Category: Uncategorized
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She’s Just Not That Into You: Orlando Furioso and the Making of the Modern European Novel
Who will ascend to heaven, mistress mine, to fetch me back my lost wits? (Orlando furioso, XXXV.2) Before we get into Orlando, I did want to assure some of you that I didn’t forget about giving updates about the release of my next novel, Daughter of Scorpions. I would personally love to have a concrete…
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Knowing It When You See It: Fanny Hill, Her Literary Sisters and Her Legacy
“…our virtues and our vices depend too much on our circum-stances…” (Fanny Hill, p. 77) I recently read John Cleland’s infamous novel Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748/9), and while not really a piece of high literature, it got me thinking about a whole host of other banned/censored books and…
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Defining Art: Museum Curation and the Work of Gertrude Abercrombie
I haven’t done a museum entry in a while, and the Carnegie Museum of Art has some new exhibitions that caught my attention last week, so I thought we’d take a look at some of what’s on offer for the spring quarter. CMOA’s Forum Gallery is a single-room exhibition space that rotates on a roughly…
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American Authors in the First Millennium: Zora Neale Hurston’s The Life of Herod the Great and Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March
While it’s hard to ever call historical fiction set in the Roman period passé, I do sometimes feel like I’m out here on an island, as it seems most of the current genre zeitgeist is for almost entirely 20th century historical fiction, with a few forays into midcentury Victorian. But as I’m pretty much never…
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Imitation to Independence: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and the Legacy of Rajmohan’s Wife
“The earlier Bankim was only a poet and stylist, the later Bankim was a seer and nation-builder.” – Sri Aurobindo Last year, I talked a little about early Indian literature in English through the work of Toru Dutt, India’s first published woman writer in the language. But Dutt was not the first Indian novelist to…
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Secret’s in the (Fish) Sauce: A Brief History of Rome’s Favorite Condiment
This week I want to take another look at some ancient cuisine, and specifically garum,—a fermented fish sauce that is particularly associated with the Romans, but was actually extremely popular throughout the Mediterranean. We’ll talk a bit about its composition and manufacture, its use and reputation, and then we’ll wrap things up with the triumphant…
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Talk From the Animals: Anthropomorphic (Auto)Biographies in Fiction
Blessings on thee, dog of mine,Pretty collars make thee fine,Sugared milk make fat thee !Pleasures wag on in thy tail —Hands of gentle motion failNevermore, to pat thee ! – from “To Flush, My Dog” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) This week, I wanted to take a look at an interesting literary subgenre: books about animals told…
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Preview for 🦂DAUGHTER OF SCORPIONS🦂
Okay, folks, this week—as promised—I’m going to get into the next book a little bit, since I’m working through my editor’s notes and giving final approvals on the cover design (stay tuned to the bottom of this entry for a sneak peek at the latter!) I’ve mentioned this here before, but I had no expectations…
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My Best Reads of 2024
Here we are, at the end of another year already! I hope that your literary year, whether as a reader, a writer, or just a person questing for knowledge in all its forms, was fruitful. Because of a small effort to take some time off from writing (or at least, feel less guilty for not…
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Lions, and Tigers, and Bonnacons: Zoology and Allegory in Medieval Bestiaries
This week, I thought we’d take a look at one of the most interesting cultural artifacts to come out of the medieval period: the medieval bestiary. Although present throughout the Middle Ages and all over Europe, these elaborately illuminated animal catalogues were most popular during what is now often referred to by modern historians as…
Sarah Holz 