21. In Paradise Lost we see Milton trying to incorporate the cosmological revolution, speculate about these new worlds, but also retreating
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Replying to @HeerJeet
22. Milton almost wrote science fiction - certainly fantastical elements of Paradise Lost are close - but retreated into theological fiction
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23. Donne was arguably more radical than Milton: someone who dared to think through the cosmological revolution.
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24. My thoughts on Donne shaped by William Empson's controversial 1957 essay "Donne the Space Man" (in his Essays on Renaissance Literature)
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24. Now, Empson was both a very great literary critic and a very eccentric, even loopy, guy. Here's a photo:pic.twitter.com/kCUU6qkH5P
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25. Empson's argument: When young, Donne deeply shaped by cosmological revolution, wondered about how space aliens would know Christ
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26. Empson: Donne "was interested in getting to another planet...he brought the idea into practically all his best love-poems."
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27. Empson reads Donne's love poems as science fiction: lovers are on another world, where man is a new Christ.
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28. Important innovation: in earlier poetry, lover could be like Christ. In Donne, on new planet, lover is a Christ.Each planet has a Christ
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29. With Empson in mind, read Donne's "The Good-Marrow": http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173360
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30. "Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world.. and is one."
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Replying to @HeerJeet
31. In some manuscripts, looks like Donne's "one world" is "our world" -- which supports Empson even more, I think.
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32. If Empson is right, the young Donne was deeply heretical: Christ was not unique, "ever planet could have its Incarnation"
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