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Funktor posted:This is out of left field, but do you have any thoughts on the 1001 Arabian Nights? I've been reading the Burton translation and I find it utterly fascinating so far. Anything I should look for as I read? Wow. I have no idea. I mean, I read Nights -- or, to be fair, some of Nights -- as a kid. I vaguely remember most of it, but I can clearly remember reading it right after Chaucer and being surprised that it got raunchier. Anyway. I got it as a set of several volumes -- I think six or eight -- from one of my grandparents for Christmas. I'm not sure that was the complete set, either. But so far as closely reading Nights, I don't think I have much. As far as its place in a canon, I think its worth considering Burton's translation (like most influential translations) as a piece of literature in its own right. I know that's not terribly useful, but it's what I've got. But thanks for bringing that up; I think I'ma get on Nights this Summer.
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Nov 24, 2009 16:19
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My interest piqued by a much earlier post, I picked up a copy of Pare's On Monsters and Marvels. I've just started into the first chapter or so. Do you have any recommendations on how to read it, or of things to keep in mind to get the most out of the book? I'm looking forward to it; the bizarre illustrations are a real trip!
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Nov 25, 2009 15:37
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I'm also a little unclear on the subject of authorial intent. It seems to me that while it's certainly possible to get something out of a work that the author did not intentionally put in, looking at the work from the perspective of the author can give a number of insights about it. Like, from looking at the various Twilight threads around the forums, it looks like Stephanie Meyer read Wuthering Heights as an example of a romance where everything works out for the most part and the desirable outcome is reached. But you yourself seem to advocate interpreting the works of Shakespeare from his perspective, at least somewhat. You have spoken about how you don't think that the portrayal of Shylock is a damnation of the endemic anti-Semitism in Elizabethan society because that was not something that the author would have concerned himself with, and (I think) have voiced similar opinions on some of the more modern interpretations of Caliban. I'm just not sure why observing a work from the author's perspective has to be mutually exclusive to observing it from one's own perspective. Or am I completely off the mark here?
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Nov 25, 2009 18:48
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Business of Ferrets posted:My interest piqued by a much earlier post, I picked up a copy of Pare's On Monsters and Marvels. I've just started into the first chapter or so. Do you have any recommendations on how to read it, or of things to keep in mind to get the most out of the book? I'm looking forward to it; the bizarre illustrations are a real trip! Pare, well, Pare's just awesome. I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that Pare's actually a smart guy -- he was an accomplished surgeon in an era when trips to the doctor's meant injections of mercury and buckets of boiling pitch. So the thing I find fascinating about Monsters and Marvels is how close Pare is to something that looks like modern rules of evidence and scientific method; he's got several sensible methods for excluding evidence that he finds unreliable or unbelievable, and he has testable hypotheses about how e.g. birth defects occur that strictly rely on observed evidence. I don't know whether your copy of Pare is one of the recent ones that includes his Discourse on the Unicorn, but that's also worth a read. Again Pare's approach seems eminently rational and frighteningly modern. From his perspective, there are all these stories about unicorns, yet no reliable accounts, so he digs through different catalogs or reliable creature sightings to see whether any of these could be a basis for a unicorn legend. Again, he's closer to modern method on this than you'd think, given when he's working.
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Nov 26, 2009 15:50
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Captain Frigate posted:I'm also a little unclear on the subject of authorial intent. It seems to me that while it's certainly possible to get something out of a work that the author did not intentionally put in, looking at the work from the perspective of the author can give a number of insights about it. Like, from looking at the various Twilight threads around the forums, it looks like Stephanie Meyer read Wuthering Heights as an example of a romance where everything works out for the most part and the desirable outcome is reached. But you yourself seem to advocate interpreting the works of Shakespeare from his perspective, at least somewhat. You have spoken about how you don't think that the portrayal of Shylock is a damnation of the endemic anti-Semitism in Elizabethan society because that was not something that the author would have concerned himself with, and (I think) have voiced similar opinions on some of the more modern interpretations of Caliban. I'm just not sure why observing a work from the author's perspective has to be mutually exclusive to observing it from one's own perspective. Or am I completely off the mark here? The short answer is that even if Shylock is not portrayed in a way which suggests that Shakespeare had anything to say about the impression of Jews in his era, the words of the play itself nevertheless suggest that Jewsish religious autonomy can be tampered with unproblematically and because they're Jewish. Historicist approaches such as Brainworm's are the major go-to point for contemporary criticism, but it is worth noting that historicism does not supercede all possible approaches to texts. Nor does it account for the many ways texts have been read in the past. Adding authorial intent to this, especially when it cannot be known, such as in Shakespeare's case, just makes everything needlessly complicated for no good reason. For example, about the only reason why nobody seriously reads The Lord of the Rings as Christian allegory is because J.R.R. told everybody not to and his son is the most important Tolkien scholar alive right now. I would be shocked if nobody explicated this in significant detail ~50 years from now when all the important parties are dead.
