---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: 23 November 2002 00:00 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 21 Nov 2002 to 22 Nov 2002 (#2002-321)
There are 20 messages totalling 658 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Hopkins: urgent query
2. John Sutherland & Daniel Deronda (2)
3. Norton's Tess: "A Pure Woman"? (3)
4. sodomy laws
5. "Two Victorian scandals shaped Britain's sex laws"
6. Romola
7. Hopkins query (3)
8. John Sutherland, Romola, DD, Mill/Floss
9. London seminars on 19th-c. texts and readers
10. Tattoo- Thanks!
11. Illegitimate daughters
12. fellowships for 19thC British grad students (2)
13. Ripping yarn, "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman II" (2)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 21:47:21 -0800
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Hopkins: urgent query
My old Norton glosses "buckle" thus:
"The obvious sense here is 'join,' though some critics have understood it as
'bend' or 'break' and some have taken it as an imperative in that sense. ...
Hopkins is celebrating the point at which animal beauty, strength, bearing,
and fine display all join."
But the Norton editors also say, "This poem has been variously explicated,"
before presenting their view that the main thought in it "seems to be that
the ecstatic flying of the bird stirs the poet's heart ... In the
combination of beauty, strength, and glory which the poet sees in the bird,
he sees an emblem of the beauty, strength, and glory of Christ, whom he
addresses as 'my chevalier' ..."
No mention of the shooting interpretation.
Sheldon Goldfarb
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 08:42:28 +0100
From: neil davie <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: John Sutherland & Daniel Deronda
Wouldn't it be a sad state of affairs if everyone enjoyed the same =
books?
Neil=20
Neil Davie, Universit=E9 Paris 7, Paris, France
([log in to unmask])
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 09:11:21 -0000
From: Valerie Gorman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Norton's Tess: "A Pure Woman"?
Another reason for scrupulously checking the text before it is assigned to
students as a recommended/required text, I'd say. If the editor/publisher
has a good reason for altering the writer's wishes when the writer can no
longer enforce them personally, I'm sure they would be happy to explain
themselves. If they can't or won't and if lecturers are trying to instill
in our students the opinion that scholarly endeavour is worthwhile and that
editing matters, departments should vote with their (or rather with their
student's) wallets and only allow into the university/college bookstore the
best, no matter how many inspection copies we have to return. In this, as
in every field whether we like it or not, money talks.
Valerie Gorman
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 10:36:20 -0000
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: John Sutherland & Daniel Deronda
> Wouldn't it be a sad state of affairs if everyone enjoyed the same books?
>
Absolutely: but too often, isn't there an unspoken segue from (to take the
current case) 'I don't enjoy DD or Romola' to 'This is George Eliot at her
absolute worst and no-one in their right minds could possibly enjoy it',
making a quality judgement rather than one of personal taste.
Lesley Hall
[log in to unmask]
website http://www.lesleyahall.net
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 09:29:20 -0000
From: Esma <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: sodomy laws
A good example is The Vere Street Coterie case, as outlined in Robert
Holloway's 'The Pheonix of Sodom'(pub.London, 1813).
The Vere St case itself relates to the raid on a male brothel at the White
Swan Inn, Vere St, London, on Sunday 8th July 1810.
It is a horrible case, and a terribly brutal example of the sort of
treatment and punishment meted out to those who, for all intents and
purposes, where harming noone.
A brief history and bibliography is available at:
www.infopt.demon.co.uk/gayhistory.htm
I am sure that there must be other material available on this case
elsewhere, but as it is a little out of my usual post-1885 Criminal Law
(Amendment) Act time-bracket, this is all I can currently offer. Hope that
it is useful.
Esma Pearcey
[log in to unmask]
-----
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 09:56:34 -0000
From: Esma <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Two Victorian scandals shaped Britain's sex laws"
Jason Boyd's reply to Leslie Hall's original posting points out the fact
that it was the Earl of Euston who sucessfully prosecuted Parke for libel
over his accusations regarding his involvement in the Cleveland Street
Scandal. Two odd things sprung to mind a while ago about both this and the
Wilde libel case.
Firstly, considering what we now know about the Earl of Euston, how
confident can he have been that the case was winnable without some help
coming from somewhere?
Secondly, if indeed the government did stay out of the whole affair, would
this perhaps explain Wilde's initial confidence in his own libel trial
against Queensberry?
