Ersatz TLS discussion
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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 3rd August 2021
SydneyH wrote: "Russell wrote: "a good option for scenes of opulence is one of the earlier novels in the sequence, “La Curée” (The Kill)."Thanks. I have The Masterpiece and The Debacle lined up as my next two, b..."
La Debacle is the best novel on the Franco-Prussian war i have read, the defeat and the shame for the french nation
Bill wrote: "Do you know where the 50:50 split is mentioned in the text?"I found a reference myself - in the letter to (Rochester) from Daniel Cosway
But old Mason take a great fancy for the girl Antoinetta and give her half his money when he die. (pg. 58 Norton Critical Edition)I considered Cosway's testimony in the letter to be of the "unreliable narrator" sort, but there's no other explanation for Antoinette's possession of the money in the marriage settlement.
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Horrible magic realist mush."I think that most of Gabo's work can't really be described as Magic Realism. Certainly One Hundred Years of Solitude."
unlike Vargas Llosa, i found reading Marquez painful, a hopeless wade through treacle and the acclaim he gets always made me wonder...
AB76 wrote: "unlike Vargas Llosa."My response is completely the opposite. While I liked Feast of the Goat, I found The Green House and Death in the Andes deadly plain.
I liked the (one and only) Marquez book I read. I wasn't expecting it to be so funny. I still remember the really beautiful woman calmly stepping past the dead body of one of the many men peeping on her in the shower (he slipped and broke his neck), and then later being so beautiful she promptly ascended to the heavens while the family matriarch shrugged and carried on hanging up the laundry.
Sandya wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Slawkenbergius wrote: "Sandya wrote: "Georg wrote: "Bill wrote: "Georg wrote: "Dear Father. The thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without question or condition...I hav..."Which is how William Marshal (a medieval hero of mine) became Earl of Pembroke by being "given" Isobelle de Clare a ward of the king.
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "unlike Vargas Llosa."My response is completely the opposite. While I liked Feast of the Goat, I found The Green House and Death in the Andes deadly plain."
i havent read The Green House, loved Death in the Andes
Vargas Llosa is brilliant
AB76 wrote: "Vargas Llosa is brilliant"Yes, in some respects he's very much my kind of writer, and probably the last time I've been intrigued by a recent Nobel Prize recipient. His work fits very tidily into the jungles/tropical island theme I sometimes like exploring, and I'm interested in his Flaubert enthusiasm.
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Vargas Llosa is brilliant"Yes, in some respects he's very much my kind of writer, and probably the last time I've been intrigued by a recent Nobel Prize recipient. His work fits very..."
did you read "dream of the celt"?
I've been trying to read one "contemporary" book per month or so - arbitrarily choosing "contemporary" to mean within my adult lifetime, which for me is roughly the 1980s onwards. However, within that time-span, for one reason or another, I've somehow ended up reading almost exclusively things from the 80s, the most recent being William Vollmann's The Rainbow Stories (1989).This is only the second book of Vollmann's that I've read (You Bright and Risen Angels was thr other one) but he already feels like a favourite writer: I find his prose a pleasure to read, inventive and playful without being precious, it flows nicely to my mental ear - something that isn't always the case for me with American writers, even some that I rate very highly in other respects. He also has a good sense of humour. The subject matter of these stories ranges from contemporary (1980s) San Francisco skinhead culture to historical fiction about the Thugee cult in India. I'm looking forward to getting into more of his work over the coming months.
Right now I'm in the middle of Chester Himes's A Rage in Harlem a very solid late-1950s noir novel set where the title says. Very interesting to read a crime novel of the period
set in Harlem and written by an African-American writer, rather than that setting and community being looked at from the outside by a writer that isn't part of it.
And of course, as I usually do, I'm watching and listening to and reading other stuff from that same 1950s period as well.
Berkley wrote: "I've been trying to read one "contemporary" book per month or so - arbitrarily choosing "contemporary" to mean within my adult lifetime, which for me is roughly the 1980s onwards. However, within t..."i do a similar thing to you berkley, in that i supplement the novel i';m reading with photos and articles from the time. I dont read anything from same era in book form but search out articles and essays. there is so much to find on the net....
