---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: 05 December 2002 00:00 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 3 Dec 2002 to 4 Dec 2002 (#2002-333)
There are 9 messages totalling 378 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Nothing (2)
2. Query: Wildean quote?
3. Egyptian cigars
4. Not So Bad as We Seem
5. Bloom on Ruskin, Pater, and Stevens
6. Teaching 19C Popular culture
7. lotteries
8. An obscure Victorian woman...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 07:46:55 -0500
From: herbert tucker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Nothing
-------------------
> I can think of a number of 19th century poems that play with
subjectivity
> in similar ways (several by Hardy, for example), but the obvious
prose
> passage for me would be from Pater's "Conclusion" (to The
> Renaissance). The second paragraph especially, but you may need
the first
> to give it some context.
This from Jack Kolb was my first nomination too, for (what proves
pretty rare in Victorian prose, the poetry being another matter) its
quality of Stevens-like bemusement. An ascesis virtually scientific,
as I like to think Pater would have liked to think, which then puts
me in mind of the final paragraph of Darwin's *Origin of Species*,
which might nicely complement "The Snow Man." The proposed Carlyle
and Ruskin passages -- also the stunning survey of secular
meaninglessness that fills a paragraph or two near the start of the
final chapter of Newman's *Apologia* -- are appalled, all right, but
in the earnest not the numbed sense.
Herbert Tucker
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 09:10:26 -0800
From: Myrtle Stanhope <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Query: Wildean quote?
Dear all,
I've been having trouble tracking down a quotation that may or may not be
Wilde's, and I wonder if anyone on the list might recognize it. The gist
of it is a comment made about talking to oneself because that is how one is
assured of an intelligent audience--though I am paraphrasing from a
paraphrase, and probably getting the key words wrong. I am hesitantly
attributing it to Wilde because of its dry aphoristic wit (and because I
have a faint memory of its being his), but I may be wrong about that too.
I've tried Brewster's, Columbia, Oxford, and Google, with no results. Any
hints?
Best wishes and thanks,
Myrtle Stanhope
[log in to unmask]
_____________________________________________________________
Get 25MB, POP3, Spam Filtering with LYCOS MAIL PLUS for $19.95/year.
http://login.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus&ref=lmtplus
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 12:13:59 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Egyptian cigars
It's also available online in several places, including the gaslight site:
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/gaslight/egyptcig.htm
Mario Rups
[log in to unmask]
On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, anne gomez huff wrote:
> Kate Chopin wrote a piece called "An Egyptian Cigarette" that seems to
> suggest the possible hallucinogenic qualities of Egyptian tobacco. You
> can find this piece in _Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin
> de Siecle_ Ed. Showalter.
>
> Cheers!
> Anne Gomez Huff
>
>
>
> ************************************************
> "Though he was a pessimist, Schopenhauer played the flute"
> ---F. Nietzsche
>
>
>
>
>
> > From: "Sally H. Mitchell" <[log in to unmask]>
> > Reply-To: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
> > <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Egyptian cigars
> > Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 14:40:39 -0500
> >
> > I'm not sure about the cigars, but I think "Egyptian cigarettes" have a
> > drug-related connotation, maybe hash . . . and no doubt as soon as I
> > click on "send" I will think of a source or reference which is now
> > eluding me.
> >
> >
> > Sally Mitchell, English Department, Temple University: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 09:17:15 -0800
From: Beppe Sabatini <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Not So Bad as We Seem
Thanks to Jennifer Foster, Daniel Hack, and Dr. Russell Potter for providing
clues in my research on Laura Honey and the cast of Not So Bad as We Seem. I
can't quite verify that Miss Honey ever did join the troupe, so I'm going to
omit that dubious assertion. Should anyone stumble across any further
evidence, please be in touch.
***********************************************************
Beppe Sabatini [log in to unmask]
Alumnus, University of California, Berkeley
Working on News by Boz, Charles Dickens's Newspaper Writing
_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 11:55:27 -0800
From: Peter O'Neill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Bloom on Ruskin, Pater, and Stevens
Harold Bloom, in his eloquent introduction to *Selected Writings of Walter
Pater,* discusses Stevens as a descendant of Ruskin and Pater, dominant
figures in Bloom's anxiety-of-influence genealogy. Along the way, Blooms
alludes to Stevens's "The Snow Man":
"Ruskin's formulation of the pathetic fallacy protests the human loss
involved in Wordsworth's compensatory imagination. As such, Ruskin's
critique prophesies the winter vision of Wallace Stevens, from "The Snow
Man" through to "The Course of the Particular." When Stevens reduces to
what he calls the First Idea, he returns to 'the ordinary, proper, and true
appearances of things to us,' [Ruskin's description, when explaining the
pathetic fallacy, of the first order of poets' ability to more accurately
capture external life--my note] but then finds it dehumanizing to live only
with these appearances. So the later Ruskin found also, in his own
elaborate mythicizings in *Sesame and Lilies* and related books, and in the
Wordsworthian autobiography, *Praeterita,* that closed his work. What
Wordsworth called "spots of time," periods of particular splendor or
privileged moments testifying to the mind's power over the eye, Ruskin had
turned from earlier, as being dubious triumphs of the pathetic fallacy.
