The Custom House--Force and Guile in Samson Agonistes

Bringing Down the House: Force and Guile in Milton's Samson Agonistes (Extended Conversation w/Penelope Anderson)

August 3, 2013
75:53 minutes (69.48 MB)

Radio Cut (31:34 m)

On this episode of The Custom House we'll investigate the claims of Milton's Samson as he argues his holy dispensation as a divine right to be violent and deceitful in marriage as in war.

In this episode of The Custom House we turn to 17th century English poet John Milton for an assessment of love and marriage, or perhaps of lust and betrayal as presented in his play Samson Agonistes published in 1671. On hand to assist us in this is Penelope Anderson an assistant professor in the English Department here at Indiana University whose research aims to show the longstanding historical intersections between the legal and conceptual frameworks of political prisoner, slave, and subjected woman, in order to reveal a new genealogy of human rights articulated in their suspension.

This extended cut includes two more readings of the text. One is a back-and-forth between Samson and Dalila, lines 732-996; the other comprises lines 1629-1659 where a messenger describes Samson pulling down the pillars supporting the “theatre” (in Milton’s word; the biblical word is “house”).

Episode 3 of The Custom House: Theocracy & Dystopia in The Handmaid's Tale

The Custom House - Theocracy and Dystopia (Extended Conversation w/Purnima Bose)View Edit

Artist: WFHB
Title: Theocracy and Dystopia (Extended Conversation w/Purnima Bose)
Album: The Custom House
Comment: copyright (c) 2013 Bloomington
Length: 32:36 minutes (29.85 MB)

This week we discuss how Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale demonstrates how easily modern America might become a truly repressive theocracy. The extended cut includes a review of the plot of the novel as well as a discussion of the cultural milieu in which Atwood composed the narrative. There is also a brief discussion of how the movie adaptation with Natasha Richardson, Aidan Quinn and Robert Duvall alters the book's ending.

America is a land founded on commercial ventures intended to gather in the riches of a virgin land but also upon the Puritan plan to set up a theocratic state. In this episode of The Custom House Purnima Bose, a professor in the International Studies Department of Indiana University, discusses how Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale demonstrates how easily modern America can become a truly repressive theocracy.

My Radio Show and Podcast: The Custom House

I am hosting a radio show and podcast on WFHB, community radio, in Bloomington, IN, called The Custom House that will air on Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. through August and continue as a podcast.

The first show aired June 1 and can be downloaded here: Babo's Razor.  This show is about our inability to see through our cultural "blinders" even when there's a razor at our throats.  The fiction that illustrates this for us is Melville's novella, "Benito Cereno."  My guest was Jonathan Elmer of Indiana University.

The second show aired June 8 (has yet to be posted) and featured biographer Christoph Irmscher.  We discussed his book Louis Agassiz: The Creator of American Science.  In one part of our discussion Irmscher details a letter that Agassiz wrote discussing Psalm 8 saying the Psalmist's view is in error as he did not know that the mind of the scientist would bring Man closer to realizing God in himself.

This weekend, June 15, I'll talk with Purnima Bose (International Studies at IU) about Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.  We examine the "template" of theocratic totalitarianism that lives just below the surface in America.

Much more to come including shows on photography, environmentalism (Rachel Carson), moral machines, Sylvia Plath, Robert Browning, Autobiography, Herman Melville (Hershel Parker), Hannah Arendt (Eichmann in Jerusalem), Women and the Law and much more.