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Dec 1, 2009 09:04
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Captain Frigate posted:I'm also a little unclear on the subject of authorial intent. It seems to me that while it's certainly possible to get something out of a work that the author did not intentionally put in, looking at the work from the perspective of the author can give a number of insights about it. Like, from looking at the various Twilight threads around the forums, it looks like Stephanie Meyer read Wuthering Heights as an example of a romance where everything works out for the most part and the desirable outcome is reached. But you yourself seem to advocate interpreting the works of Shakespeare from his perspective, at least somewhat. You have spoken about how you don't think that the portrayal of Shylock is a damnation of the endemic anti-Semitism in Elizabethan society because that was not something that the author would have concerned himself with, and (I think) have voiced similar opinions on some of the more modern interpretations of Caliban. I'm just not sure why observing a work from the author's perspective has to be mutually exclusive to observing it from one's own perspective. Or am I completely off the mark here? I think it's probably useful to make some fine distinctions here, because not all of these matters necessarily involve authorial intent. It's probably easier to parse this out according to great example Wimsatt and Beardsley give in The Verbal Icon: a verse of Donne's "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." Donne posted:Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears; It's been a while since I read Icon, but it considers interpretations of what "moving of the earth" could mean. Two easy candidates are an earthquake, which of course brings "harms and fears," and the Galilean heresy, which could cause "harms and fears" of a different sort. There are lots of things outside the text that might have some bearing on how we historicize it, or how we might read it if it were important to us that we use only word and phrase meanings that were extant at the time it was written. If, for instance, we could prove that this text were written before the heliocentric solar system came out of the astronomical closet, that would shut down a reading that relied on the Galilean heresy. If we could likewise show that "moving of the earth" could not possibly be an earthquake -- say, that period wisdom on earthquakes was that they were actually strong wind, or that earthquakes didn't exist before 1800 -- we could rule out the earthquake reading. In both of those cases, we use a kind of textual and historical argument to govern interpretation of the text, and we really concern ourselves with boundaries for possible readings -- that is, with what could not possibly be in the text given our understanding of when it was written. Who the author was matters, at least insofar as the author's a historical participant, but that's different from what we usually mean when we talk about an author's intent. In practice, intentional discussion goes something like this: I discover that Donne was really interested in astronomy, and I use that interest to favor the astronomical reading over the earthquake one. That's a bad move. After all, someone who's interested in astronomy can still write about earthquakes, or vice versa. You see this kind of reading a lot when an author has well-known and current politics -- a good example might be Adrienne Rich. Given her activism, and her place in e.g. anthologies of women's or feminist poetry, there's a reflex to read everything she's written as some kind of manifesto. And some of what she's written might be manifesto, but you can't argue that from her biography. That'd be like saying everything I write is really about single-payer health care. I should add that, apart from this clear major issue (authors could in fact intend to write about things that they are not represented in texts about them, and so inferences of intent are therefore unreliable), there's at least one other: there's no clear reason that intent matters, or matters enough to overrule other licit interpretive methods. Spooky mentioned Tolkien and Christianity, and that seems like a good example. There's Christian lore in Lord of the Rings regardless of whether Tolkien says he intended to put it there. Maybe he didn't want to be remembered for writing a Christian allegory, or maybe he wanted to distance his work from C.S Lewis's. Or maybe he wanted readers to pay attention to other things he thought were more important. Or maybe it ended up in his text in a way that wasn't intentional -- I mean, the man grew up with Bible lore, as have tons of other authors Rings draws from, so there are plenty of ways for Christian allegories to find ways into Tolkien's writing without him knowing about it. Or maybe his editors, or the people that helped him with revision, saw the text as principally a Christian allegory and made or recommended changes based on that reading.
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Dec 1, 2009 17:48
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I know this thread slowed down about a month ago, but I'm hoping that you've seen the Two Gentlemen of Lebowski that was posted over in GBS just yesterday. I'm kinda curious what the thoughts of a Shakespeare expert are on it.
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Jan 7, 2010 23:54
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I'm not happy this thread has died, and I at least hope you'll keep updating your blog when you have time. I'll put a (somewhat uninteresting) question to you though; what do you think of Evelyn Waugh, if anything? He's probably my favourite author at the moment. He has a great entertaining style, and sometimes delivers really powerful moments as well.
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Jan 8, 2010 01:37
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Why do you think learning English is important and how good do you think everyone should be at English? I mean beyond just coming across as smart which is necessary in business. Obviously I think English is important I only want to hear a professors opinion on it.
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Jan 8, 2010 01:50
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theunderwaterbear posted:I'm not happy this thread has died, and I at least hope you'll keep updating your blog when you have time. I'll put a (somewhat uninteresting) question to you though; what do you think of Evelyn Waugh, if anything? He's probably my favourite author at the moment. He has a great entertaining style, and sometimes delivers really powerful moments as well. I'd like to hear your take on this as well, especially if you have any specific insight into how Catch-22 responds to the Sword of Honour trilogy, namely Men at Arms.