Pater, who subverted Ruskin by going back to their common ancestor,
Wordsworth, may be said to have founded his criticism upon privileged
moments of vision, or 'epiphanies' as Joyce's Stephen, another Paterian
disciple, was to term them."
Peter O'Neill
[log in to unmask]
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 14:22:51 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Nothing
Here's some of my notes from Mary Elizabeth Braddon's
notebooks held at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin. She clearly
ponders fragmented subjectivity and meaningless, but ultimately
grasps belief:
MEB's 7 notebooks at HRC include lots of quoting of other writers,
including French writers in the French language, Shakespeare,
17th, 18th, and Romantic writers; long quotes from Jowett about
Plato's Symposium, Republic and Apology, references to Darwin
and Huxley, Spencer, Heraclitus, Mohammed, the Buddha, the
Greek gods, Italian writers in Italian language, quotes from In
Darkest Africa and Stanley's diaries, & from Sir Richard Burton's
travels in Africa, English History, Nietzsche, William James,
Pascal, Parnell, Pater, Jeremy Taylor, Gibbon on Zoroaster, Comte
de Villiers de L'Isle--Adam, quotes from Don Quixote in the
Spanish language, verses from the Bible, a clipping from the
newspaper by a chiromanist, one who reads the hand as a
phrenologist reads the head: he describes the murderers hand
with 5 or 6 specific characteristics, Carlyle, Newman, Hooker,
Flaubert, George Eliot, EBB and RB, Tennyson, Swinburne,
Dryden, Bunyan, words and their meanings in colloquial
Hindustani, Oscar Wilde, translations of English words in the
Hawaiian language and how to read the vowels in that language,
Zola, the Greek signs and names of the zodiac, Faust in German;
Chaucer, Marlowe, Pope.
page 58 of Vol IV MEB Notebooks: First & Last Catastrophe [I can't
tell here if she's just taking parenthetical notes and summaries
here or quoting a writer. But on page 57 she is summarizing Mr.
Spencer's and William Thomson's theories about how the earth
was formed over a million years and on p. 59 she seems to be
quoting from Froude, Nemesis: [ at any rate here is what is written
down on p. 58]: In any case, all we know is that the sun is going
out. If we fall into the sun then we shall be fried; if we go away
from the sun, or the sun goes out, then we shall be frozen. So that,
so far as the earth is concerned, we have no means of
determining what will be the character of the end, but we know that
one of these two things must take place in time. But in regard to
the whole universe, if we were to travel forward as we have
travelled backward in time, & consider things as falling together,
we shd come finally to a great central mass, all in one piece, wh
wd send out waves of heat through a perfectly empty ether, &
gradually cool itself down. As this mass got cool it wd be deprived
of all life motion; it wd be just a mere enormous frozen block in the
middle of the ether.
But that conclusion depends upon the assumption that the laws
of geometry & mechanics are exactly & absolutely true; & that they
will continue exactly & absolutely true for ever & ever. Such an
assumption we have no right to make. We may therefore, I think,
conclude about the end of things that, so far as the earth is
concerned, an end of life upon it is as probable as science can
make anything; but that in regard to the universe we have no right
to draw any conclusion at all. [my guess is that this is her own
summary and understanding of the writers she has been reading].
[She's quite the philosopher]: page 63 of MEB's NOtebook IV:
[once again i think that she is processing and summarizing writers
she's been reading such as Plato, stoics, Jewish fathers]: In a
fairly coherent dream everything seems quite real, & it is rare, I
think, with most people to know in a dream that they are dreaming.
Now if a dream is sufficiently vivid & coherent, all physical
inferences are as valid in it as they are in waking life.
For physical purposes a dream is just as good as real life; the
only difference is in vividness & coherence.
