---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: 03 February 2004 00:00 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 1 Feb 2004 to 2 Feb 2004 (#2004-34)
There are 33 messages totalling 953 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Victorian metrics (2)
2. NYTimes.com Article: Books of The Times | 'The
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Bront=EB?=
=?iso-8859-1?Q?_Myth':_Freeing_Charlotte_and_Emily_From_the_Bront=EB?=
Industry
3. horticulture and literature (5)
4. Victorian Orientalists (2)
5. governesses
6. Bulwer and Der Freischutz
7.
=?iso-8859-1?Q?'The_Bront=EB_Myth':_Freeing_Charlotte_and_Emily_From_the_?
= =?iso-8859-1?Q?Bront=EB_Industry?=
8. To be a bard, freed a man
9. =?iso-8859-1?Q?RE=3A_=27The_Bront=EB_Myth=27=3A_Freeing_Charlo?=
=?iso-8859-1?Q?tte_and_Emily_From_the_Bront=EB_Industry?=
10. CFP: Representing the Dance in British Literature and Culture MLA
11. Virginia Woolf and her servants
12. age and marriageability in British colonies (3)
13.
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?RE:_'The_Bront=EB_Myth':_Freeing_Charlotte_and_Emily_From_t
he_Bront=EB_Industry?=
14. =?iso-8859-1?Q?'The_Bront=EB_Myth'?=
15. Horticulture and Literature (2)
16. Blake Archive Update
17. =?iso-8859-1?Q?Re:_'The_Bront=EB_Myth'?=
18. Fw: Bulwer's references (G&S)
19. =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_'The_Bront=EB_Myth'?=
20. =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20'The=20Bront=EB=20Myth'?=
21. =?iso-8859-1?Q?RE=3A_=27The_Bront=EB_Myth=27?=
22. New publication
23. Ruskin and Queen of Sheba (2)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2004 21:48:48 -0800
From: Yisrael Levin <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Victorian metrics
Hello all,
I was wondering whether list members can direct me to Victorian works
dealing with theories of rhythm and metre. I am familiar with Coventry
Patmore's *Essays on English Metrical Law* and George Saintbury's *History
of English Prosody* but am looking for other sources as well.
Many thanks,
Yisrael Levin.
______________________
Yisrael Levin
University of Victoria
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 00:29:04 -0800
From: "by way of Jack Kolb <[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Books of The Times | 'The
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Bront=EB?=
=?iso-8859-1?Q?_Myth':_Freeing_Charlotte_and_Emily_From_the_Bront=EB?=
Industry
Books of The Times | 'The Brontė Myth': Freeing Charlotte and Emily From
the Brontė Industry
January 30, 2004
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Lucasta Miller's absorbing new book traces how the
Brontė sisters became cultural icons and raises questions
about changing fashions in scholarship.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/books/30BOOK.html?ex=1076705249&ei=1&en=0
f7b2f728a535e7f
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 08:50:13 -0000
From: Chrissie Bradstreet <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: horticulture and literature
I have found the following very useful:
Waters, Michael, 'The Garden in Victorian Literature' (Aldershot:
Scolar, 1988).
Best Wishes,
Christina
Christina Bradstreet
Birkbeck College
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Shannon Smith
Sent: 01 February 2004 23:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: horticulture and literature
Hello!
I was wondering if anyone out there knows of any recent critical works
that deal with the discourse of horticulture in nineteenth century
literature. Database searches have not proved very fruitful (forgive
the pun) and any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
Shannon
Shannon R Smith
PhD Student
Department of English
Queen's University
Kingston ON
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 08:59:33 +0000
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Victorian Orientalists
Not sure if this is completely what you are searching for, but
Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall“s works "Asiatic Studies" (1882), "The British
Dominion in India" (1893) & "Verses written in India" (1889, 1890) offer an
interesting "expertise" or view on India. Lyall acted as Foreign Secretary,
Government of India, 1878-81 and in Bengal Civil Service 1856-87. He also
wrote poems, memoirs on Tennyson, and corresponded, i.a., with the writer
Andrew Lang.
