Category: Uncategorized
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Publishing Perils: Mark Twain, Amanda McKittrick Ros, and the Exuberant Afterlife of Irene Iddesleigh
“Over the years A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage has been ignored almost entirely by the myriad scholars who have scrutinized every other scrap of Twain’s writing voluminously.” – Roy Blount Jr., foreword to the Norton edition (2001) “Ros’ writing is not just bad, in other words; its badness is so potent that it seems to…
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In the Noh: The Poetics of Classical Japanese Theatre
CHORUS: Pine Wind and Autumn Rain Both drenched their sleeves with the tears Of hopeless love beyond their station, Fisher girls of Suma. Our sin is deep, o priest. Pray for us, we beg of you! (They [Matsukaze and Murasame] press their palms together in supplication) Our love grew rank as wild grasses; Tears and…
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Demons, Cannibals, and Courtesy: Richard Coer de Lyon and Inventing Modern English Mythology
Incredible as he is inept Whenever the history books are kept, They’ll call him the Phony King of England! Robin Hood (1973) Every five to ten years since the invention of film at the turn of the twentieth century, Hollywood has forced another movie in the Robin Hood mythos on us—whether, as noted by far…
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Scaling the Walls of Medieval Troy: Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie
Trop a esté li siegles feus Et sera tant come il durra: Ja autrement ne finera. [The world has been exceedingly cruel and will continue in this way as long as it lasts. It will never end in any other way.] (Roman de Troie, lines 29318-20) After a couple years of very solid, regular output,…
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Oh No! They Say Caesar’s Got To Go!: Lucan’s Pharsalia
How mighty, how sacred is the poet’s task! He snatches all things from destruction and gives to mortal men immortality. Be not jealous, Caesar, of those whom fame has consecrated; for, if it is permissible for the Latin Muses to promise aught, then, as long as the fame of Smyrna’s bard endures, posterity shall read…
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Gods, Girls, and Gender: Elagabalus and the Cultural Politics of the Severan Roman Empire
Since it’s Pride Month here the US for our LGBTQ+ community, I thought we’d do a little deep dive into the reign of Rome’s queerest ruler (yes, even more than Hadrian…), the 3rd century emperor Elagabalus (c.204-222 CE), formerly mentioned on this blog as a Vestal Virgin-marrying early adopter of the wheelbarrow/unicycle. Held by many traditional historians…
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The Cakes of Osiris are a Lie: Portals of the Duat and their Keepers
“Ugh,” scoffs the first man. “Don’t let her bother you. You know the Egyptians dream up the maddest things…” – Children of Actium Last week we looked at the seven gates a soul must traverse as part of their journey through the Egyptian Duat in order to prove their worthiness to the gods of the afterlife, as…
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Hold That Door!: The Gates of the Duat and Their Keepers
I turn to the drooling hyena holding its flaming sword before the gate. “We demand your name, gatekeeper.” The hyena lets loose an unnerving cascade of shrieking sounds that makes Dru wince. “I must have heard him wrong,” she says, frowning. I shake my head. “Not if what you heard was One Who Eats Up…
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Of Pirates and Persians: Chariton of Aphrodisias’ Callirhoe
“O treacherous beauty, you are the cause of all my woes!” – Callirhoe (Book 6.5) As threatened, I’ve been reading what might be the first western historical fiction novel, Chariton of Aphrodisias’ Callirhoe, and when I intimated that it sounded like the more far-fetched of Shakespeare’s comedies (I’m thinking The Winter’s Tale or Pericles), it has more lived up to that…
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Dream Girls: The Jinling Beauties and the Many Illusions of Dream of the Red Chamber
The office jack’s career is blighted, The rich man’s fortune now all vanished, The kind with life have been requited, The cruel exemplarily punished; The one who owed a life is dead, The tears one owed have all been shed. Wrongs suffered have the wrongs done expiated; The couplings and the sundering were fated. Untimely…
Sarah Holz 