BunWat 's comments
BunWat 's comments from the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club group.
Note: BunWat is no longer a member of this group.
(showing 1-20 of 601)
Every generation does that.
Real swell dolls are hip to the jive.
Can you dig it, daddy oh?
Its a groovy thing, to be copacetic.
The words larder and pantry are still in use in my house.
I don't think English and American are going to be two languages within a few decades. For one reason, literacy tends to slow down linguistic drift. For another languages split more readily and quickly when two groups of speakers are separated and given current transportation and communication tech we just aren't that separated.
Funny!! Its true, Anglo Saxon is much more Germanic/Nordic. My prof said she spent a summer vacaction in Norway when she was studying Anglo Saxon, and found quite a few commonalities.
Well we do have some idea, although I agree, not a definitive one.
I think that makes sense. Also Mowgli is often hugging, or wrestling, or jumping out of hiding onto his friends or being pushed off and tickled, its very rough and tumble and physically affectionate. I don't know if Bod can't touch the ghosts or he just doesn't very much but for me it really gives a different feel. And doesn't Gaiman say someplace that they feel cold when you get close to them? Not that they don't care about him, but there's a kind of distance.
Cool. I have not read more than a few excerpts of Beowulf in the original. I've read some other Anglo Saxon poetry though. For me, Chaucer is still recognizably English, but Anglo Saxon is like reading another language.
You aren't reading Beowulf in the original though? Unless you read Anglo Saxon? Which would be very cool. I had a professor who did, and she read us some of it, it sounded like a work song, you know, with a really definite rhythm that got you moving.
I agree, it is possible, (and rewarding) to read Chaucer in the original. Even easier to read Shakespeare. Part of the reason they are included in the canon is that they shaped the language. We speak the way we do in part because of authors that people quoted and imitated. So reading them tells us something about where the language we speak came from, and how it developed.
That's an interesting point. However, Shakespeare has been such an influence on English that we still use his language in many ways. We still use his turns of phrase and his metaphors and his vocabulary.
Other languages have their own literary icons who don't generally get "translated" into modern versions either. Even the Tale of Genji, which is from the eleventh century and unreadable for most modern Japanese without a lot of annotation - high schools in Japan still teach excerpts in the original because its such an important part of the history of Japanese culture.
how much do you think we lose, miss, or misunderstand when we read books from earlier ages?
I think we miss a lot, but how much depends somewhat on whether you have learned about those earlier times. I have studied some history, and linguistic history, so although I don't and can't read a book with the same understandings as the people who read it when it was new, I can (on good days) use an old work to travel mentally into a different world view. Sort of like time traveling via fiction. Which is a lot of fun.
As far as Beowulf and Homer and such, I would guess you are reading them in translation, not in the language in which they were written. So then a lot depends on the translator.
That's true.
Ayup. UK LeGuin wrote some great essays on children's fiction. One of the things she often talks about is that good children's fiction makes children's fears into stories rather than denying them. Giving kids a way to look at their fears at a fictional distance, but still look at them.
For example in so many kids stories the child is an orphan, or lost, or stolen. Huge fear - how could I survive if I lost my parents? Thus the many stories where somehow, kids do.
Anansi Boys for me.
I think Gaiman often leaves a lot to the imagination. He will give you part of the picture and then sort of let you fill it in the rest of the way for yourself. Which is often very okay with me.
I like that he will make references to things that are not fully explained, because you know in my real life when I walk past a couple arguing in the parking lot I may never find out why they are arguing. So for me it gives Gaiman's work this feeling of strange realism.
Yeah!! Because its sort of the same thing. A lot of the people have multiple titles, and quite a few of them have more than one name too. Like Eleanor herself; Dutchess of Aquitaine, Countess of Poitiers, Queen of England. Birth name was Aenor, but she was called Aliénor (the other Aenor) because she was named after her mother so there were two Aenors in the castle.
Her stuff often starts slow, you've got to sort of settle in with it. Because there are a lot of characters to be brought into the story if its going to be at all accurate. But once you get established, yum!! Just think of it as a Russian novel Lori, ha ha.
Sharon Kay Penman, who is very good, wrote an Eleanor of Aquitaine series, really about that whole period of history. The first one When Christ and His Saints Slept is about the civil war between Maud and Stephen, and Eleanor and Henry come in toward the end. I haven't read them but I've been meaning to because I REALLY liked her Welsh series.
Well maybe if the woman in the Carey book had holdings or retainers before she got married then she went through some sort of fealty ceremony when they married so that her retainers would then come under his rule? To clear up just those kinds of issues. So then that would put her into a relationship to him where petty treason could come into it. Just guessing really.
Sorry, can't help you on the book, its not ringing a bell just now.
I saw them on your profile and put the first one on my to read mountain. It looks really interesting!!
I read some great articles awhile back about Eleanor of Aquitane's fealty relationships. Very complicated!! Because some people were in direct fealty with her as heiress of Aquitaine. Others were in fealty with her as a representative of her husbands. The ones who were in direct relationship to her weren't subject to Louis or Henry and she had to be sure to maintain and be aware of those different relationships.
The articles went on to say that she was an example of a particularly complicated tangle but that other women also had the same issues on a smaller scale. Apparently one of the issues between her and Henry was that he had a tendency to forget that not everybody who worked for her worked for him too. And then things would get touchy.
Thanks Richard, I enjoyed that.
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
