to see The Libertine this coming Wednesday, April 5th at Station Square Cinema in Metrotown at 7:05. Were the Instructor to attend it would be an unnofficial class get-together, following our end-of-term seminar. Please continue your good attendance this term in the final week: the wrap-up will be enjoyable - remember your own assignment for the last class & I'll remember the pigeon pie ....

Hobbes in Current American Politics & Pop Lit

That one is on a productive course of study is confirmed when illustrations of the central intellectual theme pop up in accidental encouters.

In today's Los Angeles Times, the Secretary of State during Bill Clinton's presidency, Madeleine Albright, has an article attacking the current American president, George W. Bush. The point of the polemic blames Mr. Bush for not applying the principles of Leviathan to his foreign policy.

But hope is not a policy. In the short term, we must recognize that the region will be shaped primarily by fairly ruthless power politics in which the clash between good and evil will be swamped by differences between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, Arab and Kurd, Kurd and Turk, Hashemite and Saudi, secular and religious and, of course, Arab and Jew.

Note that this anti-Bush article, from a prominent Clinton cabinet member, begins here by saying, in effect, that Paradise Lost's values make bad foreign policy, and goes on, once again, to attack George W. Bush for not being Hobbsean.
Update: for a (pop) literary -- or, at least, artistic -- version of Albright's polemical position, consider this Doonesbury cartoon from G.B. Trudeau.

Mr. Trudeau is here referencing this influential article in the left-leaning Washinton Post mocking President Bush's second inaugural address: mocking him, in effect, for letting Miltonian idealism, rather than Hobbesian realpolitik, guide his approach to international affairs.
Here again, the Seventeenth Century dialectic between Love and Power is a stimulus to an artistic response. Does this conclude, then, that a progressive modern socialist politic is Hobbsean?

N.b. To be very clear here on the partisan politics, G.B. Trudeau is self-declared as a progressive -- i.e. Left Wing -- in his political views: he strongly opposes the coalition war in Iraq and the Death Penalty; and actively supports Homosexual marriage and abortion on demand. Moreover, Mr. Trudeau -- a vigourous supporter of Bill Clinton -- has a extremely strong and publically expressed antipathy to the Bush family: stemming, as I understand matters, from the Bushes and the Trudeaus belonging to rival fraternities at Yale University.

Counter-View to my Fear-Power Scale

I especially enjoy dialectic with fellow-scholars on the course material. Here is one class-fellow who emailed me his:

.... thoughts about Hobbes' representation of power and fear having an inverse
relationship. I disagree with this view and it is actually contadictory according to Hobbes' own axioms. Instead of those with power having less fear, they would and should and more fear because with power comes advantages and in turn the desires of others to have what you posess. Since everybody is seeking to fulfill their
own desires their is a natural "war" as everyone tries to get to top. Everyone is a position of power has to constantly worry about those below them that are trying to get what they have. In turn they have more to fear than the ones at the bottom, who possess nothing that anybody desires so therefore they have nothing to fear.

Final Paper: Criteria & Revised Due Date

First off, as compensation for Wednesday's folder malfunction I am revising the due date for the Term paper to Friday April 14th. I will add an upate this effect to the syllabus: all other requirements are absolutely unchanged.

The topic for the paper is open, within the context of the primary texts, to allow you to engage with any particular aspect of the material that has captured your keenest interest. If you find yourself with several aspects of the material having equal claims on your interest, or if you are uncertain about the level of thesis suitable to an upper-division course, you might consider the topics following:

1. Detail the characteristics of Seventeenth Century literature which give it a claim to uniqueness -- as you have come to understand it through our course engagement with the primary material. Use the summaries that I have posted here of the Century's literary features to guide your paper.
2. Both Leviathan and Paradise Lost are absolutist literary texts: both are themed to capture the reader's affirmation entirely. Characteristically of the present century, many of you judge both texts' absolutisms to be discomfortable exclusion, yet are satisfied with elements of both texts. Argue, then, for a new literary whole that (a.) contains the parts of Leviathan or Paradise Lost with which you agree but (b.) cannot be contradicted by any of the remaining parts of your chosen text which you leave out of your whole.

By all means see me well ahead of the (now extended) deadline to confirm the suitability of your paper topic or to discuss an outline or draught of a thesis paragraph.

Second Group Project Workshop

A reminder that we have time set aside for a final Group Project workshop in our second hour today.

Mid-Term Paper Grading

I have enjoyed reading and grading your mid-term papers very much. I will hand them back and discuss them in seminar this week, as promised. I learned a great deal, I received many fresh ideas and intriguing perspectives, and was very satisfied with the general ability to transmute into literary analysis the ideas which are the primary & defining characteristic of literature in the seventeenth century.

"The Libertine" - Ebert Review

Roger Ebert gives a customarily engaging and well-written -- & in this case, favourable -- review of The Libertine, here.

Update: the film is rated 18A. I suggest that we discuss in seminar this week the issues that this fact raises. Even Ebert, who charts very high on the permissivity index, writes of Wilmot that "The earl composes poetry of startling obscenity."

17th Century: Literature of Rhetoric & Ideas

In seminar this week I put in graphical form the main elements of our course and their inter-relationship.

