Luke > Recent Status Updates

"[H]e then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of an heavy rain."

Seems Austen shares my appreciation for the wonderful sculpting effect water has on clothing of certain types of folks.

Commenting on Jane Austen's penchant for dirty jokes counts as a credible annotation, right?

[A] war can be won with any class of people, but a fair, ethical system of government cannot be put in place if the people who take it upon themselves to do it lack those qualities, or sacrifice those values along the way.

It's outrageous to think that knowledge is only for those who can pay for it.

What was it that enabled people to give their lives for an idea, for the freedom of others?

To be known as a poet in my country is to enjoy one of the highest, most cherished status symbols in society.

I may end up regretting adding yet another work to the currently reading docket, but between my three school books in measured transit and my two nearly finished that need to be put off for pacing's sake, I've got nothing to read and I'm bored. Besides, YoRWoC2016's always a good excuse for anything.

[W]e should not be surprised that the Enlightenment could accomodate slavery; we should be surprised if it had not. The concept of freedom did not emerge in a vacuum. Nothing highlighted freedom—if it did not in fact create it—like slavery.

Criticism as a form of knowledge is capable of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and explicit ideology but of its ideas as well; it can dismiss the difficult, arduous work writers do to make an art that becomes and remains part of and significant within a human landscape.

A word of advice to haters of women: if there's even the slightest chance you'll be forced to publically make an exception to your rule, make sure she's not in the position to put a price on your head.

I was taught to remember two things with regards to Titus Adronicus and tragedies in general: the play will have its goat, and there will be incest. Everywhere. I already know the particulars of the having of the goat, and am starting to get a fair idea of the incest.

For holy Church's good may be dispended
On holy Church's blood that is descended.
Therefore he would his holy blood honour
Though that he holy Churche should devour.

(My class has me jumping around in this, so bear with the incoming nonlinearity.)

It's a sad day indeed when one runs out of colorful socks to wear.

To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.

We're actually starting Austen off with bits and pieces of Catharine and Other Writings, but there's not enough of them to constitute reviewing quite yet.

Headcannoning the Pardoner as female/a trans male/nonbinary.

I don't plan on keeping up my current trend of finishing and reviewing a book every other day for much longer, but it's good to know I'm capable of it.

There may be advocates for matrimonal obedience, who, making a distinction between the duty of a wife and of a human being, may blame my conduct.—To them I write not—my feelings are not for them to analyze[.]

Upside: Shakespearean Tragedy prof is a fucking genius.

Downside: I'm going to have to work my fucking ass off but it's so nice to actually be encouraged to think in class.

Prof, your lips say that Wollstonecraft isn't white feminism, but your villianization of the concept of "harem" and your inability to name a country in Africa say otherwise.

I'll fight anyone who refers to Dorothea as a "typical woman".

How writers, professing to be friends to freedom, and the improvement of morals, can assert that poverty is no evil, I cannot imagine.

On this page, a previous reader penned: 'I HATE YOUR LONG ^complicated ^confusing SENTENCES WOLLSTONECRAFT!!!' That wasn't very Proust of them.

I don't know my thoughts with regards to Titus Adronicus quite yet, but it's good to know my Shakespeare reading abilities haven't dulled.

She was not bound, they said, by any of England's laws since the Conquest—and could therefore choose to sweep away the entire apparatus of the Reformation at will—because all previous statutes had been made in the name of England's king, while its queen was nowhere mentioned.

Wollstonecraft and co's sniffety sniff sniff attitude towards tattoos just makes me want to get more.

When Warwick knelt before her to pledge his renewed allegiance, Margaret's revulsion was such that she kept him on his knees for more than fifteen minutes.

Parents often love their children in the most brutal manner, and sacrifice every relative duty to promote their advancement in the world.—To promote, such is the perversity of unprincipled prejudices, the future welfare of the very beings whose present existence they imbitter by the most despotic stretch of power.

A good litmus test for people in general is whether they're a 'bell hooks' or a 'Bell Hooks'.

On what ground can religion or morality rest when justice is thus set as defiance?