"Downcast eyes" on a "downward path to wisdom" :: reading Milton s "darkness visible" through a derridean perspective
AUTOR(ES)
Miriam Piedade Mansur Andrade
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO
2006
RESUMO
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 vison/blindness. To establish the contextualization for the dialogue on this issue, Martin Jay s book Dowcast Eyes serves as a far-reaching guide fron the early allusions on sight up to poststructuralist/posmodern 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 "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.
ASSUNTO(S)
estruturalismo (análise literária) teses. milton, john, 1608-1674. paradise lost crítica e interpretação teses metáfora teses derrida, jacques, 1930- memoirs of the blind teses percepção visual na literatura teses reformulação de texto (literatura) teses jay, martin, 1944- downcast eyes teses pos-modernismo (literatura) teses. semiótica e literatura teses.