Berkley wrote: "Very interesting to read a crime novel of the period set in Harlem and written by an African-American writer, rather than that setting and community being looked at from the outside by a writer that isn't part of it."Harkening back to the earlier Bond discussion, I only recall reading one novel set (partially) in Harlem that wasn't by an African-American writer: Live and Let Die.
Miri wrote: "I liked the (one and only) Marquez book I read. I wasn't expecting it to be so funny."Which one was that? I've read only two (or maybe three - for sure Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Love and Other Demons, but unsure about Love in Time of Cholera, I might have just studied excerpts of it), but really liked them both.
As for your other post,
Ultimately I agree that I want more diversity in the writing that is pushed. But... I do identify with characters in and love books from countries I have no particular connection with. Ireland, Nigeria, Italy, South Korea, Russia...I agree with you, but I'd say that this probably comes easier to you, and to me. Let's set aside our gender for a second, and focus on the fact that we've probably both grown up surrounded by books, whether at home, from the library, or from school, the overwhelming majority describing the lives of white people like us (let's roll with it and consider me "white" for now). So enlarging our horizons, later on, to reading books from around the world comes as an option, an indulgence for us (being a bit provocative here, but just to emphasise my point). But if you grow up having to read all the time about other people, those who don't look like you, and share not much at all of your experience, then perhaps you become a bit more discerning about the kind of people you want to read about later on?
Sandya in that example has actually read one novel by Edna O'Brien (which is one more than me), and while there might have been some shared experience in there, somehow, that simply didn't do it for her. I can understand (though by no means does it have to be Sandya's reasons) not wanting to waste any more time if you've already been bombarded for a lot of your earlier life by similar tales of people who don't look like you. Something most of us here simply haven't had to contend with.
Plus, that Irish wind cliché mentioned by Flinty is simply atrocious, so there's that, too.
Bill wrote: "Bill wrote: "Do you know where the 50:50 split is mentioned in the text?"I found a reference myself - in the letter to (Rochester) from Daniel Cosway But old Mason take a great fancy for the girl..."
I usually don't do this pairing reading that you seem to like Swelter, but this year, I happen to have done exactly just that with Jane Eyre in February, and Wide Sargasso Sea in May. I actually loved them both, although Jane Eyre is possibly my favourite book for the year so far. I hadn't read anything about it, and knew practically nothing of it either (and haven't read anything since, as it was something I wanted to discuss with @inter, but she started to feel unwell at the time I was reading it, and then I simply didn't have the heart to read more about it, afterwards). But it struck me as terribly modern, and feminist, and infinitely perceptive of the terrors of childhood (at her aunt's, at school).
One thing though, @Sandya, is that I absolutely cannot get my head round the idea that, worn down by sheer intellectual and moral bullying, she was finally going to give up and consider marrying her cousin. Are we talking about the same Jane who could converse, equal to equal, with the scary, indomitable, socially superior Rochester? Getting herself cornered, only months later, by the relentlessness of her cousin, by the awe she has of his higher mission (just an exercise in ego boosting, really, and a silly Messiah complex), did not make sense to me. At all. On the other hand, everything made perfect sense in Wide Sargasso Sea and, unlike you, I didn't find that Antoinetta was a "madwoman". Her slow decent in madness felt organic, natural, and I could entirely buy the idea that I would have turned up just the same, had I been confronted to the same events as she had.
Anne wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: "And if that was not bad enough, it apparently takes a nosedive halfway through with some ill choice from the writer.I am not encouraging you much, am I?."
It's a book that should be rewritten by Barbara Vine."
I had to look that name up MsC! I have never read any Ruth Rendell. Any advice of where to start if I come across one (one day...)?
Tam wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I do think you missed the whole point of the book [Cold Comfort Farm], Scarlett it was a send up, a satire no less, written by a journalist"I wonder if this is perhaps more obvious in the book, and because of this, people see it more clearly in the film adaptation?