Just call me an old conspiricy theorist or an idle speculator, but has this
ever occured to anyone else?
Esma Pearcey
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 10:21:12 +0000
From: Emma Mason <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Romola
Well, if it's a matter of chivalry, I will certainly stand up and defend
Romola. I just taught it a couple of weeks ago and most of the students
seemed to like it. The depiction of Savonarola is very interesting
(especially read through Eliot's own views on the Oxford Movement). And the
ending is quite sweet, Romola and Tess working to raise a pair of
illegitimate children together. So sweet, in fact, that the 1924 film
adaptation of Romola (dir. Henry King) changed the ending and drowned Tess
before the ending... but I suppose this has more to do with the sexual
anxieties of the 1920s than Eliot.
>
> The age of chivalry is dead.. . . . will no sword leap from its scabbard
> to defend Romola?
>
> David Latane
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 08:43:42 -0500
From: herbert tucker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Hopkins query
Now we're getting someplace. "Buckle" has attracted a great deal of
commentary over the decades. The strangest interpretation I know of
finds the poet alluding to the (by him despised) historiography of W.
T. Buckle (don't quote me on those initials). The strongest portable
reading of the word, and thereby of the sonnet, is probably still
Empson's in *Seven Types of Ambiguity* (hint: it's ambiguous, nay a
Freudian auto-antonym like "cleave") -- an interpretation short
enough to read in a few minutes of class and provocative enough to
occupy the rest of the hour.
It doesn't help much to say that the idea of GMH with a fowling piece
on his shoulder is biographically preposterous. Instead, trawl in
the journals and letters for his use of the verb "catch," usually in
connection with the noun "inscape," as a term of perception (whose
Latin root "catch" of course englishes). Maybe an analogy to the
photographer's "snap" will help: Leave nothing but footprints, take
nothing but photos, etc..... Such catching (the raptor's rapture) is
an act of prowess by GMH's standards of manliness, no NRA required.
-------------------
> The student's narrator-as-hunter approach to "The Windhover"has
been advanced before and, in my eyes, remains weak and
unconvincing. "Caught," in the opening line, means idiomatically
that the narrator glimpsed, or caught sight of, the lovely kestrel.
To me, the only sense in which the bird is captive is in the rapt
imagination of the narrator.
>
> Further, it is doubtful that "buckle" here means stoop or fall, in
order to pursue prey (little evidence of this) or from being shot
(the narrator appears to lack albatross issues). Also, as an
ornithological aside, kestrels do not drop precipitously toward their
prey, which "buckle" implies; it is a gradual, sloping descent.
Thus, a more logical way to interpret "buckle," in terms of the tone
of the poem, is in the sense of combining or uniting (one meaning of
buckle is to unite in marriage or to fasten a buckle) the antecedent
elements of the windhover's inscape, the feature in nature and man
that reveals God presence. The onomatopoeic force of "buckle," then,
acts to recreate an almost electrically-charged resilience of the
windhover, as a uniquely beautiful bird and as a representative of
Christ. This imagery of stress or pressure appears throughout the
poem, particularly in the narrator's description of the aerodynamic
feats of the kestrel.
>
> Peter O'Neill
Herbert F. Tucker
Professor of English
(University of Virginia)
NYU in London
6 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3RA
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 09:03:47 -0500
From: Sarah Winters <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Hopkins query
Two suggestions:
Would a hunter address his prey as "my chevalier"? That seems unlikely.
The embers of the last two lines "fall, gall themselves." They sacrifice
_themselves_, rather than being broken by an outside force. If they
mirror the bird, then that would suggest the bird is not caused to buckle
by an outside force either.
I hope this helps.
Sarah Winters
University of Toronto
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 09:40:13 -0500
From: Elisabeth Rose Gruner <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Norton's Tess: "A Pure Woman"?
(I am posting this for my student, whose response didn't go through)
We are currently studying Tess and the Broadview version edited by Sarah
Maier, who has responded, uses the subtitle with the Shakespearean quote.
There is also an--Author's Preface to The Fifth and Later Editions-- with
this following quote from Hardy in 1912--
--Respecting the sub-title, to which allusion was made above, I may add that
it was appended at the last moment, after reading the final proofs, as being
the estimate left in a candid mind of the heroine's character -- an estimate
that nobody would be likely to dispute. It was disputed more than anything
else in the book. Melius fuerat non scribere.* But there it stands (31).--
* It would have been better not to write it.