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Jan 8, 2010 05:55
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Bachaao posted:I know this thread slowed down about a month ago, but I'm hoping that you've seen the Two Gentlemen of Lebowski that was posted over in GBS just yesterday. I'm kinda curious what the thoughts of a Shakespeare expert are on it. I haven't seen it yet -- this is the first I've heard of it and of course the site's down now. So now I'm dancing back from foot to foot like a kid who needs to pee really bad. *** And now I've found a mirror some God-blessed soul has thrown up. This is fun as hell, at least after a once-over. One of the more interesting things about it is that it recreates something like a contemporary experience of much Shakespearean drama: this is an adaptation of material that we're already familiar with, right? Just like the Histories or Hamlet would have been for a Renaissance audience. What's also interesting is how this works as an adaptation. Normally, when you look at a Shakespeare adaptation (like Death of a Salesman with Lear), you see a character adaptation -- you know, what kind of person is the 20th century Lear? Apparently Willy Loman. But this is turned inside out; it's not an adaptation of Shakespearean plot or character as much as an adaptation of the language, or, if you'd rather, a way of making Shakespearean language and dramatic style accessible by grafting it on to a familiar plot and cast of characters. Those are some knee-jerk responses. Once I read it for real I may have something more useful to say.
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Jan 8, 2010 19:02
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Here's another short topic. I've been switched from teaching Monday/Wednesday/Friday hour long course in Intro to Theatre to a Tuesday/Thursday, hour and fifteen minute course. I've taken basic pedagogy and I understand the concepts of active learning and engaging the student and all that jazz, but I'm a bit daunted by trying to keep introductory students engaged (or even awake) for that length of time. One of my sections is also at 8:00 in the morning (ugh). Any protips from other teachers? This is my second year of grad school, and any advice/similar experiences would be helpful.
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Jan 11, 2010 21:37
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bartlebee posted:Here's another short topic. I've been switched from teaching Monday/Wednesday/Friday hour long course in Intro to Theatre to a Tuesday/Thursday, hour and fifteen minute course. I've taken basic pedagogy and I understand the concepts of active learning and engaging the student and all that jazz, but I'm a bit daunted by trying to keep introductory students engaged (or even awake) for that length of time. One of my sections is also at 8:00 in the morning (ugh). Any protips from other teachers? This is my second year of grad school, and any advice/similar experiences would be helpful. I made the switch in lesson plans myself recently. It's surprisingly easy. By the end of the semester, you'll wonder how you ever dealt with 50 minutes. Let them fill the time at first, especially if you're nervous. Group activities. Or bring in more multimedia for them to discuss/react to. I teach English 101, and for a 75 min, I usually do 20 min~ of lecture, a group activity (flexible, but usually 20-25 minutes), bring them back together for another five to ten to discuss, then another activity or more discussion/lecture as appropriate. Switching between activities takes time, even. I use it to remind them endlessly about due dates coming up, or for questions, or rehashing expectations.
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Jan 11, 2010 21:49
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theunderwaterbear posted:I'm not happy this thread has died, and I at least hope you'll keep updating your blog when you have time. I'll put a (somewhat uninteresting) question to you though; what do you think of Evelyn Waugh, if anything? He's probably my favourite author at the moment. He has a great entertaining style, and sometimes delivers really powerful moments as well. I haven't read Waugh, actually -- one of about a million authors on my I'm-getting-to-obscenely-late list. David Foster Wallace was a long-time resident there, too. So were I going to read Waugh soon, where do you think I ought to start?
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Jan 11, 2010 23:58
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FortCastle posted:Why do you think learning English is important and how good do you think everyone should be at English? I mean beyond just coming across as smart which is necessary in business. Obviously I think English is important I only want to hear a professors opinion on it. I've said before (I think) that English as commonly taught really focuses on a confederacy of not-necessarily-related skills. One of these is language facility: reading and writing college-level prose, and developing the tools of thought that promote those skills' exercise. This is where Rhetoric and Composition theorists focus their attention. And I think the value of these skills is self-evident, since almost any modern intellectual exercise -- think work, but an increasing amount of worthwhile leisure -- has this kind of literacy as a prerequisite. But the more interesting skillset attached to English has to do with interpretive practices, or with the way that English teaches you to look at the world. And I'ma give it to you in a sentence: Everything is a text.* Easy right? But the implications of this statement are staggering, especially if you're creative and intellectually honest enough to take it to its logical conclusions. If you do that, I think you'll find you've got an unusually powerful set of interpretive tools at your disposal. That might sound counterintuitive, and I think unpacking it won't make it seem any more natural. But here it goes: a text is anything you can read. I'm using "read" here in the broad sense, meaning something like "interpret through a process of associating meanings with signs." What you're reading right now is a text; you look at the screen, and if whatever's on it makes meaning happen inside you're head, you're reading it. But that's what you'd expect, right? Your screen is at least partly covered with the letters I'm typing right now and, assuming my writing and your reading work the way I think they do, we're experiencing a sort of telepathy -- you getting my thoughts across time, space, or whatever other barriers you care to name. Even though that's a minor miracle, it's a common one. And I think we'd all agree that it extends in certain obvious directions once you accept the ways I've abstracted "text" and "reading." Speech, for instance is obviously a text. But so is the way someone acts -- you look at whether they're smiling or clenching their teeth, and you read. You some to some decision about what they're thinking or feeling. All that's obvious. But it has wider application. Your memories and experiences are texts, too, and in the same way. And so are television shows, documentaries, court cases, and lab experiments. They all, in their most important respects, consist of signs that readers assign meanings to. What's really interesting, though, is how reading