New Books and a Thesis Topic

I just got a whole bunch of new books in the mail today. I wish everyday could begin with new books in the mail. If I were really rich, I would have to think long and hard about whether I'd rather have a new book everyday or a bottle of wine everyday. On the other hand, if I were really really rich, I guess I could have both! Time to start selling my masterpiece for incredible sums of money. Oh, wait, I guess I still haven't magically written anything in my sleep. I should start having Aleah do some automatic writing for me for inspiration.

Now for the important stuff, the books:

The new(ish) Modern Library Milton

Geoffrey Hill's Selected Poems

Geoffrey Hill's Collected Critical Writings

Those are the big ones. I got some other books recently, such as Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being and a couple of Cambridge Companions (one to Woolf and one to Milton), and I finally got my hands on Upholding Mystery (really nice hardback--much better than the ratty one I got through interlibrary loan a couple years ago).

That Milton is a beast of a book. I shouldn't have to choose between it and figuring out what I'm going to teach my kiddies tomorrow; it's really unfair.

Now, why all these books? Well, I've basically decided on a thesis topic, but before I get there, I have to give some back story.

I believe all areas of our lives should be based on that which is most central to our worldview. To some extent we can't help but have this be the case, but in another way we do have to try to unify our thoughts. For me, as a Christian raised in a Christian household, I will naturally have a tendency toward a Christian way of doing things and thinking about things, but because of my imperfections (which are few of course ;) I am not 100% consistent in my thoughts and actions. A person, on the other hand, whose most core beliefs revolve around something else, such as politics, will naturally drift toward a way of thinking about all things from his political perspective. Noam Chomsky, for instance, is adamant about his political viewpoint, which is communism (according to Chomsky, not to me), and we see echoes of that communism in his linguistic theories. He cannot, no matter how much he may say otherwise or may try otherwise, totally divorce those two important aspects of his life. For me, I cannot divorce my Christianity totally from my study of English literature, nor would I want to. What I want to do, in fact, is figure out how I can be more consistent in my thinking about literature so that it lines up exactly with with my understanding of my faith. This means finding a "Christian" way to study literature. I don't mean by "Christian way," a method that looks for Christian themes in literature. What I do mean must be framed in a question: How can I read literature in a way that is consistent with scripture and in a way that does not disregard my faith as a hindrance, but, rather, a way that regards my faith as essential to a proper understanding of literature?

Now, that being said, I have decided to pursue an answer to that question in my thesis, but I wanted to ground my theorizing in something concrete, an author's work, and what contemporary poet could possibly be better suited to this kind of work than Geoffrey Hill? Why the books on Milton then? Well, partly because I just really like him, but more importantly because Hill draws on Milton more than any other writer that I'm aware of. Also, in Hill and Milton I see two artists trying to come to terms in their poetry (and their criticism) with exactly the same sort of thing I'm trying to come to terms with--how do faith and art relate to one another?

Finally, I am particularly interested in an aesthetic theory that takes into account the way a reader experiences the art as well as the way an artist experiences his own art in terms of this faith I have been talking about. What does this theory look like? I have no idea, and that's why I'm so excited to start writing and reading about it. If anyone has any ideas or recommendations, I'd love to hear them.