Baby steps: I submitted a proposal to an MLA panel based on an idea about Paradise Lost and Oroonoko I've harbored for quite a while. My proposal was rejected, but I remain convinced that the basic premise is sound and original. I hope to churn out an essay sooner rather than later. I'm currently working on another conference abstract. This one I'll post here once I complete a rough draft--it's so weird and idiosyncratic that I don't think anyone could make enough sense of it to steal it.
For now, though, I transcribe what is one of the meatiest, wittiest (yes, meaty and witty!) sentences I've read in a long time. From James Nohrnberg, "Paradise Regained by One Greater Man": "The reflection of bodily well-being and whole-being in the cognate flesh of the mother calls the ego to the periphery of a diffuse romance pleasance; the outlines of the object call into being the coddled or self-boiled entity of the ego as body and subject."
It's the "coddled or self-boiled" part that kills me.
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6 comments:
I'm a Nohrnberg fan, but I have no idea what that sentence means.
I'm not 100% sure either, but it's like an awesome Freud-Frye mashup + an egg/ego joke.
The sentence means that retreat into pleasant dreams, and, during sleep (or under assault), regression to the so called "fetal position," betokens the "sleep" of the foetus in the womb ("back to the womb and hot chocolate"), and the less than wholly sculpted or articulated physique of the unborn, are images and a kind of sign of a similarly not yet well defined ego or blurring identity: which nonetheless gets a feeling for its having a shape and outline (or structure) from the shell-like exterior or boundaries of the objects on the non-proprioceptive margins of perception. There's something in there about the ubiquitous and yoke-like 'we-all-look-alike' sunny smile button. : )
Anonymous should have said:
The sentence means that retreat into pleasant dreams, and, during sleep (or under assault), regression to the so called "fetal position," betokening the "sleep" of the foetus in the womb ("back to the womb and hot chocolate"), and the less than wholly sculpted or articulated physique of the unborn, are both images and a kind of sign of a similarly not yet well defined ego or blurring or blurred or yet-to-be individuated identity: which nonetheless gets a feeling for its having a shape and outline (or structure) from the shell-like exterior or boundaries of the objects on the non-proprioceptive margins of perception. There's something in there about the ubiquitous and yoke-like 'we-all-look-alike' sunny smile button. : )
Anonymous should have added:
The hero of Paradise Regained, on the pinnacle of the temple, "said [he was Satan's Lord], and stood"--so before he finished speaking he may possibly have been crouching (or going on all fours), and not yet have taken full possession of his identity as the Son; only when he has finished speaking and has then stood up has he fully declared himself and exhibited his newly earned (or matured) autonomy.
I think "self-boiled" should be "soft-boiled." The cited author is apparently the victim of poor proof-reading, no?
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