happens. Meaning is always a relational process or, more specifically, the process of constructing relationships between texts. If you want to know what a word means, you build a relationship between it and a dictionary or some other usage catalog. If you want to decide whether an accused person is innocent or guilty, you build a relationship between the text of the trial and the text of the law (among others). If you want to know whether an experiment's results are noteworthy, you build a relationship between those results and the results of other, related experiments. And so on. This is a staggeringly powerful interpretive tool, because it confines the conclusions you come to in useful ways. If a judicial verdict is a relationship between texts, than the best conclusion you can come to about guilt or innocence has to do with whether a person is guilty (i.e. whether there's a compelling correspondence between the the texts a trial presents to you). You can't decide whether Johnny shot the sheriff. He either did or didn't, but all the evidence can do is allow you to craft a narrative. That's what guilt or not-guilt is about -- not about whether person A actually did thing B that broke law C, but whether the evidence allows you to construct a compelling narrative about how and why it happened. But more important, this way of thinking leads to asking good and useful questions. If I'm reading a Shakespeare biography, one question I could ask is whether such-and-such a claim is true. If you're thinking in English, that's a bad question. A better question is how the text of the biography relates to other texts -- other biographies, texts from Shakespeare's lifetime, or the texts of the plays, for example. And this means I need a rational basis for comparison. I don't get to know about what happened during Shakespeare's life; it's categorically accessible. So building a relationship between the Wikipedia article on Shakespeare's life and Pericles, Prince of Tyre on the basis that the article is "true" doesn't make sense. There might be some other basis for relating those texts, but that ain't a one. In other words, I think English provides a way of looking at the world that's extremely powerful even though it doesn't rely on truth values. Want to know whether people are going to believe in global warming? The issue that most folks think is most important (whether the temperature of the Earth is trending upwards as a result of human activity) is basically irrelevant; what matters is which narrative people find most compelling. An avalanche of data in agreement on the point might make it compelling, but so might a spokesman who claims repression -- after all, we like stories about underdogs. Either way, the issue is narrative, not truth. Want to know whether global warming is actually happening? Look at the texts of whatever studies, and build relationships between those texts and texts that describe how such studies ought to be conducted and which conclusions a person ought to draw from them. Again, the issue is really relationships between texts, not truth. So I think that's the value of English. If you accept the premise that the truth about something is inaccessible -- and I think a reasonable person has to -- it gives you an alternative to intellectual paralysis. On a more practical note, it lets you see things as they are; as a set of interperable phenomena that can be either strongly or weakly related, and compelling based on selected strengths or weaknesses of those relationships. * This is something that even people in my field would disagree with, but mostly because they've adopted an approach to English that, at root, is really a type of cultural studies. They're doing History or social science with literature.
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Jan 12, 2010 15:40
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Brainworm posted:I haven't read Waugh, actually -- one of about a million authors on my I'm-getting-to-obscenely-late list. David Foster Wallace was a long-time resident there, too. Decline and Fall is quite funny (I think...heh)
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Jan 12, 2010 15:42
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bartlebee posted:Here's another short topic. I've been switched from teaching Monday/Wednesday/Friday hour long course in Intro to Theatre to a Tuesday/Thursday, hour and fifteen minute course. I've taken basic pedagogy and I understand the concepts of active learning and engaging the student and all that jazz, but I'm a bit daunted by trying to keep introductory students engaged (or even awake) for that length of time. One of my sections is also at 8:00 in the morning (ugh). Any protips from other teachers? This is my second year of grad school, and any advice/similar experiences would be helpful. I think the most important thing about long classes, especially intro-level classes, is that you have to chunk them. A fifty-minute class, after you get your business out of the way, is just about the perfect length for sustained discussion of a single topic. When I teach Shakespeare, for instance, we meet MWF and do one act per class. That's not enough to exhaust the act -- not even close -- but it's enough for the class to explore an issue in that act in reasonable depth, and short enough that discussion doesn't start retreading. So we meet and discuss, and the end of class forces us to move on regardless of whether we agree that Hamlet's really gone insane by Act III. With a TR or other 1:15, you can't do quite the same thing. On one hand, discussions can hang -- you get a critical mass of students interested in an issue, but as discussion continues the number of people interested in it wanes, and they see the last twenty minutes as a waste. On the other, you get fewer chances to recap; fewer class meeting means fewer chances for students to explore an issue outside of class and quickly report back at the beginning of the next meeting. So I think Brazen Apothecary got things right. Break the class up into different activities -- lecture, small group work, and so on. Also, make assignments due outside of class whenever possible. We all know that if you have both a long paper and a reading assignment due on the same day, many students will do the paper and skip the reading. So if you're meeting TR, make substantial assignments due on Monday or Friday. And for an 8:00 class, start with anything you want except lecture. Small group work is nice, since it forces some usually-pleasant conversation that warms everyone up. So is reflective writing, especially if you've got students who're less comfortable in small groups. Either way, your goal for the first segment of an early class is to get students to bring some energy into the room; even if they rowdy up, it's easier to redirect energy once it's there than produce it at 8:45. Last, I think classes work best when you set up a consistent weekly schedule. Seriously, you'll see more engagement, fewer absences, and less late work if you have e.g. small groups/lecture on Tuesdays, writing exercise/agenda on Thursdays, and papers due on Fridays. Students pick up a rhythm quickly, and if you set it early in the semester it's easier for them to effectively budget their reading and writing time. This is tougher to do in a 2x/week course, but in my experience well worth the extra planning.