Ilona Salomaa
University of Helsinki
Finland
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:16:55 -0000
From: Sarah Brown <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: governesses
Thanks to everyone who has suggested texts about governesses - and all =
the interesting additional information. I think my student probably has =
enough to go on now!=20
Best wishes
Sarah
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:47:19 +0000
From: Harriet Jump <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Bulwer and Der Freischutz
Thanks for the helpful replies. Re Bulwer and Germany -- he certainly
was interested in Germany and all things German but I don't know if he
went to this particular opera. Still, as was pointed out, the dates do
match up so it seems like a good possibility.
Harriet
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 03:56:35 -0800
From: Peter O'Neill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Victorian metrics
See GM Hopkins's 1883 Preface to his Poems and his correspondence with RW
Dixon and others about his verse. Also, for a start, read Walter Ong's
essay on sprung rhythm in Norman Weyand's (ed) _Studies in GM Hopkins_
(1949).
Peter O'Neill
[log in to unmask]
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:39:59 -0400
From: Richard Nemesvari <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:
=?iso-8859-1?Q?'The_Bront=EB_Myth':_Freeing_Charlotte_and_Emily_From_the_?=
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Bront=EB_Industry?=
I haven't yet read Miller's *The Bronte Myth,* although I have ordered it
for our library, but I was a little surprised by its subtitle, and by the
review which Jack Kolb provided. Is it really still necessary to go about
"freeing" Charlotte and Emily "from the Bronte industry"? I suppose on one
level such a process can and should be ongoing, but surely large parts of
the "myth" have successfully been laid to rest already. The reviewer
approvingly mentions Lyndall Gordon's *Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life*
(1994), which is certainly a strong book, but doesn't even glance towards
Juliette Barker's *The Brontes,* which came out in the same year. For me
that is the text that conclusively counters Gaskell, and provides the
detailed research background to prove its case. The kind of metacriticism
which Miller apparently provides should be interesting, but surely "changing
fashions in scholarship" aren't quite as oppressive as the image of
"freeing" someone from them suggests. That authors are constructed by their
readership (both professional and not) is no longer a revolutionary idea--or
at least it doesn't seem so to me.
Richard Nemesvari
Department of English
St. Francis Xavier University
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 08:28:28 -0500
From: Catherine Robson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: To be a bard, freed a man
Dear learned colleagues,
I am wondering if the phrase "to be a bard, freed a man" rings any
bells for any of you? It crops up in Arnold's -On the Study of Celtic
Literature- (1867) and I can't for the life of me track it down. If you do
recognize it, I'd be very grateful if you'd drop me a line to the email
address below.
Thanks so much,
Catherine Robson
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 08:33:50 -0500
From: Kay Heath <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: horticulture and literature
Amy King's new book titled Bloom is on how horticulture and the concept of =
the "blooming girl" figured in Victorian literature. Just out from Oxford =
UP, I believe.
Kay Heath
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 09:59:48 -0500
From: Anthony Rafalowski <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Victorian Orientalists
A useful variety of sources on oriental matters is available in the work of
Harriet Martineau. You might look especially at her "History of British
Rule in India", written in the wake of the Great Mutiny of 1857 and in the
light of ongoing debates in England about the future of the East India
Company and of Empire itself.
Also of interest would be Martineau's three volume "Eastern Life: Present
and Past", which records her travels in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria and
which provides a very different perspective on orientalism in the Victoria
period.
Tony Rafalowski
Ph.D. candidate
University of Missouri - Columbia
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 09:27:29 -0600
From: Martin A Danahay <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?RE=3A_=27The_Bront=EB_Myth=27=3A_Freeing_Charlo?=
=?iso-8859-1?Q?tte_and_Emily_From_the_Bront=EB_Industry?=
It's difficult to really assess the contribution of Lucasta Miller's book
based on what I read in the "New York Times" review - the review shows the
difficulty of disentangling a subject from the reviewer's predispositions.
When the reviewer. Michiko Kakutani, says "[Miller] shows how Victorian
hagiography and recent feminist analysis alike have obscured the Bronte's'
identities as individual artists, and how their work has frequently been
overshadowed by their public personas" are these categories those of
Kakutani or Miller? Does Miller actually single out "feminist analysis" for
criticism above other forms? What is the difference exactly between
"identity as individual artist" and "public persona"? Are these terms ever
defined by Miller? And again, whose categories are these?
The book certainly sounds interesting, and I look forward to reading it, but
it would be prudent to judge this review as yet another attempt to
"position" the Bronte story for the reviewer's own ends.