I honestly could hardly see any satire in the film. Perhaps some mildly funny, exaggerated doom and gloom coming from the great-aunt and her daughter (although the kind of mass hysteria - in the clinical sense of the term - they all suffer from I found to be decidedly unfunny). And one laugh at the expense of Flora (how bad her flowery prose is). But the fact that they're all saved by Flora, that they all see the light when she appears in their life, completely undermined any kind of satire that I could have perhaps accepted more from somebody who belonged to that countryside (maybe some send up like Flann O'Brien's, although I haven't read him at all...?).
I'm still tempted to try the book though, I know it's a firm favourite for many people here, and it might just be superior to its adaptation...
Bill wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Very interesting to read a crime novel of the period set in Harlem and written by an African-American writer, rather than that setting and community being looked at from the outside..."Harkening back to the earlier Bond discussion, I only recall reading one novel set (partially) in Harlem that wasn't by an African-American writer: Live and Let Die.
Yes, and I think these two books, Himes's and Fleming's, would make a good pair to read together sometime: both violent thrillers written in the 1950s and dealing with Harlem and African-American characters, but with that contrast between the authors.
I'll be upfront and admit that I don't think Fleming's book is as egregiously racist as it's sometimes represented as being. And there are passages in Himes that would be sure to elicit similar charges - if one didn't know the author was an African-American himself (though perhaps even then, some modern readers might simply accuse him of having assimilated the racist attitudes of his era) .
Not that I think that's the most interesting point of comparison between the two books, but I know it's the one that will first come to mind for many readers today, so I thought I might as well bring it up.
AB76 wrote: "i do a similar thing to you berkley, in that i supplement the novel i';m reading with photos and articles from the time. I dont read anything from same era in book form but search out articles and essays. there is so much to find on the net..."Yes, I hope to do more of that kind of thing in the future as well - for example, I'd like to take advantage of some of the old newspaper and magazine archives that are available online, and look at more of that kind of thing when I'm reading something from a particular era.
Of course the downside is that all this takes a lot of time! So for now I've been limiting myself to a few tv shows, movies, comics, and music. So the past few days I've been listening to Buddy Holly, Ella Fitzgerald, reading Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon newspaper strip and MAD magazine, and I plan to watch the 1953 Julius Caesar (Brando, Gielgud, James Mason) later tonight.
BTW, if anyone's wondering how I chose that particular 1950s movie to watch, apart from the stellar cast and the fact that I've never seen it before, it happens to be parodied in the issue of MAD I'm reading, #17, so I thought it would be nice to see it before reading the parody.
AB76 wrote: "did you read "dream of the celt"?"No - should I? I actually have a second-hand copy, but I think I saw some bad reviews and I thought maybe that wouldn't be my next one. I possibly thought the Storyteller would be my next attempt, on Justine's recommendation.
I was reading Anthony Lane’s review of The Green Knight in the New Yorker today and was wondering how many other reviewers would quote the source poem’s Middle English. Then I got to wondering if any film reviews ever had previously quoted Middle English verse.
Hushpuppy wrote: "Anne wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: "And if that was not bad enough, it apparently takes a nosedive halfway through with some ill choice from the writer.I am not encouraging you much, am I?."
It's a b..."How about From Doon With Death? It's the first Inspector Wexford. Nothing like a police procedural to warm the cockles if my reading heart.
Fuzzywuzz wrote: "I fondly remembered the two moggies, KitKat and Bandit that were pets during my teenage years. They used to torment my Mum by using her head as a paw and claw cushion. It used to drive her bonkers being woke up in that manner..."Interesting that doors had yet to be invented in your mother's time!
Georg wrote: "Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys 
Bought for 10 cent this book has been lingering on a shelf for some years. I love long books, if the story is good I do not want i..."
So glad you enjoyed this... a short masterpiece, indeed.
Machenbach wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "do you know if it's ever been studied academically?."I think it has, 'though I don't recall any sources, and I strongly doubt that, for example, a meaningful census has been t..."
Thanks for your interesting and thoughtful comments.
