As many of you know, my main speciality is John Milton (1608-1674), the author of Paradise Lost, a writer of genius, and a thinker on liberty whose impact on American democracy would be hard to over-calculate. As I gear up for the next semester, I’ve placed the following text by the side of my office door:
How can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hidebound humor which he calls his judgment?
from Areopagitica
Last year on my door, Milton said these words in favor of Glamser and Stringer, but the tenure issue remains.
quote: Originally posted by: foot soldier "Too bad that it is slightly too long for a t-shirt. No quarter AND no frick'n hidebound humor!"
Actually, I've got quite a nice collection of Milton quote teeshirts from the biennial John Milton Conference up at MTSU, which is nationally and even internationally attended. The one from 1995 is particularly appropriate: "To create/ Is greater than created to destroy" (Paradise Lost 3.606-607).