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Jan 12, 2010 16:06
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Barto posted:Decline and Fall is quite funny (I think...heh) Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust are my favourite satires, but he considered Brideshead Revisited his 'masterpiece' and I definitely think it's his best. Not sure you'd start with it though... I just want to say thanks for this thread Brainworm, you are most impressive! You've inspired me to try and stop being so mentally lazy... wish me luck.
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Jan 12, 2010 18:51
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I've also had Waugh on my have-to-read list forever, and last week I ran across a used copy of Decline and Fall and decided it was time. It is funny, as long as you're not sitting there going "THIS ISN'T WODEHOUSE."
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Jan 12, 2010 21:01
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theunderwaterbear posted:Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust are my favourite satires, but he considered Brideshead Revisited his 'masterpiece' and I definitely think it's his best. Not sure you'd start with it though... Good luck, or anything that helps. I'll get on Waugh as soon as may be. Me, I'm starting classes tomorrow. Every semester, I think I leave myself enough time to get all my course planning done like days in advance. And every semester, the first day of classes sneaks up on me. I mean, like a ninja. It's incredible. This is like the twentieth time in a row I've been caught by surprise.
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Jan 13, 2010 00:26
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Also re: Waugh, The Loved One is good for a brief taste of his style. The subject matter is a little different, less satire of the English class system and more a satire of English-expat/American relations and Hollywood/the funeral industry (of all things), but since it's incredibly short it can be read in only a few hours and has an absolutely great punchline. The other good ones have already been mentioned. A Handful of Dust has what might be my favorite ending out of everything I've ever read and Decline and Fall is good, fun, quick reading. Brideshead is a bit trickier since it's not satire and more overt about its religious concerns, but I had a good time with it regardless.
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Jan 13, 2010 02:22
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H.P. Shivcraft posted:A Handful of Dust has what might be my favorite ending out of everything I've ever read Oh god! I always forget about that ending, somehow. Until I'm about halfway through it at any rate. It's terrifying.
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Jan 13, 2010 16:46
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This is a bit of a shot in the dark but I figured I'd try. Do you have any experience with post-modernist French novels? I'm taking a class on the subject and I'm open to any advice you might have to offer as I have very little experience in the subject. Right now we're reading Nathalie Sarraute's "Tropisms", do you have any wisdom to impart on the genre or the differences between regular post-modernism and French post-modernism? Follow up question: I was reading a display in the library at school today that mentioned a few special areas in the library and most of them were broad subjects but it did name John Milton. Do you have any schools in particular whose collections you really admire and for what reasons? Lastly I just want to say that I'm a big fan of the blog. Your interesting discussions on semiotics have helped me three times since the new semester started this week. Also, why do you say "I'ma"?