It occurs to me that one reason for depicting women or men reading is that it provides the sitter with an activity - it must be quite boring to be asked to sit still for a long time without moving, so that the artist may do his work - though that doesn't explain why 'more women'.
It must also be the case that the women are of the moneyed classes: the poor either couldn't read, or would not have had the time to do so. My wife always tells me that if her grandmother caught her reading, she'd say: "Don't just sit there doing nothing!"
CCCubbon wrote: "Mach wrote Moreover, the number of paintings of women reading as opposed to other activities is also generally held to be pretty weirdly (i.e. significantly) high: there are just a lot of pictures..."Haha! excellent points, CCC. I wonder where, or why, those women 'lost' their clothes? Very funny.
(In passing - for the second time this morning, GR has underlined 'their' in red, and yet there is no typo. Does the spell-checker think I should have written 'there clothes'? That didn't get a red underline... for shame!)
Greenfairy wrote: "I liked this CC, The part about the Men discussing Very Important things while completely ignoring her as though she was a part of the furniture as she fetched and carried ...You may, then, like this - which I posted a few weeks ago
...this excerpt from Henning Mankell's 'The Eye of the Leopard', mainly set in Africa - the questioner is a recently arrived European:
They walk down to the river... Everywhere he sees women with hoes in their hands, bent over the earth.
"Where are all the men?" he asks.
"The men are making important decisions, Bwana. Maybe they are also preparing the African whisky."
"Important decisions?"
"Important decisions, Bwana."
scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Mach wrote Moreover, the number of paintings of women reading as opposed to other activities is also generally held to be pretty weirdly (i.e. significantly) high: there are just a..."It irks . Here’s Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass
https://postimg.cc/N5cR8fjK
Bill wrote: "I only recall reading one novel set (partially) in Harlem that wasn't by an African-American writer: Live and Let Die."Well, there is The Mobster's Lament by Ray Celstin, where some of the action definitely takes place in Harlem - and where one of our detectives, Ida Davis, is non-white and a friend of Louis Armstrong. I like this series - not 'great literature', but entertaining and also seemingly informative and well researched (I am no expert, so...).
Hushpuppy wrote: "...enlarging our horizons, later on, to reading books from around the world comes as an option, an indulgence for us... But if you grow up having to read all the time about other people, those who don't look like you, and share not much at all of your experience, then perhaps you become a bit more discerning about the kind of people you want to read about later on?That's a good point... it is certainly interesting, and often a pleasure, to read stories set in other cultures, or times...
I still feel, though, that much human experience tends to follow similar patterns, and that the main thing that changes is the cultural framework. For example, the religious constraints which exist in Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc. may differ in their details, but what we have in all is a set of rules which those in power use to control the behaviour of others... obviously, the consequences for ignoring those rules can differ greatly in the severity of the repercussions which may entail.
I wonder whether, after leaving school, the problem may mainly be one of (lack of) availability of books reflecting the experience of people whose parents or grandparents moved from one country/culture to another? It looks as if that gap is gradually being filled now, but it certainly must have been a major problem say 30 years ago or more.
Berkley wrote: "And there are passages in Himes that would be sure to elicit similar charges - if one didn't know the author was an African-American himself (though perhaps even then, some modern readers might simply accuse him of having assimilated the racist attitudes of his era) ."I think Himes is simply showing the kinds of attitudes and the type of language being used at the time... as for 'being racist', there are racist comments going in the other direction, too, from the black characters about the white ones - which is fair enough!
CCCubbon wrote: "It irks . Here’s Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grasshttps://postimg.cc/N5cR8fjK"
Yes - not surprisingly, that painting was controversial from the time it was first exhibited. There appears to be no agreement on what Manet's intention was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_D%C3...
It may say more about his audience than Manet himself, that a couple of his relatively few paintings featuring nudes are disproportionately famous (or notorious) compared to the rest of his oeuvre!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89d...
Anne wrote: "Picking up on the comments about my reading of The Secret Place.The book group is organised by my local library and we (the group) don't choose the books. Some institution or nati..."
What an awful predicament to be in. Reading a book that one doesn't like is like walking through treacle. I thought Tam's suggestion was a good idea.