Martin Danahay
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 09:57:01 -0600
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: CFP: Representing the Dance in British Literature and Culture MLA
Call for Papers for Special Session (4/1/04)
2004 MLA Philadelphia, PA
"Textual Bodies, Corporeal Words: Representing the Dance in British
Literature and Culture"
We are seeking papers that examine the intersections between dance and
literature in 19th-C British context, the representations of dance in
print form, and the interplay between dance and the cultural imagination.
Topics may include:
-bodies in motion vs. bodies in the text: distinctions between embodied
discourse and textual representation
-dance, literature, and gender
-dance and class ideology
-dance and "anti-theatrical prejudice"
-sylphs, ballet girls, music hall, pantomime, dance classes
-spectacle, spectatorship, role(s) of audience
-role of emotion in imagining/representing dance
-artifice, artificiality, (re)presention: on stage, on the page
-tropes, metaphors, symbolism, fantasies of/as dance
-performances as texts: critical challenges of reconstruction
-writers as performers, choreographers
-aesthetics of performing arts and related literary movements (Romanticism,
Decadence)
-parodies and perversions
-periodicals, popular imagination
Please send 1 page abstracts by March 1 via email (only) to
Megan Early Alter and/or Molly Engelhardt
[log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:26:39 -0600
From: "Haddad, Emily" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: horticulture and literature
It's not the most recent, but I've made good use of Pauline Fletcher's book
_Gardens and Grim Ravines_ (Princeton, 1983).
Emily Haddad
Associate Professor of English
Coordinator of Graduate Studies
University of South Dakota
Vermillion, SD 57069
605-677-5229
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 16:45:15 +0000
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?S=20Fletcher?= <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Virginia Woolf and her servants
--- mary cane <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >
Can anyone
> help with this or any
> other VW servant stories?
Joan Russell Noble (ed)'s *Recollections of Virginia
Woolf by Her Contemporaries* (London: Peter Owen,
1972) includes a memoir of VW by her last
cook-housekeeper, Louie Mayer. It's a fascinating and
often surprising account - we see the Woolfs rolling
their own cigarettes together, VW displaying an
unexpected expertise in breadmaking, etc!
If you're unable to track down the book, pls e me
off-list & I'll copy the piece for you.
Sunie Fletcher
University of Exeter
[log in to unmask]
________________________________________________________________________
BT Yahoo! Broadband - Free modem offer, sign up online today and save £80
http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 11:20:06 -0500
From: Kay Heath <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: age and marriageability in British colonies
Can anyone think of cases (in fiction or otherwise) of spinsters who aged =
out of marriageability in Great Britain or remarrying widows trying to =
make a life in the colonies? =20
Thanks,
Kay Heath
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 19:47:41 -0000
From: Michel Faber <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?RE:_'The_Bront=EB_Myth':_Freeing_Charlotte_and_Emily_From_th
e_Bront=EB_Industry?=
The book's author Lucasta Miller, the book's reviewer Michiko Kakutani, and
the members of VICTORIA who have been trying to assess the validity of this
latest deconstruction of 'The Brontė Myth', are all labouring in the shadow
of a larger truth. Which, in my opinion, is this:
It is almost impossible nowadays for a book of literary biography, history
or criticism to garner substantial review coverage unless it purports to
turn some previous orthodoxy on its head. Newspaper editors know that only
a tiny proportion of readers will actually buy the books being reviewed;
they also tend to credit readers with short attention spans and zero
interest in any academic subject per se. The most effective way, then, of
ensuring that readers will bother to read a review is to give it an aura of
controversy, of feisty iconoclasm. Personal feuds between "rival"
historians/biographers are at the highest premium, but if those can't be
generated, the book must be presented as a radical debunking of prevailing
myths about the subject. The reader can then be wooed with the tantalising
suggestion that everything previously believed was wrong and that the
"truth" can now, at last, be revealed.
Of course, any field of study in which conscientious scholars have been
working for any length of time is unlikely to offer many genuine
opportunities for wholesale debunking. The Victorian era has been subjected
to an enormous amount of scrutiny, and whatever misconceptions may have been
common in the earlier parts of the 20th century have been frequently
dispelled since then. Yet, in the popular arena of reviews and media
coverage, this is unacceptable. Knowledge is not supposed to be a slow,
cumulative, comparative thing, it's supposed to be a sudden brainstorm, a
breathless dispatch from the front line of investigative journalism.
