Even if we locate a source of some kind of genuine strength, authoritative strength, it's still usually possible, as it is for Satan, to argue that that power is really at base just the concealed product of custom or what we would think of as cultural construction.

有时即使我们找到了一种真实的，权威的力量，还是有可能像撒旦所辩解的那样，这种力量其实只是,约定俗成的规矩教条的隐秘产物,或者如我们所想来自文化建构。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

It's not just that Satan or the moon or whatever it is that we're looking at seems indeterminate until we get a proper look at it.

不仅是撒旦或月亮或者任意什么,我们在关注的，看起来非常不确定,直到我们得到了一个合理的想法。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

At times when we read Paradise Lost it seems almost as if Satan were quoting or alluding to Comus.

有时当我们读《失乐园》时,就好像看到Satan在引用Comus的话或影射他。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

Like Milton, Satan is in the business of demystifying power, of exposing political or cultural power as something that is not simply inherently there or naturally there.

正如弥尔顿一样，撒旦也是要揭开力量被神化的幻想，向人们揭露政治或文化力量并不是,与生俱来自然而然的存在的。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

He permits a real character like Satan to interact with a merely allegorical or symbolic character like Sin. The effect for Johnson - and who can say that this is -- that Johnson is wrong?

他允许一个真实的角色如撒旦与仅仅是寓言中才出现的,或只具备象征的意义的人物如罪恶之神互动,谁又能说约翰逊是错的呢？

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

They are mere personifications of abstract ideas, and it's not at all clear that Sin and her son, Death, exist as individual entities in the same way, or on the same plane, that Satan does, for example, or Beelzebub.

他们仅仅是将抽象的思想拟人化的结果，但我们不清楚的是罪恶之神和她的儿子死神，以同样的方式或在同一个星球作为独立的个体存在，例如撒旦或者苍蝇王比尔泽布也是这样。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

The story of Adam and Eve and of the fall of Satan may strike us - having read or about to read Paradise Lost -- may strike us as a natural subject for Milton to have chosen for his epic poem.

弥尔顿选择了亚当夏娃以及撒旦的溃败的故事,作为他史诗的主题在我们看来--不管我们读过,还是将要读《失乐园》--都是很自然的。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

Satan's described initially here as the wind god Orion, a classical figure who vexed or tossed the waves of the Red Sea, ; just as Satan is rousing and inspiring his fallen host of angels; but Milton continues to complicate the simile.

撒旦在这里最初被比作风神猎户，这是一个在红海上呼风唤浪的古典形象，就像撒旦在他的天使随从面前充满了威严;,但是弥尔顿接下来又使这个比喻复杂化了。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

Then we read, or at least we think we read, that Satan's spear is small, and then we realize over the course of this reading process that Satan's spear is unimaginable, and we realize that our time-bound mode of knowing is ultimately inadequate to understand anything about the inscrutable truths of eternity: this is according to Fish.

然后又读到，至少我们认为读到，撒旦的长矛又很小，接着我们意识到了在阅读的过程中,撒旦的长矛实际上是不可想象的，并且我们被特定时代拘束的理解模式,是不足以理解任何,有关永恒的难以预测的真相的：,这是费什告诉我们的道理。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选