Regards,
Dominic Finney
--There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it
lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level, and surveys the long
windings of destiny.--
--Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Dominic Finney
Student Information Specialist
Registrar's Office
University of Richmond
(804) 289-8858
(804) 287-6578 fax
Elisabeth Rose Gruner
Associate Professor of English & Women's Studies
University of Richmond
Richmond VA 23173
Voice: 804/289-8298 Fax: 804-289-8313
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.richmond.edu/~egruner
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 16:37:25 +0100
From: Richard Dury <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Hopkins query
The student's view, that the bird is shot, is unconvincing - yet there is an
element of desire in the represented relationship of observer and
bird/chevalier: 'caught', imagery of stress and pressure, the unstopable
force or definitive uniting of 'buckle'. All this may have been seen by the
student as evidence of the basic mistake (the interpretaiton of 'caught').
Richard Dury
Univ. Bergamo
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:30:05 -0500
From: Kathleen McCormack <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: John Sutherland, Romola, DD, Mill/Floss
I agree with Niccola, but I think the pressure of having to come up with
significant tag ends in all of 19th-century fiction may create certain
demands as well. I confess to some irritation last summer when
Sutherland wrote in the Guardian that Margaret Mitchell calls the freed
slaves 'black apes from the jungle' in Gone with the Wind. I'm not
certain, but I don't think even the narrator ever does say that; I
remember it as in the mouth of a character, a Yankee woman trying to
hire a servant.
The key to rendering Romola enjoyable, in my humble opinion, is reading
it in Florence. George Eliot kindly sets a scene at every major tourist
attraction, even the slightly remote San Miniato where she has Romola
taking a walk with Baldassare.
I've taught Romola with great success in two ways. In a Florence Study
Abroad program and in something I called ?Victorian Literature and the
Italian Renaissance.' In the first it worked well, only I had some pangs
as I watched the students actually reading it on the train to Naples
(?what am I doing to them?). One of my colleagues, when teaching it
there, actually claims that the Palazzo housing the program at 15 Borgo
degli Albizi is where Romola and Tessa end up?don't know about that. In
the second, each student did an oral report on the Italian names
mentioned in the early chapters. Naturally every character, person, and
plot alluded to has parallels or counterpoints to what's happening at
the main plot level. This not only expanded their knowledge of
15th-century Florence, but I didn't have to break my back to convince
them of George Eliot's incredible density, something that can be hard to
do when they have no familiarity with the majority of the texts to which
she alludes.
Back to Sutherland, because of his errors in the early volume about the
ending of The Mill on the Floss, I worry about people using the puzzles
for teaching. I think he's spot on about Felix Holt and don't remember
the Deronda puzzle very well?it had to do with the old Cynthia
Chase/circumcision debate maybe??but everyone should know that regarding
The Mill on the Floss, he corrects himself in a later volume.
Ciao.
Kathleen
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 10:34:42 -0600
From: Patrick Leary <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: London seminars on 19th-c. texts and readers
[The following reminder is cross-posted from SHARP-L.]
Please note that the next two papers in the current series of seminars on
'Texts, Readers and Reading Communities in Nineteenth-Century Britain' at
the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, Institute of English Studies,
University of London, will take place on Monday 25 November and Monday 09
December 2002. Full details below and on the webpage at
http://www.sas.ac.uk/ies/centre/seminars.htm
Monday 25 November: Room 265
Mrs Beeton and Betty: Recipes for Domestic Reading
Margaret Beetham (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Monday 9 December: Room 265
Quotation and Confession: Reading and Reader in late-Victorian Autograph
Albums
Samantha Matthews (Goldsmiths College)
Texts, Readers and Reading Communities in Nineteenth-Century Britain is
organised jointly with the Open University
Mondays, 6.00-7.30pm, fortnightly, Autumn Term 2002
Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX.
For further information please contact Caroline Sumpter,Open University
([log in to unmask]) and Stephen Colclough, University of Reading
([log in to unmask])
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 09:20:56 -0500
From: "Emily D. Biggs" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Tattoo- Thanks!
Thank you so much for your generous help with my research on tattoos. I am
as awed by your knowledge as I am by your kindness. Gratefully,
Emily Biggs
PhD Student
University of Kentucky
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 11:46:59 -0400
From: Richard Nemesvari <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Norton's Tess: "A Pure Woman"?