Thus, a book like Matthew Sweet's 'Inventing The Victorians' is presented --
and discussed -- as though no one had ever questioned the piano legs
canard, Victoria's 'ignorance' of lesbianism, etc, before. In my view,
Sweet's book is highly readable and deserves to take its place among more
substantial, more thorough texts on the same subject. But a phrase like
"highly readable and deserves to take its place among more substantial,
more thorough texts on the same subject" is not exciting enough to please
the average newspaper editor. It's boring and it's predicated on the notion
that people are willing & able to read a number of texts and compare them --
which the average newspaper editor strongly doubts. Much better to be able
to say things like "renders all previous books on the subject redundant" or
"has pulled the real [whatever] out of the shadows".
In this hunger for revelations and the shocking truth, it is sometimes not
enough to dress up the available resources in more sensational language.
Sometimes, new revelations and truths must be invented. In a recent post
(and also in a more diplomatically-phrased letter to The Guardian Review),
our listowner Patrick expressed his anger at the recycling, in Henrietta
Garnett's life of Anne Thackery, of D.J. Taylor's groundless speculation
that Thackeray's funeral was attended by prostitutes he had visited.
Sadly, what brings those sorts of factoids into existence is not
necessarily -- or not only -- the questionable scholarship of a biographer.
It is also the expectations of the review culture. A newspaper editor who
is unconvinced that people really want to read about long-dead Victorians
may be swayed by the picture of a crowd of Thackeray's favourite
prostitutes attending his funeral. This onus to convince editors of the
review-worthiness of supposedly "dry" books may have been somewhere at the
back of Taylor's mind when he was preparing his Thackeray biography and it
may well have been why Hermione Lee, reviewing Garnett's life of Anne,
chose this detail rather than any other as an example of the interesting
information that Garnett has "unearthed".
In each case, there is a lack of faith in the idea that the cogency and
perceptiveness with which a historian can order a large (but finite) amount
of material is sufficient justification to write a book, and sufficient
reason for reviewers to review it and readers to read it.
It would be interesting to see what the fate was, in terms of review
coverage, of a new Brontė biography which did not pretend to "rescue" the
Brontės from "the Brontė industry" and which did not make unprovable new
allegations about the sexual misbehaviours of Branwell, the sisters' causes
of death, etc etc, but merely marshalled the existing material in a way
that was clearer, better-organised, more insightful and more elegantly
written than previous biographies. Would such a book be ignored?
Best wishes,
Michel Faber
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 13:07:07 -0600
From: John Farrell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?'The_Bront=EB_Myth'?=
There's no question that the Brontes have been dramatically distorted in
the last twenty years by all kinds of tendentious criticism, including
feminist criticism (resulting, for example, in the attempt to elevate Anne
Bronte's deeply mediocre writing to the level of her sisters' brilliant
works), so Miller certainly has something to say that's worth saying. At
the same time I agree completely with Richard Nemesvari: any consideration
of Bronte biography that pretends to currency and yet omits mention of
Juliette Barker's extraordinary achievement isn't worth much.
John P. Farrell
University of Texas
Michiko Kakutani
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 12:26:26 -0500
From: Robert Aguirre <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Horticulture and Literature
VICTORIA Digest - 31 Jan 2004 to 1 Feb 2004 (#2004-33)See, most recently,
Amy King's Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel (OUP, 2003).
Also worthwhile is Seaton, Beverly: The Language of Flowers: A History (U of
Virginia P, 1995). There is a superb chapter on the Victoria Regia giant
water lilly (in the context of South American exploration and botanical
imperialism) in D. Graham Burnett's Masters of All They Surveyed (U of
Chicago P, 2001). For more on this angle, see Donal P. McCracken, Gardens
of Empire: Botanical Institutions of the Victorian British Empire (Leicester
UP, 1997) and Lucile H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role
of the British Royal Botanic Gardens (Academic, 1979).
Hope this helps.
