{"id":24491,"date":"2014-04-08T10:34:34","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T14:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=24491"},"modified":"2014-04-08T10:53:58","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T14:53:58","slug":"on-john-milton-and-reading-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2014\/04\/on-john-milton-and-reading-blood\/","title":{"rendered":"On John Milton and "Reading Blood""},"content":{"rendered":"

By: \u00a0Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

On the south parapet of Blegen Library are carved these words from John Milton\u2019s Areopagitica <\/i>written in 1644:<\/p>\n

For books are not absolutely dead things<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>But do contain a potencie of life in them<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>To be as active as those whose progeny they are.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"JohnMilton (1608-1674) is one of the greatest poets and essayists in the English language.\u00a0 The quote, which is part of his work condemning censorship and pleading for free speech, is part of the architectural design in the library, which opened as the University of Cincinnati\u2019s Main Library in 1930.\u00a0 Intended to inspire students and scholars, they are words meant both to establish the primacy of books and the written word in human culture and to draw the reader within the building to explore, to learn, to consider, and to share knowledge.<\/p>\n

The Department of English and Comparative Literature sends this information for a lecture this Friday at 1:00 pm in 814 Blegen, the Schott Seminar Room in the Archives & Rare Books Library:<\/p>\n

\u00a0This Friday, April 11, John Rumrich will be on campus to give a talk called \u201cReading Blood.\u201d In a talk that will focus on Milton (1608-1674), he will be exploring the issue that he calls the \u201cpersonhood of a book.\u201d We talk freely about books as friends\u2014or enemies\u2014and assign various kinds of agency to them, but what do we really mean by that?\u00a0 Milton\u2019s defines \u201cA good Booke\u201d as \u201cthe precious life-blood of a master spirit imbalm\u2019d and treasur\u2019d up on purpose to a life beyond life.\u201d\u00a0 But this definition has never really been satisfactorily explained.\u00a0 Perhaps his definition has been so often quoted or engraved on library walls that it seems too obvious and familiar to require a gloss. Yet the equation between \u201ca good book\u201d and \u201clifeblood,\u201d specifically the \u201clifeblood of a master spirit\u201d implies a question, at least to the literal-minded: what does it mean to read blood? <\/b><\/p>\n

\"Areopagitica\"John Rumrich is the Thaman Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches Milton, Shakespeare, and Seventeenth Century Poetry. The author of Milton Unbound<\/i> and Matter of Glory<\/i>, he has recently co-edited a collection of essays on Milton and Heresy and the Norton Critical Edition of Seventeenth Century British Poetry. He has been a visiting scholar in China and was interviewed on NPR for Milton\u2019s 400th birthday. While he is in Cincinnati, he will be doing research on the Archives & Rare Books Library\u2019s anthropodermically-bound edition of Phillis Wheatley\u2019s poetry.<\/b><\/p>\n

Professor Rumrich\u2019s lecture is free and open to the UC community and to the public.\u00a0 After his talk, a tour will be offered of Blegen Library and its extensive architectural elements that extol the heritage of education and the history of the book, which includes the Milton quote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: \u00a0Kevin Grace On the south parapet of Blegen Library are carved these words from John Milton\u2019s Areopagitica written in 1644: For books are not absolutely dead things But do contain a potencie of life in them To be as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[814,67,52],"class_list":["post-24491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-events","tag-rare-books","tag-uc-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}