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Jan 14, 2010 04:45
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Mr. Banana Grabber posted:This is a bit of a shot in the dark but I figured I'd try. Do you have any experience with post-modernist French novels? I'm taking a class on the subject and I'm open to any advice you might have to offer as I have very little experience in the subject. Right now we're reading Nathalie Sarraute's "Tropisms", do you have any wisdom to impart on the genre or the differences between regular post-modernism and French post-modernism? I can't say much about Sarraute. What I can say is that American postmodernism looks different form French postmodernism in a few basic respects: French postmodernism is typified by linguistic, psychoanalytic, and political theories -- it is, or was at one time, politically radical in practice. You can look at the reception of, say, Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place and see how this plays out. It's a politics of discontent. American postmodernity, on the other hand, seems to be typified in media criticism. Dollars to donuts, if you hear an non-collegiate American say "postmodern," he or she is talking about a media aesthetic -- you know, jump cuts and schizophrenic costuming. On top of that, American postmodernity is generally apolitical and, where it is political, basically celebratory. Just to pick one example: I already mentioned Baudrillard, who is French. Both he and Francis Fukuyama (an American) were obsessed with the idea that history has effectively ended with the globalization of various media and economies. For Baudrillard, this is a disaster, because it buries the possibility of meaningful social progress. Fukuyama thinks it's the best thing that could possibly happen. quote:Follow up question: I was reading a display in the library at school today that mentioned a few special areas in the library and most of them were broad subjects but it did name John Milton. Do you have any schools in particular whose collections you really admire and for what reasons? Mostly, it's the librarians who make a library great, not the collections. But I can think of two that really stand out. I hate to bring Harvard into this, but they have, hands down, the most extensive manuscript collection I've seen at a University, and they're generally great about access. Also, they have some of the best research librarians I've ever worked with. They really are very good. Also, UC Berkeley has what's got to be my favorite collection of print journals. I mean, they don't have everything, but they have stuff that you just can't get anywhere else -- and I'm talking 20th century journals here, too. The best example I can think of is the Journal of Gypsy Lore (which is where T.P. Vukanovic published my favorite article on the Romi belief in vampiric watermelons and garden tools in 1968). I mean, we're talking about an academic quarterly that was probably printed in some quirky dean's basement, maybe had a circulation of 200, and isn't likely to get scanned into e.g. JSTOR. But UCB, they've got it. quote:Lastly I just want to say that I'm a big fan of the blog. Your interesting discussions on semiotics have helped me three times since the new semester started this week. Also, why do you say "I'ma"? Glad it works for you. I've finally scheduled enough of the right kind of time that I can keep up with it again. And "I'ma?" I grew up with people who said "I'm fixing to do X" (which sounds like "I'm fidna/finna do X" or, further contracted, "I'm'a do X"), and is a really handy form. It means something like "I'm gong to do X as soon as I finish what I'm working on now," like "I'm fixing to go to the store" means "I'm putting on my coat now because I intend to leave for the store as soon as it's on." I use it all the time. "I'ma write a blog post" means "as soon as I'm done with this I'm going to write a blog post." "I'ma explain that" means "I acknowledge your question but will explain it immediately after I reach the end of this section." And so on. The thing is, once you have an immediate future tense to use, you can't stop. It's so goddamn useful.
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Jan 14, 2010 23:24
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That's very interesting. I've been instructed to keep an eye out for media criticism in regards to the classic 19th century French novels. So far the only politics that have come up have been an offhanded reference to the French president from 1895 to 1899 (take that, Félix Faure!) but I'll be sure to keep an eye out. In your blog you mentioned that you'd read Greenblatt's "The Will in the World". I thought it was great and it hit on a lot of the topics in Shakespeare's personal life that I was curious about: the "Second best bed", his sexuality especially in regards to his sonnets etc. One curious omission was the controversy over the identity of Shakespeare. When I read Romeo and Juliet in my freshman year of high school we referred to the author as "The man from Stratford" but Greenblatt seemed pretty certain of Shakespeare's identity considering all of the information on John Shakespeare and the wedding registry. Have there been major breakthroughs in regards to the identity of Shakespeare that confirm who he actually was or was my freshman English teacher crazy?
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Jan 15, 2010 02:24
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Brainworm posted:The thing is, once you have an immediate future tense to use, you can't stop. It's so goddamn useful. That is a pretty great way of looking at it, but is it possible for someone not from the south to use it without sounding ridiculous?
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Jan 15, 2010 02:30
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I was at my uncle's house today, and he produced for me three miniature copies of Shakespeare, one each of Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Taming of the Shrew. They're published by the Knickerbocker Leather & Novelty Co., New York. A quick google, and Folger tells me they aren't too rare, but decently collectible. Do you know anything else about them? I can produce some pictures if you'd like.
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Jan 15, 2010 06:00
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Mr. Banana Grabber posted:[...] One curious omission was the controversy over the identity of Shakespeare. When I read Romeo and Juliet in my freshman year of high school we referred to the author as "The man from Stratford" but Greenblatt seemed pretty certain of Shakespeare's identity considering all of the information on John Shakespeare and the wedding registry. Have there been major breakthroughs in regards to the identity of Shakespeare that confirm who he actually was or was my freshman English teacher crazy? I think every field has some issue like this. For Renaissance scholars, this is our Global Warming or Large Hadron Collider's Gonna Black Hole the Earth. What I mean is that Shakespeare's identity is a matter of public discourse but not a field controversy. Unless you want to start tossing out documentary evidence or trotting out conspiracy theories, I think you've pretty much got to accept that Shakespeare is the author of at least the 36 plays that appear in the First Folio (1623); This was a commemorative volume of works put together by Shakespeare's fellow actors Heminges and Condell, and formally titled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. So that title, by itself, locks up a great deal. It at least means that in 1623, all of the plays we now attribute to Shakespeare (minus Pericles and Two Noble Kinsmen) were then attributed to him. And there are other attributions of many of these plays to Shakespeare as well; some of these are quarto printings of the plays, and some are review documents, like Meres's Palladis Tamia. In short, these attributions suggest that the body of work we think of as Shakespeare's was, during Shakespeare's lifetime, attributed to Shakespeare. Likewise, the 1608 printing of the Sonnets (the first and only one from Shakespeare's lifetime) attributes them to William Shakespeare. Whether these are the same William Shakespeare is a fair question, but Meres and others mention that Shakespeare the playwright was known for writing "sugared sonnets" as well. So it seems likely. But this doesn't tell us whether William Shakespeare the London playwright and sonneteer was the same William Shakespeare who appears in the legal records of Stratford. There's no reason to suppose he isn't -- there's nothing that suggests that there was a William Shakespeare in both places at once, for example -- and there's plenty of evidence to suggest they're the same person. Just for instance, the will of "William Shackspeare of Stratford upon Avon" bequests money to buy commemorative rings to "John Hemynges, Richard Burbage and Heny Cundell," all of which are the names of actors in the King's Men. "Hemynges" and "Cundell" are the same who published the First Folio. So I'm not going to call your teacher crazy. He has simply discarded, for whatever reasons, a body of evidence that attributes the plays and sonnets to William Shakespeare, and which suggests that this William Shakespeare was from Stratford on Avon. That's not a mark of field expertise, but people do this kind of thing often enough that it's probably not fair to call him insane.
