Tag: Literary criticism
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Original Chick Lit: 19th Century American Women Writers, Readers, and the Little House that Millbank Built
“Ma spread the between-meals red-checked cloth on the table, and on it she set the shining-clean lamp. She laid there the paper-covered Bible, the big green Wonders of the Animal World, and the novel named Millbank.” – On the Banks of Plum Creek, chapter 17 “Every window and shutter at Millbank was closed. Knots of…
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The Fifth Horse-Man: Apocalypse and Allegory in the Roman de Fauvel
“Le jugement contre Fauvel est déjà prêt, et il sera jugé; lorsqu’il aura été condamné, il subira le châtiment éternel avec le prince des démons.” [“The judgment of Fauvel has already been set, and he will be judged. When he is condemned, he will undergo eternal punishment with the Devil.”] – le Roman de Fauvel…
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Caught in a Bad Roman-ce Again: Medieval Myth- Making and the Octavian Romances
Somtym byffell ane aventure,In Rome ther was ane Emperoure,Als men in romance rede.He was a man of grete favoureAnd levede in joye and grete honoureAnd doghety was of dede.In tornament nor in no fyghteIn the werlde ther ne was a better knyghte,No worthier undir wede.Octovyane was his name thrughowte;Everylke man hade of hym dowteWhen he…
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Bite-Sized Bard: The Lambs and Tales From Shakespeare
“The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a connected story, diligent care has been…
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Unfinished Business: The Second Part of Mary Wroth’s Urania
A year and a half ago, I introduced all of you to Mary Wroth and her sprawling Jacobean pastoral roman à clef, Urania. In that post, I promised to keep my eyes peeled for an ultra-rare copy of Urania’s incomplete second part in the wild and report back if I successfully got my hands on…
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More Literary Runaway Lovers: Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed and the Birth of the Modern Italian Novel
“Dear readers, all twenty-five of you, imagine the impression the meeting with the two bravi must have made on the poor man!” – The Betrothed, Chapter 1 I’m arguably running a week behind schedule here because last week the other lady of the house and I were in Las Vegas trying to dip our toes…
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The Little House that Libertarianism Built: Myths of the American Frontier and Rose Wilder Lane’s Let the Hurricane Roar
“We are having hard times now, but we should not dwell upon them but think of the future. It has never been easy to build up a country, but how much easier it is for us, with such great comforts and conveniences, kerosene, cookstoves, and even railroads and fast posts, than it was for our…
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Babes in the Woods: Longus’ Daphnis & Chloe
“[A]bsolutely no one has ever escaped Love nor ever shall, as long as beauty exists and eyes can see.” — Daphnis & Chloe, prologue “For our part, may the gods grant us proper detachment in depicting the story of others.” (ibid—and my new writing mantra) As threatened multiple times, we’re circling back to more of…
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The Girl Who Lived: Historical People and the Question of Ethics in Historical Fiction
This entry is going to broadly discuss historical fiction, and the framing of two novels, Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979) and Shalom Auslander’s Hope: A Tragedy (2012) in particular. While normally I wouldn’t post spoiler warnings for two books forty-four and eleven years old respectively, because both books’ synopses play the historical denouement of…
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Canada Emptor: Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush and the Early Immigrant Literature of the Great White North
“Home! The word had ceased to belong to my present it was doomed to live for ever in the past; for what emigrant ever regarded the country of his exile as his home?” – Susanna Moodie, Roughing it in the Bush (Chapter II) As I’ve mentioned a few times, I spent the overwhelming bulk of…
Sarah Holz 