*******************************************
Robert Aguirre
Department of English
Wayne State University
51 W. Warren
Detroit, MI 48202
Tel: 313 577 3287
Fax: 313 577 8618
Email: [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 10:27:31 -0800
From: Victoria Szabo <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Blake Archive Update
1 February 2004
The William Blake Archive <www.blakearchive.org> is pleased to announce the
publication of "Illuminated Printing." It joins our profusely illustrated
Biography, Chronology, and Glossary in the About Blake section, off the
Table of Contents page. The essay was first published in _The Cambridge
Companion to William Blake_, edited by Morris Eaves, 2003. It is republished
here by permission of Cambridge University Press. While the text remains the
same, the electronic version has 95 illustrations versus 9 in the printed
version. The illustrations demonstrate in detail the stages of both Blake's
relief etching ("illuminated printing") and conventional intaglio etching
according to the six Chambers in the Printing house in Hell, from Blake's
_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_. The comparison of these two methods of
etching will help reveal what was borrowed, altered, invented, and radical
in Blake's new mode of graphic production. The illustrations, which are
linked to enlargements that have detailed captions, supplement the text but
also function autonomously as slide shows on the technical and aesthetic
contexts in which illuminated printing was invented, and as tutorials in the
production of engravings, etchings, and relief etchings.
As always, the William Blake Archive is a free site, imposing no access
restrictions and charging no subscription fees. The site is made possible
through the continuing support of the Library of Congress, the Institute for
Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, by a
major grant from the Preservation and Access Division of the National
Endowment for the Humanities, by the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, and by the cooperation of the international array of libraries and
museums that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from
their collections in the Archive.
Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors Andrea Laue,
technical editor The William Blake Archive
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 12:35:32 -0500
From: Herbert Tucker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: horticulture and literature
The cornucopia of critical discourse on Rossetti's "Goblin Market" will
fill your shopping basket in itself: I'd train the blue-light myself on
Richard Menke's fine contribution to *The Culture of Christina Rossetti*
(1999).
At 05:15 PM 2/1/04 -0600, you wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I was wondering if anyone out there knows of any recent critical works
> that deal with the discourse of horticulture in nineteenth century
> literature.
Herbert F. Tucker
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of English
219 Bryan Hall
University of Virginia 22904-4121
[log in to unmask]
434 / 924-6677
FAX: 434 / 924-1478
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 15:53:03 -0500
From: Narin Hassan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: horticulture and literature
I have been doing some research on gardens/conservatories and empire, and
although the following don't focus upon literary representations of
horticulture, they may be useful for you:
Donal McCracken, Gardens of Empire (sorry I don't have the full citation
here) Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women
Embrace the Living World (Chicago, 1998)
Rebecca Preston, ??The scenery of the torrid zone? imagined travels and the
culture of exotics in nineteenth-century British gardens.? Imperial Cities.
Landscape, Display and Identity. (Felix Driver and David Gilbert (eds)
Manchester UP ,1999.
Also, Marianne North's autobiography, *Recollections of a Happy Life* may be
useful because of her work collecting and illustrating botanical flora and
fauna.
--
Narin Hassan
Assistant Professor
School of Literature, Communication and Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332
404-385-3060
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 12:27:10 -0600
From: Amy Elizabeth Harris Tan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: age and marriageability in British colonies
Moll Flanders comes to mind for the latter category, but of course, that is
18th century, and not sure she really qualifies as widow. Spinsters: Miss
Bates in Emma. Miss Catherine Vernon in Hester.
Amy E. Harris Tan
[log in to unmask]
>
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 18:40:36 -0400
From: Richard Nemesvari <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Re:_'The_Bront=EB_Myth'?=
As someone who was once accused on this list of writing a "tendentious"
introduction to *Jane Eyre,* I'm not sure I can agree with John Farrell
about feminist responses to the Brontes, although we do both admire Juliette
Barker's biography. Of course there is such a thing as weak feminist
criticism, but it seems to me that much of the best writing on both
Charlotte and Emily Bronte (and even Anne) in the last thirty or so years
has either been feminist, or been influenced by feminist approaches. I find
it interesting that we very rarely hear about tendentious psychological
criticism, or tendentious formalist criticism (and I do believe such things
exists)--but feminism is always there be knocked down when the need arises.
This no doubt has something to do with Michel Faber's observation about how
controversy sells, since there's nothing like a good gender dustup to move
the product. With any luck Miller's metacriticism isn't just about feminist
constructions of the Brontes, but recognizes the other ways in which they've
been critically constructed as well. That the reviewer would choose to
focus on this out of all the other possibilities is, probably, predictable.