Maybe I'm a bit naïve when it comes to bookclub etiquette (having never been part of one - eTLS is the closest bookclub), but surely not all members would like the chosen book and I would have thought that discussion as to why would make for a far more interesting post-book conversation.
Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i do a similar thing to you berkley, in that i supplement the novel i';m reading with photos and articles from the time. I dont read anything from same era in book form but search out ..."i've found a goldmine in old censuses from various countries and the excellent digitised records of magazines and newspapers from Germany and France(all free)
Sadly in the UK, the availability of the same media is very scarce and seems to be behind paywalls
SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "did you read "dream of the celt"?"No - should I? I actually have a second-hand copy, but I think I saw some bad reviews and I thought maybe that wouldn't be my next one. I possibly t..."
Roger Casement is a very interesting character and worth reading about. its not a classic but having a south american write about britain is fascinating
scarletnoir wrote: I still feel, though, that much human experience tends to follow similar patterns, and that the main thing that changes is the cultural framework.Some months ago I watched a Senegalese film Hyènes
About five minutes in I thought: Hang on! This sounds familiar!
As indeed it was. It is an adaptation of Dürrenmatts play "The Visit", set in a suburb of Dakar.
Linguere was 17 when she was cast out, pregnant, abandoned by Dramaan, who denied he was the father. Now, about 50 years later she has announced her visit. She is "as rich as the World Bank". Dramaan is now an amiable and well-liked shopkeeper, always willing to give credit, or free drinks. Oh yes, Linguere will be extremely generous for old time's sake, every villager will become rich beyond their dreams. If they kill Dramaan.
Dürrenmatts (brilliant) play is universal; and timeless.
So are many of Shakespeares plays. And, and, and.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyenas_...
Found the various post WW2 BDR and DDR censuses online(free as usual, unlike in the UK*), its fascinating to look at the change in the sex ratio between 1939 and 1946, the impact of the war etc* you can get census data in the UK but its never well organised, usually parcelled into private companies where you have to pay or aggregated to be meaningless(like the Christian category used for about 50 years, what about fluctuations in denomination....zilch...nada)
AB76 wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "AB76 wrote: "unlike Vargas Llosa."My response is completely the opposite. While I liked Feast of the Goat, I found The Green House and Death in the Andes deadly plain."
i havent ..."
Death in the Andes has a truly uncanny feeling-- you suspect that the Apocalypse is about to arrive, somewhere over the next ridge.
Georg wrote: "Some months ago I watched a Senegalese film HyènesAbout five minutes in I thought: Hang on! This sounds familiar!
As indeed it was. It is an adaptation of Dürrenmatts play "The Visit", set in a suburb of Dakar."
Thanks for that example. Sandya herself complained about 'Romeo and Juliet' type stories being written about Muslims and Hindus... so I think her objection must relate to the quality of the writing as much as anything. I'm sure she'll correct me if I am mistaken!
I am aware, though, that modern tales about second/third generation immigrants, though increasing in number, are still thin on the ground.
scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "It irks . Here’s Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grasshttps://postimg.cc/N5cR8fjK"
Yes - not surprisingly, that painting was controversial from the time it was first exhibited. Ther..."
The controversy, at the time, is that he painted female nudes, who were directly looking out at the (in those days mostly male viewer) with a challenging gaze. It may be a bit hard for us to unpick, in our own current times, but this was seen/read as a direct challenge to the status quo of those times, in art, where female models were nearly always, either clothed or unclothed, portrayed as not looking directly at the viewer. They were there to be enjoyably perused over, as delectable objects, indeed some might well be portrayed with their face in a book! It was a signifier for the lesser power that women had in society.
So Manet's 'Le déjeuner sur l'herbe' was a radical statement. Here was a women saying hey! I have no clothes on, as per usual, but I'm not scared to look you in the eye, and challenge you to accept that I'm your equal...
If you tale a look at 'Olympia' its even more of a challenge. She is probably modelled on a prostitute, but she is definitely in charge and challenging the viewer. And what of the the black servant in the back ground, (that being black was even further down the rung of social hierarchy than being female in those days?) Here is the lovely 'Olympia'https://i.postimg.cc/htCYPVXf/downloa...
And thishttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-...
Tam wrote: "It was a signifier for the lesser power that women had in society.So Manet's 'Le déjeuner sur l'herbe' was a radical statement. Here was a women saying hey! I have no clothes on, as per usual, but I'm not scared to look you in the eye, and challenge you to accept that I'm your equal...
If you tale a look at 'Olympia' its even more of a challenge. She is probably modelled on a prostitute, but she is definitely in charge and challenging the viewer. "
Thank you, Tam - I was hoping someone with a better knowledge of art history would provide us with some context.
What you say makes perfect sense to me. (And, FWIW, I like Manet as an artist.)
Tam wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "It irks . Here’s Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass..."
What you say captures the likely intentions and reactions in 1863 and later. I find it less easy to read the attitudes in the early 1500s. Here is a link to the engraving that Manet was copying. The naiad has the same take-it-or-leave-it gaze, but could that really have been Raphael’s intention?
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
What you say captures the likely intentions and reactions in 1863 and later. I find it less easy to read the attitudes in the early 1500s. Here is a link to the engraving that Manet was copying. The naiad has the same take-it-or-leave-it gaze, but could that really have been Raphael’s intention?
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Russell wrote: " The naiad has the same take-it-or-leave-it gaze"Ah, actually, I thought I could detect something else on my small laptop, and fully blown on my big screen, it indeed is: her eyes are downcast, looking at the ground, and she looks pensive. Nothing of that daring look in the Manet. So it'd seem he made a clear change there, reinforcing what Tam mentioned in her post.
Sandya wrote: "SI am tired of Americans in particular telling me Ireland, a tiny country, is more important than India, China, or Africa. Their sentimentality about Ireland is unreal.."Well, something like a fifth of the American population are 1st, 2nd or 3rd or 4th generation Irish immigrants. And those immigrants at one time comprised the majority of their national lineage. Ashkenazi, Neapolitan, Irish, Veneto, perhaps even Hmong and Armenian, at one time there were more primary or second-degree citizens in the USA than in their native land. Which is something that never has happened for China, India, Turkey, etc which retained the bulk of their native populace. So, why it should appear more important to the average American than China or India is fairly obvious on the allelic level.... Obviously, there is a nativist, racist connotation underlying that, because the Irish arrived in the states at the same time as the Chinese on the opposite shore. Whether that means modern Irish fiction has any call on the American reading public is certainly up for debate. I'd say no, most of it seems fairly unreadable to me, with exception of Kevin Barry and a few others.
Did you like James Herriott? Did you like "All my patients are under the bed" by Camuti?Here is new stuff for vet-story-lovers:
Just read David E. Larsen, The last cow in the chute. Stories from a vet who practised in Sweet Home - Oregon, not Alabama. He also writes a blog,
https://docsmemoirs.com/2021/08/06/nan/
Different time from Herriott and Camuti, which two must have practised during the same time, starting professional life in the 30s, shortly before WW II. Larsen started his practice in the mid seventies. Like Camuti he practises in the US, like Herriott he is dealing with rural folk. With him living a generation later that makes for a distinct voice of his own.
I got his e-book for free (it was on Amazon, not by him) - and yes, I think he can tell an anecdote well enough.
Hushpuppy wrote: "Russell wrote: " The naiad has the same take-it-or-leave-it gaze"
Ah, actually, I thought I could detect something else on my small laptop..."
You’re right! She does look different in close-up. Her eyelids droop, which makes it a bit difficult to tell, and I’m not totally sure she’s looking at the ground, because she still seems to take in the viewer. But I agree that Manet has clearly introduced a daringness.
Ah, actually, I thought I could detect something else on my small laptop..."
You’re right! She does look different in close-up. Her eyelids droop, which makes it a bit difficult to tell, and I’m not totally sure she’s looking at the ground, because she still seems to take in the viewer. But I agree that Manet has clearly introduced a daringness.