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Jan 15, 2010 23:11
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z0331 posted:That is a pretty great way of looking at it, but is it possible for someone not from the south to use it without sounding ridiculous? I'm not from the South. I may or may not sound ridiculous saying "I'ma," but that's hardly the most ridiculous play in my book. I doubt it affects much.
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Jan 15, 2010 23:13
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Lawnie posted:I was at my uncle's house today, and he produced for me three miniature copies of Shakespeare, one each of Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Taming of the Shrew. They're published by the Knickerbocker Leather & Novelty Co., New York. A quick google, and Folger tells me they aren't too rare, but decently collectible. Do you know anything else about them? The Knickerbockers? Those things are sweet -- at least if you're looking at the single play volumes about the size of a card deck. I'm not sure I can tell you anything that the Folger doesn't, though. I'm sure you already know that individual volumes are easy to get, but the full set, in box, and in good condition can be worth close to a thousand bucks. Once you start looking for these, they're all over the place. I mean, you see them at flea markets and antique malls and estate sales. I started picking them up while I was matching out my silver and scoring Victor coffee mugs. About the only advice I have on collecting them is that the condition of the spine doesn't necessarily reflect the condition of the binding, so you can have e.g. missing pages without spine creases. Also, these were frighteningly popular. My parents and their friends are in their 60s, and they have some senior flashback moments whenever they see a KS -- if their moments are anything to go by, a box of Knickerbocker Shakespeares was standard issue in late-elementary classrooms throughout the Midwest.
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Jan 15, 2010 23:46
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Brainworm posted:The Knickerbockers? Those things are sweet -- at least if you're looking at the single play volumes about the size of a card deck. I'm not sure I can tell you anything that the Folger doesn't, though. I'm sure you already know that individual volumes are easy to get, but the full set, in box, and in good condition can be worth close to a thousand bucks. Thanks a lot, they're really cool. I'll be sure to pass on this little tidbit to my uncle.
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Jan 16, 2010 01:35
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Brainworm, did you end up making it to MLA? Would be interested in getting your take on the best and worst of what you saw, whether panels or otherwise. (I ended up finishing my talk about 15 minutes before walking over to give it, and nearly collapsing in the book expo room afterward, but I gather that is fairly normal for first-time attendees.)
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Jan 17, 2010 14:30
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elentar posted:Brainworm, did you end up making it to MLA? Would be interested in getting your take on the best and worst of what you saw, whether panels or otherwise. I didn't make it to MLA, actually. This is the first year in recent memory that I haven't had to either interview or be interviewed, and I can't predict when I'll get one of those again. So I took some real vacation. But how was the talk? I mean, you finished late and were nervous after, but did you get questions (or an audience)? And do you have a best and worst list?
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Jan 17, 2010 21:36
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Brainworm posted:I didn't make it to MLA, actually. This is the first year in recent memory that I haven't had to either interview or be interviewed, and I can't predict when I'll get one of those again. So I took some real vacation. Heh, not nervous, just sleep-deprived. Thought it went well though, got a couple questions and one of the other guys on the panel has added a bit on my subject to his syllabus for this semester. Audience was maybe 20-30, kind of small but I'm not really sure what to expect for an 8:30am on the final day. Best was probably the talk on James Joyce in men's magazines, especially the cover featuring Finnegans Wake that had a mostly-dead dude being ridden by a topless whiskey-swilling girl. Also pretty nice to go to the open-bar top-floor MLA bash--the MLA president put out a last-second invite over Twitter and it ended up being a good mix of old and new blood. Worst--not bad really, but was disappointed by the science fiction panel; the chair accepted four papers and everyone went over so no time to ask questions of the one panelist who was better than meh. Also the book expo was a bit slack, no real freebies going around even on the last day. And it was cold as gently caress to the point of everyone visibly wincing when stepping outside. Most MLA thing I saw: dude putting on a monocle to check something on his iPhone. Congrats on the real vacation--I think a lot of people went that route this time, heard attendance was down 1k or so.