What then hinders us from saying that life is all a dream? If the
phenomena we dream of are just as good & real phenomena as
those we see when we are awake, what right [page break 64] have
we to say that the material universe has any more existence a part
from our minds than the things we see & feel in our dreams? The
answer wh Berkeley gave to that question was, No right at all. The
physical universe wh I see & feel, & [?] is just my dream & nothing
else; that wh you see is yr dream; only it so happens that all our
dreams agree in many respects. This doctrine of Berkeley's has
now been so far confirmed by the physiology of the senses, that it
is no longer a metaphysical speculation, but a scientifically
established fact.
What makes life not [?] a dream is the existence of those facts wh
we arrive at by our second process of inference; the
consciousness of men & the higher animals; the
sub-consciousness of lower organisms & the quasi-mental facts
wh go along with the motions of inanimate matter.
Page 65 MEB NOtebook IV: Responsibility [her thoughts i'm quite
sure]
For instinctive actions we do not say that I am responsible,
because the choice is made before I know anything about it. For
voluntary actions I am responsible, because I make the choice;
that is, the character of me is what determines the character ofthe
action. The me, then, for this purpose, is included the aggregate
of liks of association wh determines what memories shall be
called up by a given suggestion, & what motives shall be set at
work by these memories. But we distinguish this mass of
passions or pleasures, desire & knowledge & pain, wh makes up
most of my character at the moment, from that inner & deeper
motive-choosing self wh is called Reason, & the Will , & the Ego;
wh are presented. But again I may reasonably be blamed for what
I did yesterday, or a week ago, or last year. This is because I am
permanent; i so far as from my actions of that date an inference
may be drawn about my characer now, it is reasonable that I
should be treated as praiseworthy or blameable. And within
certain limits I am for the same reason responsible for what I am
now, because within certain limits I have made myself. Even
instinctive actions aredependent in many cses upon habits wh
may be altered by proper attention [page break] care; & still more
the nature of the conscious between sensation & actions, the
associations of memory & motive, may be voluntarily modified if I
choose to try. The habit of choosing among motive is one wh may
be acquired & strengthened by practice, & te strength of prticular
motives, by continually directing attention to them, may be almost
indefinitely increased or diminished. Thus, if by me is meant not
the instaneous me of this moment, but the aggregate of my past
life, or even of the last year, the range of my responsible is very
largely increased. I am responsible for a very large portion ofthe
circumstances which are now external to me; that is to say, I am
responsbile for certain of the restrictions on my own freedom. A
the eagle was shot with an arrow that flew on is ow feather, so I
find myself bound with fetters of my proper [flying?].
Belief, that sacred faculty wh prompts the decisions of our will, &
knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our
being, is ours not for ourselves, but for humanity. It is rightly used
on truths wh have been established by long experience & waiting
toil, & wh have stood in the fierce light of free & fearless
questioning. Then it helps to bind mere [?} & to strengthen &
direct their common actions. It is [page break] desecrated when
given to unproved & unquestioned statements, for the solace or
private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel spendour to the
plain straight road of our life & display a bright mirage beyond it; or
even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception
wh allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us.
Whoso wd deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the
purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any
time it should rest on an unworthy object, & catch a stain wh can
never be wiped away.
>
> t
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 21:34:36 +0000
From: Andrew Maunder <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Teaching 19C Popular culture
Dear all
I'd like to thank everyone who sent me comments - both on the list and
privately about the questions I circulated a couple of weeks ago. The
response has been overwhelming and is much appreciated.
Andrew Maunder
Dr Andrew Maunder
English Literature Group
Faculty of Humanities
University of Hertfordshire
Wall Hall
Aldenham
Watford
Herts WD25 8AT
Tel: +44 (0)1707 285641
Email: [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 19:35:36 -0000
From: Emelyne Godfrey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: lotteries
Check out Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield for lotteries. The
vicar talks about someone winning a huge sum of money.
Emelyne Godfrey
PhD student
Birkbeck, London
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 16:42:13 -0600
From: Anne Thornton <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: An obscure Victorian woman...
Hi, everyone,
During my final seminar-paper writing, I came across a reference (in =
Emily Eden's The Semi-Attached Couple) to a character who gives domestic =
novels a bad name by fawning too much upon her husband--a "Mrs. Major =
Waddell." Is she a fiction within a fiction, a stereotype, or a real =
character in some Victorian domestic novel? Any thoughts?
Best to all,
Anne Thornton
Graduate student
UT-San Antonio
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
End of VICTORIA Digest - 3 Dec 2002 to 4 Dec 2002 (#2002-333)
*************************************************************
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
|
