The Prescribed Satisfaction of An Irrational Heat

I found Milton's Doctrine and Dsicipline of Divorce not only surprisingly easy to engage but downright pleasant to read. Though I don't have a great deal of time now to discuss my thoughts in any length worthy of the text, I do wish to highlight a few segments I found particularly intriguing:

1) the allegorical figures of error (a "blind and serpentine body" (697) lacking a head) and custom (a face without a body). I must admit that I'm not quite sure how to approach this fantastically grotesque pairing, but I am deeply impressed with it.

2)Milton's argument against those who, when failing to defame the text, attempt to attack the author. This notion of the text--man's intellectual baby, according to Aeropagitica--being a distinct entity, divorced in many aspects from its author (or from the sins of its father, rather) opens up ways to talk about how authorial power, intent, and contamination in relation to book production might have been conceptualized in the seventeenth century.

3) the linking of occurrences in "personal," internal world of home and family with the health and well-being of the state. In relation to this, the proclamation of Britain as a leader in innovation and liberation--a historical identity as that which is responsible for "teaching nations how to live" (701)--and therefore as a necessary supporter of charitable divorces. Also, Milton's statement concerning his usage of the English tongue to convey his message when, he writes, "[i]t might perhaps more fitly have been written in another tongue" (702).

4) The dichotomy that Milton creates between intellectual "textualists" and common men of common sense and good heart.

This is, of course, an adumbration of forthcoming, more detailed interaction. Something to think about in the meantime, however.