Hardy's later comments on his own works are often more than a little
disingenuous, and sometimes involve a "cat and mouse" game with his readers
which can become complex. The "melius fuerat non scribere" disclaimer below
is a case in point. Although it seems to suggest regret at an unnecessary
provocation, *Tess of the d'Urbervilles* in its entirety is a carefully
calculated provocation, so that it is Hardy's evocation of the "candid mind"
which would be unlikely to "dispute" Tess's purity which is the key. What
he is in effect saying is "well, since there were apparently large numbers
of readers too thick to perceive the obvious, it would have been better not
to state the obvious, and give them even more reason to demonstrate their
thickness." He is not regretting his assertion in the subtitle, but rather
some people's (willful?) misunderstanding of his novel. And he is also
inviting the current reader to decide whose side he/she is on.
Certainly there is no reason, either bibliographical or critical, to remove
the full subtitle, including the epigraph quotation from *The Two Gentlemen
of Verona,* from the title page, and the only time I've seen this done is in
cheap knock-off productions of the text. My second edition of the Norton
*Tess* has "A PURE WOMAN FAITHFULLY PRESENTED BY THOMAS HARDY" as the
subtitle on the title page, and the quotation with its attribution on the
verso of that page. As far as layout goes this strikes me as a little odd,
and unfortunately the Shakespearean reference is misquoted, but at least the
material is there. If this has been removed from subsequent Norton
editions, I don't think it's a change for the better.
Richard Nemesvari (Chair)
Department of English
St. Francis Xavier University
[log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Elisabeth Rose Gruner" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: Norton's Tess: "A Pure Woman"?
> (I am posting this for my student, whose response didn't go through)
>
>
> We are currently studying Tess and the Broadview version edited by Sarah
> Maier, who has responded, uses the subtitle with the Shakespearean quote.
> There is also an--Author's Preface to The Fifth and Later Editions-- with
> this following quote from Hardy in 1912--
> --Respecting the sub-title, to which allusion was made above, I may add
that
> it was appended at the last moment, after reading the final proofs, as
being
> the estimate left in a candid mind of the heroine's character -- an
estimate
> that nobody would be likely to dispute. It was disputed more than anything
> else in the book. Melius fuerat non scribere.* But there it stands (31).--
> * It would have been better not to write it.
> Regards,
> Dominic Finney
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 12:08:02 -0500
From: "Schatz, SueAnn" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Illegitimate daughters
Lesley Hall's mention of Marie Corelli reminded me of Brian Master's bio of
Corelli that you might wish to consult. As I recall (and it's been a few
years since I read it), Corelli/Minnie was the illegitimate daughter of
Charles Mackay and (I think) one of his servants. She was a widow; he was
married. After the death of his first wife, Mackay and Corelli's mother
married, but she was raised thinking that Mackay was her adopted father and
that her birth father was her mother's first husband. She learned the
truth from personal papers after Mackay died, but continued to assert that
he had adopted her, most probably fearing the stigma of illegitimacy (even
if her parents had eventually married).
SueAnn Schatz
Assistant Professor of English
Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
313 Raub Hall
Lock Haven, PA 17745
570-893-2641
[log in to unmask]
http://www.lhup.edu/~sschatz
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 14:38:42 -0200
From: Gail Savage <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: fellowships for 19thC British grad students
Dear Pam: I saw your annoucement of the Kirland fellowships with some
interest. I've taken on the chore of trying to put together an on-line
version of the NACBS newsletter, the British Studies Intelligencer, and I
had thought that it might be useful to maintain a graduate student's column.
I was wondering if a somewhat condensed announcement describing these
fellowships might be appropriate for that?
Hope all is well. Best regards, Gail Savage
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 14:23:29 -0600
From: Martin A Danahay <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Ripping yarn, "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman II"
I wanted to suggest a lightearted fillip for those of you who had not heard
of this series (and my apologies for those of you who knew about this series
already for teaching you to suck eggs, as the saying goes). Discussing "The
War of the Worlds" in class yesterday, a student informed me that "The
League of Extraordinary Gentleman II" has been published; this serio-comic
series spoofs well-known Victorian character and texts, and the latest
volume sends up Wells's classic of Martian invasion - can't wait to get hold
of it. For more info go to:
http://www.wildstorm.com/minisites/loeg/loeg.html
To give you a sense of the flavour of these comics, here are the biographies
of the creators of the series:
MR. ALAN MOORE
Mr. Alan Moore, author and former circus exhibit (as "The What-Is-It from
Borneo"), is chiefly famed for his chapbooks produced with the younger
reader in mind. He astounded the Penny Dreadful world with such noted
pamphlets as "A Child's Garden of Venereal Horrors" (1864), and "Cocaine and
Rowing: The Sure Way to Health" (1872) before inheriting a Cumbrian jute
mill and, in 1904, expiring of Scorn.