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Jan 18, 2010 09:42
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elentar posted:Heh, not nervous, just sleep-deprived. Thought it went well though, got a couple questions and one of the other guys on the panel has added a bit on my subject to his syllabus for this semester. Audience was maybe 20-30, kind of small but I'm not really sure what to expect for an 8:30am on the final day. That's a nice turnout, especially that early in the morning and especially on the last day. Either way, it sounds like the talk went over well. Good job. quote:Best was probably the talk on James Joyce in men's magazines, especially the cover featuring Finnegans Wake that had a mostly-dead dude being ridden by a topless whiskey-swilling girl. Also pretty nice to go to the open-bar top-floor MLA bash--the MLA president put out a last-second invite over Twitter and it ended up being a good mix of old and new blood. I always love text-as-artifact presentations. For me, they almost always revolve around printing practices, but the men's magazine scene has lately been getting a lot of play. It's wonderful, actually -- it's one of the ways that the 20th century looks like a totally different country. quote:Worst--not bad really, but was disappointed by the science fiction panel; the chair accepted four papers and everyone went over so no time to ask questions of the one panelist who was better than meh. Also the book expo was a bit slack, no real freebies going around even on the last day. And it was cold as gently caress to the point of everyone visibly wincing when stepping outside. Neither of these is a big surprise -- in this economy, I wouldn't expect the publishers to do a lot of giveaways, and I think the extent to which they do this has been in steady decline since maybe 2000. For the last few years the only giveaways have been on the last day, and even then they haven't been impressive. I always leave with a suitcase full of terrible textbooks and Shakespeare editions. I've got a bunch of the first on my bookshelf for no good reason, and I use the Shakespeares as loaners. And I've never seen a good SF panel. I don't know why that is, but the panels I've seen come across as intense fandom coupled with calls for more academic attention to genre fiction (i.e. irritating and shrill). quote:Most MLA thing I saw: dude putting on a monocle to check something on his iPhone. This is what I go for. There's always a clear difference between the English (discipline, not nationality) and the Modern Languages folks -- someone who teaches e.g. French can look from a distance like a normal human being. But English has the most bizarre affectations. Two years ago, it was women wearing sun hats. Last year, men in fedoras. Before that, there was a disturbing prevalence of accessories that looked straight out of an amateur BDSM video from 1985. Think a guy in a bow tie and oversized tweed sportcoat with a studded black leather belt and jeans tucked into paratrooper boots. Women in billowy rayon pastel dresses with patent leather spike heels. quote:Congrats on the real vacation--I think a lot of people went that route this time, heard attendance was down 1k or so. That makes sense. Lots of places have cut travel budgets and lots are still in hiring freezes, and I think both of those would hit MLA hard. If you're not hiring anyone and you need to cut a conference, MLA seems a logical choice -- especially since the just-after-Christmas timing makes it inconvenient under the best of conditions.
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Jan 18, 2010 16:52
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Brainworm posted:And I've never seen a good SF panel. I don't know why that is, but the panels I've seen come across as intense fandom coupled with calls for more academic attention to genre fiction (i.e. irritating and shrill). The actual conventions devoted to SF(/fantasy/horror/etc.) that I've been to--SF Research Association and especially the Int'l Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts--have been mostly amazing, maybe because they don't feel the need to justify their existence. Plus you will get quite a few authors who just come to hang out and shoot the poo poo with whoever; it's a bit fannish yet very laid-back. "Pleasantly dorky," perhaps. Oh, and drunkenly. Thoroughly besotted.
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Jan 18, 2010 23:29
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elentar posted:Oh, and drunkenly. Thoroughly besotted. This seems like every non-MLA conference I go to. At GEMCS in 2002, I had to drag my later-to-be dissertation director out of a hotel swimming pool to keep him from drowning. Yes he was fully clothed, and yes, he jumped in from one of the poolside tables.
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Jan 27, 2010 01:47
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Edit: already answered
Spiderfailure fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Jan 27, 2010 |
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Jan 27, 2010 08:56
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Do you have any favourite sexy/dirty poems about love/lust? I'd like to read something at an upcoming Valentine's day poetry event.
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Feb 5, 2010 04:07
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I'm reading poetry for the first time in my life. I'm doing a course on 18th century Brit lit right now, and so far the vast majority of the stuff we've covered has been pastoral poetry (Keats, Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Clare etc., that general canon), which honestly, is boring as poo poo to me. I can appreciate the words, but I get tired of flowers and shepherds pretty fast. The one poem so far that really grabbed me was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Simple rhymes, and a cool story. I've also read Paradise Lost and enjoyed the hell out of that, so my nerdy self seems to be attracted to big, long, dramatic and fantastic poems. For someone relatively unfamiliar with classic poetry canon, what should I check out next?
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Feb 5, 2010 05:15
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