1. Our overarching purpose is to gain a comprehensive understanding of literature as it was formed and operated in the Seventeenth Century.
2. We have three primary authors, supplemented by selections of poetry from the Metaphysicals: John Milton and Paradise Lost; Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan; and His Majesty Charles I and Eikon Basilike.
3. These three major authors represent three primary forms of literature in the Seventeenth Century: Milton, the poetic; Hobbes the dialectic; Charles the pamphleteering. (The dialectical mode continues the immensely popular tradition of, among others, Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiæ and Thomas à Kempis' De Imitatio Christi. Nb: I include for present purpose the devotional under the dialectical mode.)
4. Though different in form, all three writers are united by their use of, and supreme excellence in, the genus rhetoric, and by their intense engagement with ideas.
5. Furthermore, all three writers use the same rhetorical species, that being polemic. Seventeenth Century literature, is, in this view, a Battle of the Books (to use Jonathan Swift's title.)
6. By way of understanding, if the relationship between these three writers is looked at from the perspective of Paradise Lost, Milton is seen to be fighting a two-front war. Accordingly, to the degree which he attacks one side, he supports the other -- in the way that Third Reich Germany was effectively supporting England's war aims against it by diverting resources and attention from the Western to the Eastern front.
7. In Milton's case, the aspects of Paradise Lost aimed at countering Eikon Basilike's appeal to (a.) tradition & (b.) institution are de facto support for the Leviathan's basis in atomism and egalitarianism. And, of course, vice versa.
8. Note that, although the vulgar understanding has Leviathan as an argument for absolute rule and the supremacy of established authority, deeper attention shows that Hobbes founded his work of literature on a story of perfectly equal human beings each with absolute self-authority and individually-valid claim to absolutely everything. The Leviathan does indeed have infinite (in two senses of that word) power: but that only as a consequence of Hobbes' basic story of ethernally warring monads. By contrast, in the story that Eikon Basilike tells, the institution of Monarchy is founded in the nature of things, the Person of the Monarch is elevated by nature, and tradition is an independent, living, active proof.
9. In order to fight this two front polemic, this battle of the books, this biblio-war, Milton wrote Paradise Lost with epic literary design around two foundational principles: Free Will and Natural Kind, both detailed in lecture.
10. The unfashionable sound of these two principles to modern ears suggests that, on the historical view and in the social & political dimensions, Leviathan was the victor and Eikon Basilike & Paradise Lost the losers.
11. On the literary view, however, one may argue that it is Paradise Lost which claims the laurels ....

Attendance Thanks

My thanks for the good efforts in class participation. With the exception of this past Monday's lecture, attendance has been admirable -- even for seminar today under a variety of difficulties. Effort both noted & appreciated.

SFU student excellence: case # 097945

In the debate set up in seminar this past week between Milton's God and Milton's Satan, I noted several statements that revealed a strong engagement with the competing literary positions of our course authors. Here is an representative encapsulation of the opposing positions sent to me my email from from one of the seminar groups.

1. [Milton] "The virtue of choosing good is contingent upon temptation and rejection of evil."
2. [Hobbes] "Free will does not exist because we are always inclined to the good/beneficial. Since no one would freely choose a self-harming action, choice is simply a word associated with the related events that follow a given pattern of thought."

"The Libertine" - Class Movie Night(s)

The movie, mentioned earlier , on John Wilmot -- The Libertine -- is set for limited release next Friday.
As I read the list of weeknights we have available individually, Wednesday works best for the majority. We could have a Tuesday & a Wednesday class movie night if that works for a much larger number. We'll talk more in seminar next week.
Looks great!

SFU student excellence: case # 097931

Customary excellence from SFU's students exemplified in the "comments" to the previous post.
For any of us looking for a clearer understanding of the status of ideas in literature -- more immediately, how to read seventeenth century literature -- we could do far worse than to read these comments.

Reading Hobbes as Literature (Reminder)

This early post back in mid-January explained that our reading of Hobbes' Leviathan is a literary, not a philosophical, reading, and gave a sense of how a literary reading will proceed. Topic number one in our mid-term assignment directed just such a reading.

In response to hearing from a class-fellow who recounted past experience with professors who have advised a literary reading but then required a philosophical, I can say clearly that a "philosophical" reading is not in our purview.

To recapitulate, in a course, such as ours, designed to teach as full an understanding as possible of literature in the seventeenth century, an understanding of Leviathan is realistically indispensable. Hobbes practically personifies the essential polemical, intellectual, and political character of the seventeenth century and its writers: indeed, Hobbes would stand supreme among the century's literati, were it not for a rival writer who was equally polemical, intellectual and political .... being, of course, John Milton.

As we have learned, Hobbes' was widely read among seventeenth century literary public. Now to us, Hobbes may seem "philososphical." But that is simply because we have (without asking the writer himself) imprisoned Hobbes in a tiny area restrictively called "Philosophy Departments" where Leviathan is only read for the mechanics of it Ideas.

This is not, however, how Leviathan was read by ordinary seventeenth century readers. They read it -- as we are strongly advised to be reading it -- as literature: for its rhetoric, its humour, its characterisations, its plot, for what it might reveal of the person of its writer and his social context.

The thematic elements of Leviathan that do contain important ideas -- exactly as Paradise Lost or the poetry, say, of Henry Vaughan, contain important ideas -- will be detailed in lecture. Put directly, during your reading of Leviathan you do not need to worry in any way if the ideas may not be clear: nor will you be judged or disadvantaged in this course in any way should you not successfully engage the ideas in your reading of Leviathan.

The intention is for you to finish the course with a literary appreciation for, and understanding of, the Leviathan: as, I assume, is required of scholars of the century.