MR. KEVIN O'NEILL
Mr. O'Neill commenced his career as a pugilist in 1859. Due to excessive
drinking and repeated cerebral splintering during an early bout with Walter
Phibbs, the Widnes Goliath, O'Neill passed into an insensible state from
which he was never to fully awaken. However, in 1885, doctors discovered
that by attaching galvanising cables directly to the comatose
prize-fighter's brain, his right hand could be made to delineate exquisite
and fanciful illustrations, such as his well-known series "Modern Times, or,
The Progress of a Scented Nonce," and, of course, his scandalous "Queen
Victoria and Emily Pankhurst Girl-on-Girl Novelty Flipbook." Mr. O'Neill is
currently maintained on a special diet at the London Hospital.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 13:16:11 -0800
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Ripping yarn, "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman II"
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002 14:23:29 -0600 Martin A Danahay <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I wanted to suggest a lightearted fillip for
> those of you who had not heard
> of this series (and my apologies for those of
> you who knew about this series
> already for teaching you to suck eggs, as the
> saying goes). Discussing "The
> War of the Worlds" in class yesterday, a
> student informed me that "The
> League of Extraordinary Gentleman II" has been
> published; this serio-comic
> series spoofs well-known Victorian character
> and texts, and the latest
> volume sends up Wells's classic of Martian
> invasion - can't wait to get hold
> of it. For more info go to:
>
> http://www.wildstorm.com/minisites/loeg/loeg.html
I was planning to hold off on the Blatant Self-Promotion, but this
opportunity I can't pass up.
<naked commercial plug>
League, or LoEG, is indeed a great romp through Victorian literature. For
those of you not aware of it, the premise of the first LoEG series is that
Mina Harker (whose married name was Mina Murray), is hired by "M" (of
British Secret Service) to gather together Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo,
Dr. Edward Hyde (and his alter-ego) and Hawley Griffin (better known for
his invisibility serum) to fight against a mysterious Chinese warlord
(known only as "The Doctor") who has taken up residence in Limehouse.
The premise of the second LoEG series (which follows close on the heels of
the first) is that the members of the League are witnesses to the landing
of a large cylinder in Woking, and the ugly alien brutes ("Good heavens!
Are they Prussians?") which emerge from it.
The series are filled with cameos and references to a vast range of
Victorian (and later) literature, everything from Dick Donovan to Zola to
Trollope to Rosa Coote (from The Pearl). I've annotated the issues (with
the help of a number of other folks) at
http://www.geocities.com/ratmmjess/league1.html , league2.html, and so on
for the first series, and
http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/league1.html , league2.html, and so on
for the second series.
And my annotations will be published next June (a month before the movie
(which has Sean Connery playing Quatermain) comes out). The annotations,
which are for the first series only, are in a revised and expanded form,
accompanied by three essays by me (the Victorian Archetypes in LoEG, the
literary history of the concept of the crossover, and the history of the
concept of the Yellow Peril), the artist's commentary on my annotations,
and my interview with the writer of LoEG. Around 300 pp, $14.95, from
MonkeyBrain Press.
And in summer 2004 my Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana will be
published, but that's a Blatant Self-Promotion for another time....
</naked commercial plug>
Jess Nevins
Sam Houston State University
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 17:22:08 -0500
From: Pamela Gilbert <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: fellowships for 19thC British grad students
Hi Gail!! Good to hear from you. Yes, by all means, please include it.
All is generally well here--how are you? Best, Pameal
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Gail Savage wrote:
> Dear Pam: I saw your annoucement of the Kirland fellowships with some
> interest. I've taken on the chore of trying to put together an on-line
> version of the NACBS newsletter, the British Studies Intelligencer, and I
> had thought that it might be useful to maintain a graduate student's
> column. I was wondering if a somewhat condensed announcement describing
> these fellowships might be appropriate for that?
>
> Hope all is well. Best regards, Gail Savage
>
------------------------------
End of VICTORIA Digest - 21 Nov 2002 to 22 Nov 2002 (#2002-321)
***************************************************************
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
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