On reading Spenser aloud in the vicinity of children: a dozen years ago, I
was reading Book 3 aloud to refresh the details for the next day's
class. I was at the playground with the Norton and my kids, holding the
paperback and hovering near my 3-year-old (just in case--he was on the
parallel bars). Suddenly he swung around, looked me full in the face, and
murmured in echo, ". . . blood and durt." Then back to what he was doing.
Margaret Christian
At 09:00 AM 2/19/2004 +0000, you wrote:
>Shurely shome mishtake. Obi Wan wasn't played by Christopher Lee but by the
>very much greater Alec Guiness. (And never has one seen a performance more
>clearly by someone being Wise and Good for a share of the royalties).
>
>For what it's worth I read The Hobbit to my seven year old boys a while back
>and thought, yes this is greatly imagined, but oh God it's badly written.
>Just count the 'suddenly's. And the whimseys are innumerable. When reading
>the Narnia books aloud to them I felt every word counted, even if some of
>the words had palpable designs on their souls in a way I find a bit
>unpalatable; reading Tolkein I found that not only could I skip clauses,
>sentences, and (yes indeed) lots of stanzas of songs, but that I KNEW in
>advance which clauses were going to be skippable because of the shape of the
>sentences. That all said both of my children have made serious efforts to
>read Lord of the Rings for themselves, and games of animal, vegetable,
>mineral always turn into games of 'can you remember the name of Frodo's
>sword, or of the commander of the elves at helm's deep?'. That can't be bad,
>and it may mean that the fussiness critics bring to style does fail to take
>account of the fact that big fictions start before the words and go on after
>the words. I haven't tried them on Spenser yet (where everyone who likes him
>probably sneakingly knows that the poem is bigger than its words), but they
>love Beowulf.
>
>And no, I haven't read Beowulf to them in Anglo-Saxon, before you smirk,
>Zurcher.
>
>Colin Burrow
>Reader in Renaissance and Comparative Literature and Director of Studies in
>English,
>Gonville and Caius College,
>Cambridge
>CB2 1TA
>01223 332483
>[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>www.english.cam.ac.uk/faculty/cburrow/index.htm
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Marshall Grossman
>Sent: 19 February 2004 00:16
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Theorizing J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
>
>
>I would imagine that C. Lee was chosen for both roles because of his
>memorable past portrayal of another nobleman gone bad, Dracula.
>
>At 06:09 PM 2/18/2004, Charles Butler wrote:
> >Beth Quitsland wrote:
> >
> >But has anyone written about
> > > the obvious similarities between Gandalf and Obi Wan Kenobe?
> >
> >They must have, surely. And in the films they were both played by British
> >theatrical knights, too - what does that say about Hollywood iconography?
> >Having seen the most recent *Star Wars* and *The Two Towers* films pretty
> >close together I was even more struck by the characters played by
> >Christopher Lee - Saruman and whatever-his-name-was in *SW*: both trusted
> >and powerful Jedis/Wizards who had fallen and turned to the Dark Side/Lord.
> >Curious typecasting, but it brought out the partial isomorphism of the two
> >plots very neatly.
> >
> >And Philip K. Dick, I would argue, is a
> > > science fiction/fantasy writer worth reading with close, appreciative
> > > attention, as are Ursula LeGuin and Doris Lessing
> >
> >I believe there are many fantasy/SF writers worthy of such study (including
> >the mother of a distinguished member of this list), but given that the
> >fantasy/SF label effectively means automatic disqualification from the
> >literary canon they tend not to receive it outside 'genre' courses, be they
> >in fantasy, science fiction or children's literature. Margaret Atwood might
> >qualify as another partial exception, although I understand that even she
> >recently repudiated the SF label in the case of her otherwise-clearly-SF
> >*Oryx and Crake*, perhaps fearing that it would be taken less seriously. As
> >one who would like to think that Spenser's work was part of a living and
> >respected literary heritage I find all this rather sad.
> >
> > > For the record, I would also poke fun at the launch of *Fletcher
>Studies*
> > > if its promotional materials claimed that either Giles or Phineas was a
> > > "marvellous" poet.
> >
> >Would cousin John count?
> >
> >Charlie
>
>Marshall Grossman
>
>Professor of English
>University of Maryland
>College Park, MD 20742
>301 405 9651
>[log in to unmask]
Margaret R. Christian, Ph.D. [log in to unmask]
Associate Professor of English Office: (610) 285-5106
Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College Home: (610) 562-0163
8380 Mohr Lane fax:
(610) 285-5220
Fogelsville, PA 18051 USA
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