Richard Nemesvari
Department of English
St. Francis Xavier University
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 17:23:46 -0500
From: Michael Wolff <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Fw: Bulwer's references (G&S)
Here is a contribution to this topic from a non-subscriber, James Ellis
(emeritus Mount Holyoke College) who has edited the Bab Ballads and
directed many G&S productions ([log in to unmask]).
" The fact is that Der Freischutz was never out of the Victorian
consciousness. Not only was it performed off and on over the years, but
the parodies, imitations, and burlesques of it were mainstays of the popular
stage well beyond the time of Socerer. It's quite by accident that Gilbert
never got around to his own burlesque of it, but, as your source points out,
he did manage an Elixir. Magic potions were more to his liking than magic
bullets. He adored plots that involved people revealing their true (or very
different) natures under masks of propriety or whatever. It's of interest
to me that your Victorian Studies gang travel the high road of literature
and the arts in tracing the connections between Weber & G&S, whereas my
guess is that the audiences at the Savoy had far more memories and
associations with that most popular of German operas via children's toy
theatres, Christmas pantomimes, burlesques of opera, and the endless
allusions to it in the popular comic press. Do your colleagues know, by
the way, that Sullivan, early in his career, edited an edition of Der
Freischutz
for Boosey & Co.'s Royal Edition of opera vocal scores?"
Michael Wolff
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 16:23:25 -0500
From: Maria <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_'The_Bront=EB_Myth'?=
There's no question that the Brontes have been dramatically distorted in
the last twenty years by all kinds of tendentious criticism, including
feminist criticism (resulting, for example, in the attempt to elevate Anne
Bronte's deeply mediocre writing to the level of her sisters' brilliant
works)...
John P. Farrell
University of Texas
---------------------------------------
Oh, I don't agree! I came to Anne Bronte's writing before reading anything
about it other than Charlotte's opinions in her tribute to her sisters and
the general agreement in standard biographies. I find her poetry clear,
honest, spare and trim; her novels have similar qualities, and include
closely-observed behavior as well as a sharp and subtle humor. I'm not a
fan of feminist criticism, and it's possible that this sort of criticism
will backlash against Anne's work, maybe sooner than later. On a
subjective note, I don't think Anne's writing needs feminism to support it,
and certainly she wasn't looking in that direction when she was composing.
I do think, as well, that she was writing for a different purpose than
either of her sisters, having been influenced by very different things.
Maria
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 15:46:22 -0600
From: "West, Nancy M." <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Horticulture and Literature
The interdisciplinary journal, Mosaic, is doing a special issue on "The
Garden". If I'm not mistaken, the call for papers announced Sept. 2004 as
the deadline for submissions.
Nancy West
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Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 18:08:56 EST
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20'The=20Bront=EB=20Myth'?=
I read Miller's book a few months ago, and as a result found Kakutani's
review to be remarkably unpenetrating. Given _The Bronte Myth_'s catholic
interests, there's not much room for feminism--which, if anything, comes
off far better than does psychobiography (the target of Miller's most
pronounced ire, to the extent that she manifests much "ire" in the first
place). Miller isn't dismissive of contemporary scholarship--indeed, she
quite likes the historicists. Kakutani's emphasis on Lyndall Gordon over
Juliet Barker reflects Miller's relative assessment of the two biographers:
Miller argues that Barker's work will remain standard "from the documentary
viewpoint" but doesn't think that she "gets to the core of Charlotte's
genius," whereas Gordon "is most convincing when exploring the inner
workings of the creative life" (168).
Miller's real target is not any particular school of criticism per se, but
the tendency to invert the right relationship of author and work: "We have
to decide where the cultural value of these artists lies. It is time to
turn the tables and put the writings first" (255). If the book is
anti-anything, in other words, it's the tendency to elevate the biography
above the works (or make the biography supersede the works altogether). I
found it an enjoyable read--quite sprightly and often rather witty.