Russell wrote: "Tam wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "It irks . Here’s Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass..."What you say captures the likely intentions and reactions in 1863 and later. I find it less ..."
There were different conventions for 'Christian' nudes and they aren't that common, except for Adam and Eve portrayals, and they tend to be of the rather coy variety, or very droll rather unappealing (cartoonlike?) nudes, see Cranach. But the world of gods and goddess (Roman and Greek on the whole) portrayals were much less constrained, as indeed were portraits of real people. Though the classical gods and goddesses were interactive 'mise en scenes', where the relationship and 'the gaze' were between the characters portrayed, generally. Artists weren't adverse to putting in their own little jokes and homilies into their paintings.
See Bruegel's 'Netherlandish proverbs', so I take Raphael's 'Nereids' as one of these little jokes... like... here is one of these archetypes doing a 'knowing' look of 'well I maybe trapped in here, but actually I'm well aware that you, the viewer..., are out there...'. Here is Raphael's portrait of his mistress, 'La Fornarina' she is gazing out, at him, her lover... (but even so it is not quite direct, its as if she was a gazing at maybe a parrot on his right shoulder (I love parrots so its always a favourite excuse for me!) so there is a kind of personal equality, there... maybe..https://i.postimg.cc/rpfp63h0/La-Forn...
Tam wrote: "There were different conventions for 'Christian' nudes and they aren't that common, except for Adam and Eve portrayals, and they tend to be of the rather coy variety, or very droll rather unappealing (cartoonlike?) nudes, see Cranach. But the world of gods and goddess (Roman and Greek on the whole) portrayals were much less constrained"I am reminded how Goethe's Christian devil Mephistopheles finds himself alienated amid all the casual nudity of the "Classical Walpurgis Night"
So find' ich mich doch ganz und gar entfremdet,
Fast alles nackt, nur hie und da behemdet:
Russell wrote: " I’m not totally sure she’s looking at the ground, because she still seems to take in the viewer."I've captured what I can see on my big screen. Don't know if this will render well here in my post, but from what I can see, she's definitely coy and looking at the ground (as opposed to the viewer)... But as you say, no daringness at any rate!
Hushpuppy wrote: "Bill wrote: "Bill wrote: "Do you know where the 50:50 split is mentioned in the text?"I found a reference myself - in the letter to (Rochester) from Daniel Cosway But old Mason take a great fancy..."
RE wondering how Jane could succumb to St.John Rivers after not letting herself be cowed by Rochester, I think the answer lies in Jane's own statement that she enjoyed following a strong will if she approved of that person's motivations, morality, character etc. Further, she had no reason to believe she would see Rochester again, so St. John was an option of sorts. She didn't HAVE to-she had her own money- but she admires his commitment, bloodless as it is. Her yearning for family made her vulnerable too.
I am currently reading "The Eldest Brother" by Iris Butler, an excellent biography of the Marquess Wellesley, Governor-General of India in the early 19th century (1798-1806 approx). I will review later. Butler states that he upheld the contemporary ruling strictly limiting missionary activity in India. He also upheld Muslim and Hindu laws that punished people for converting to Xtianity. This was the state of affairs until 1845. While there were missionaries in India, it casts an odd light on St. John Rivers. CB was writing in 1846-7 but the novel is (disputably) set ~ 1830-37, or even as early as 1808 if one accepts the "Marmion" reference, so one wonders about the legality of setting out to convert Hindus wholesale. It is an inconsistency and I will read more to understand the background better. Possibly there was an explosion of proselytizing after 1845....with missionary types like St. John slavering to harvest souls...... and CB references this without realizing it would have been discouraged at the time the novel is set.
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Her Heart for a Compass (other topics)Mr Wilder & Me (other topics)
Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains (other topics)
My Golden Trades (other topics)
The House of Sleep (other topics)
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Jazmina Barrera (other topics)Jazmina Barrera (other topics)
Marian Engel (other topics)
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B.S. Johnson (other topics)
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It was actually fairly common for heiresses in medieval Europe to be treated this way. In England, you could buy the right to marry them off, a "wardship" if orphaned, from the King. It was a significant source of royal revenue.