"The Personification of Death in Paradise Lost and Elsewhere" - Keynote Address for A Collective Address to Death

Hannibal Hamlin
May 13, 2022
5:00PM - 7:00PM
18th Avenue Library Colloquium Space or via Zoom

Date Range
2022-05-13 17:00:00 2022-05-13 19:00:00 "The Personification of Death in Paradise Lost and Elsewhere" - Keynote Address for A Collective Address to Death Hannibal Hamlin is Professor of English and Interim Director of the Center for Studies in Religion at The Ohio State University. As Director of CSR, he organized a year of events related to death and dying, burial practices, and conceptions of the afterlife, the second half of a two-year project, "Living Well/ Dying Well," funded by a grant from the OSU Global Arts & Humanities Discovery Theme. A particular highlight was the two-day conference, The End of Life and What Comes Next: Perspectives from Healthcare, History, Anthropology, and Religion. A scholar of English Renaissance Literature and the influence of the English Bible, he is author of Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature, The Bible in Shakespeare, and editor of editions of early modern English Psalms as well as essay collections on literature, religion, and the Bible. He is designing a new English GE course on Death, a pilot version of which he taught in 2022, reading Jim Crace's Being Dead, George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, John Donne's Devotions on his near-fatal illness, and poems on death by Whitman and Dickinson.Abstract: Samuel Johnson famously complained about the indecorous allegorization of Sin and Death in Milton's Paradise Lost, in which they are personified as mother and son, a half-woman half-serpent and a fearsome shape without a shape. This essay will revisit Milton's Death, asking why it is that he, like so many other humans before and since, have felt compelled to make Death a person. Other examples include the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper, the skeletal leader of the Dance of Death, Thanatos, Hel, Santa Muerte, and Baron Samedi. Why do we need death, which is nothing but the end of life, to be a person? Why is Death sometimes male, sometimes female? Is Death an independent agent or an instrument of a greater power? Can Death be tricked, cheated, or placated? Is Death cruel, benevolent, or indifferent?For event updates, please continue to monitor this page.All CSR events are free and open to the public.If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact religion@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.Starting at 6 p.m. Friday, March 11, masks will be optional in most indoor spaces on The Ohio State University campuses, including residence halls, dining facilities, classrooms, offices and the Ohio Union. In settings where masks are optional, students, faculty, staff and visitors can decide on an individual basis whether or not they will continue to wear a mask. 18th Avenue Library Colloquium Space or via Zoom America/New_York public

Hannibal Hamlin is Professor of English and Interim Director of the Center for Studies in Religion at The Ohio State University. As Director of CSR, he organized a year of events related to death and dying, burial practices, and conceptions of the afterlife, the second half of a two-year project, "Living Well/ Dying Well," funded by a grant from the OSU Global Arts & Humanities Discovery Theme. A particular highlight was the two-day conference, The End of Life and What Comes Next: Perspectives from Healthcare, History, Anthropology, and Religion. A scholar of English Renaissance Literature and the influence of the English Bible, he is author of Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature, The Bible in Shakespeare, and editor of editions of early modern English Psalms as well as essay collections on literature, religion, and the Bible. He is designing a new English GE course on Death, a pilot version of which he taught in 2022, reading Jim Crace's Being Dead, George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, John Donne's Devotions on his near-fatal illness, and poems on death by Whitman and Dickinson.

Abstract: Samuel Johnson famously complained about the indecorous allegorization of Sin and Death in Milton's Paradise Lost, in which they are personified as mother and son, a half-woman half-serpent and a fearsome shape without a shape. This essay will revisit Milton's Death, asking why it is that he, like so many other humans before and since, have felt compelled to make Death a person. Other examples include the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper, the skeletal leader of the Dance of Death, Thanatos, Hel, Santa Muerte, and Baron Samedi. Why do we need death, which is nothing but the end of life, to be a person? Why is Death sometimes male, sometimes female? Is Death an independent agent or an instrument of a greater power? Can Death be tricked, cheated, or placated? Is Death cruel, benevolent, or indifferent?

For event updates, please continue to monitor this page.

All CSR events are free and open to the public.

If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact religion@osu.edu. Requests made by about 10 days before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

Starting at 6 p.m. Friday, March 11, masks will be optional in most indoor spaces on The Ohio State University campuses, including residence halls, dining facilities, classrooms, offices and the Ohio Union. In settings where masks are optional, students, faculty, staff and visitors can decide on an individual basis whether or not they will continue to wear a mask.