MEB
Prof. Miriam Elizabeth Burstein
Dept. of English
SUNY Brockport
Brockport NY 14420
http://www.itss.brockport.edu/~mburstei
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Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 16:59:41 -0600
From: Martin A Danahay <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?RE=3A_=27The_Bront=EB_Myth=27?=
I'm a little taken aback by John Farrell's dismissal of attempts to
"elevate" Anne Bronte's writing. As a big fan of "Agnes Grey" I appreciate
the novel as a direct and engaging representation of class resentment. While
"Jane Eyre" may be more accessible to conventional aesthetic literary
critical standards, if you want a text that works well within a cultural
studies curriculum you can't do much better than "Agnes Grey." I believe
it's a question of new critical tools changing the status of texts - like
the elevation of the Metaphysical poets in the early twentieth century in
the context of Formalism, for example. So, Anne Bronte is a beneficiary of
changing critical tastes. I do hope there's not a movement to cast her out
of the canon, because I very much appreciate her novels.
And I notce that John Farrell's message is signed both "John Farrell" and
"Michiko Kakatuni" - so is "Michiko Kakatuni" a pseudonym?
Martin Danahay
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Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 09:15:54 +0800
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Tamara=20Wagner?= <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: age and marriageability in British colonies
--- Kay Heath <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > spinsters who
aged out of marriageability in
> Great Britain or remarrying widows trying to make a
> life in the colonies?
What about spinsters coming out to India for the
purpose? Your question made Glorvina O'Dowd in _Vanity
Fair_ spring to my mind.
I also have a vague memory of having attended a
seminar presentation on Victorian adolescence (of
girls): it was a book in progress, which was
apparently going to have one chapter on "Coming out to
India". While that wasn't part of the presentation, it
intrigued me very much at the time and I wanted to
look up the book as soon as it came out. Perhaps
someone on the list remembers the name of the book (or
of the author: so sorry, I can remember her face clearly).
=====
Tamara S. Wagner
http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/staff/home/ELLTSW/
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Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 23:31:31 +1100
From: Lucy Sussex <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: New publication
Just published is my edition of Mary Fortune's detective Fiction, THE
DETECTIVES' ALBUM. Fortune was a Belfast-born woman of Scottish
ancestry, who emigrated to Canada and thence to Australia. She was the
first woman known to have written first-person procedurals, and wrote
the longest running early detective serial, The detective's album, which
ran from 1867-1909. She also had a sensational private life, which
included bigamy and being wanted by the police. I've previously edited
her journalism as THE FORTUNES OF MARY FORTUNE (Penguin, 1989).
It's published by the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, Box 204, Shelburne,
Ontario, Canada, LON 1SO email:[log in to unmask]
Lucy Sussex
Senior Research Fellow
Department of English
University of Melbourne
Victoria, Australia.
University of Melbourne
--
Lucy Sussex
Writer, Editor, Researcher
'Of course I draw from life - but I always pulp my acquaintance before
serving them up. You would never recognize a pig in a sausage' -
Frances Trollope
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Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 13:01:31 +1100
From: Anuradha Chatterjee <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Ruskin and Queen of Sheba
Dear List Members,
I was wondering if anyone has come across Ruskin's appreciation of the
painting Solomon and the Queen of Sheba by Veronese in Scuola di San Rocco.
I was wondering which year and which work. Thanks if anyone can help out
with this.
Regards,
AC
Anuradha Chatterjee
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Built Environment
1013, Postgraduate Research Centre,
Red Centre West Wing,
University of New South Wales NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA
Ph (W): + 61 2 93856372
Ph (Mob): 0423343184
Postgraduate Council Research Committee Rep.
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Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 19:10:00 -0800
From: Peter O'Neill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Ruskin and Queen of Sheba
In his chapter, "The Grande Chartreuse," from _Praeterita_ (p 460-61),
Ruskin describes seeing Veronese's "Solomon and the Queen of Sheba," as it
"glowed in full afternoon light" in a Turin gallery:
"The gallery windows being open, there came in with the warm air, floating
swells and falls of military music, from the courtyard before the palace,
which seemed to me more devotional , in their perfect art, tune, and
discipline, than anything I remembered of evangelical hymns. And as the
perfect colour and sound gradually asserted their power on me, they seemed
finally to fasten me in the old article of Jewish faith, that things done
delightfully and rightly, were always done by the help and in the Spirit of
God. Of course that hour's meditation in the gallery of Turin only
concluded the courses of thought which had been leading me to such end
through many years. There was no sudden conversion possible to me, either
by preacher, picture, or dulcimer. But that day, my evangelical beliefs
were put away, to be debated of no more."
Peter O'Neill
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End of VICTORIA Digest - 1 Feb 2004 to 2 Feb 2004 (#2004-34)
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