Hey,

Ok - if we're going to take sides here's where I fall.

I am not in good conscience going to be able to align myself with the metaphysicals as such... but I don't quite feel that the Power vs. Love distinction is fairly/accurately encapsulated in contrasting Hobbes vs. Milton/Metaphysicals. The reason I say this is because if you read Hobbes as philosophy he's not really prescribing an open mandate for a will2power type of thing, he uses his arguments as a basis on which to propound a prescription of mutuallly assured and calculated restraint - that is, of social contract.
The way I see it, the lines feel like they should be drawn something more along the lines of:

Milton's Satan vs. Hobbes vs. Metaphysicals/Milton(maybe?.. i'm not wholly sold that he didnt mean to portray Satan as a hero)

...wherein Milton's Satan we can align with notions like power, selfhood, free-will, choice etc. and wherein hobbes represents something more like social contract & reason and wherein the metaphysicals represent love etc.

anyway... along those lines I'm definately going to take the power side, but in doing so I hesitate to associate myself with Hobbes. Rather, I'll say I take the power side and identify my stance with Milton's Satan...

so for what it's worth... I stand with Satan.... :0P


Terra, thanks - I'll check that link/reference out as soon as I get a chance. When I was suggesting that we shouldn't be too concernced with authorial intent I was thinking something along the lines of the postmodern postulate re: indeterminacy & alogocentricity of language/meaning etc... specifically I was thinking of Roland Barthes' Essay "The Death of the Author"... it's fascinating & excellent and included in both the Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, and in the Critical Theory Since Plato Anthology ... both of which are sometimes used for English 360 & 366... anyway here's a wikipedia link on it if it interests: The Death of The Author.
The critical gaze that the essay comes from is pretty well smack-opposite that of the formalist tradition, so your reference should be pretty interesting if it's saying a similar deal.

See you in class tomorrow...

All Good Things,
B.