Tag: Literary criticism
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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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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 […]
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Carthāgō iterum dēlenda est: Salammbô and The Mercenary War
“The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: ‘They are not men but oxen!’ and the multitude round about repeated: ‘Oxen! oxen!’ The […]
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Love Consumes All: Mary Herbert’s Antonius & Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
“The less her wrong, the less should be my woe;/ Nor she should pain, nor I complain me so.” – Antony, Antonius (III, line 229-30) [couplet by Mary Herbert added to the Garnier text] Back in November, I made you all listen to me natter on about Mary Wroth’s Urania and in the course of that discussion, I introduced […]
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Curses, Corpses, and Cheops: The Surprisingly Feminine Origins of Mummy Literature
“He saw it rise gradually—he heard the dry, bony fingers rattle as it drew them forth—he felt its tremendous grip—human nature could bear no more—his senses were rapidly deserting him; he felt, however, the fixed steadfast eyes of Cheops still glowing upon his failing orbs, as the lamp gave a sudden flash, and then all […]
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Jacobean Gossip Girl: Mary Wroth’s Urania
“[2/5 stars] I died and seriously started contemplating why I’m in the English program.” – Goodreads reviewer “I don’t think I want you to pass that one along to me.” – my mom One day I might use this space to talk about popular Renaissance literature, but today is apparently not that day. But in […]
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“That Best of Men”: Virgil, Horace, and a Friendship in Verse
As usual, I spent most of the past couple of days being completely stymied as to what to talk about this week, but then I remembered that today (October 15th) is Virgil’s birthday (he’s turning 2,091). So in his honor, I thought we’d talk a little about ancient Rome’s most famous poet. But since Virgil […]
Sarah Holz 