Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity - Hardcover

Mintz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0874138221 ISBN 13: 9780874138221

Publisher: University of Delaware Press, 2003

Synopsis

'Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity' is a study of the challenge intersubjective experience poses to doctrinal formulations of difference. Focusing on 'Paradise Lost' and 'Samson Agonistes' and using feminist and relational psychoanalytic theory, the project examines representations of looking, working, eating, conversing, and touching, to argue that encounters between selves in 'threshold space' dismantle the binary oppositions that support categorical thinking. A key term throughout the study is recognition, defined as the capacity to tolerate both sameness and difference between separate selves. Recognition of likeness-in-difference thus undermines the exclusionary logic of patriarchal and poitical hierarchies. Both Eve and Dalila demonstrate the ability to respect the borders of the other while seeking out similarity, but where 'Paradise Lost' depicts the eventual achievements of intersubjective understanding between Adam and Eve after the fall, 'Samson Agonistes' records its failure when Samson, maintaining the boundaries of difference, refuses Dalila's effort to make contact.

About this title

About the Author

Susannah B. Mintz is Assistant Professor of English at Skidmore College

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Delaware Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0874138221
• ISBN 13: 9780874138221
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 259