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Aug. 12th, 2012 10:53 am48. School for Scandal (2)
49. The Country Wife (2)
50. Whitman's Selected Poems, ed. Bloom (2)
51. Keats' Lyric Poems (contents Nth)
Missed a couple reading nights, in part because they gave us a practice test. Which went sufficiently well that I'm wondering if reading books of marginal interest is worth my time - the questions were of broad enough application that I chose texts I'm very familiar with. I only used Great Expectations among the new ones. Perhaps I should just stick to what I consider the basics. Maybe even prepare notes, however one does that.
Rereading Scandal and Country was curious - fifteen years ago I was impressed by Sheridan and hated the Wycherley for being nasty and predictable, to the point of wondering why it was even in anthologies. This time School seemed boring and pointless while The Country Wife was a fairly clever farce. Maybe Congreve was too fresh in my mind, but you'd think that comparison would annihilate Sheridan too. Or maybe it was The Rivals I liked and I'm confusing it with School.
Those were the last two plays, except for Mariam Queen of Jewry which I'm not having much luck with. They were also pre practice test. I've been reading a lot more Whitman and Keats than are on the list - mission resolve is sinking, given the new circumstances.
I haven't been following chronological order, clearly, but just reading all these different texts across a brief period of time is clarifying the ways many connect. Autobiography of Red is haunted by Crusoe in England, Whitman's Lilacs by much in In Memoriam, The Sleepers and Out of the Cradle by some Shelley moments - and Keats' Nightingale Ode pops up all over in Whitman. The thorough indebtedness of which Ode to Hymn to Intellectual Beauty always surprises me. Cradle group weds Hymn, the end of Adonais, Nightingale, Poe's Raven for some reason, conceivably Shelley's widow bird, and Wordsworth's Ruined Cottage (maybe filtered through Isabella) - like some shore odes written in its wake it attempts to streamline most of the Romantic gestures into one set piece. The difference from Shelley or Wordsworth is that they'd stick several together across a vague narration, like in the Two Book Prelude or Epipsychidion (or Song of Myself for that matter). The concentration of somewhat separate symbolic elements into one quivering tableau or diorama, the Cornellian mini-genre characteristic of Bishop, to a lesser extent Frost, seems like it maybe comes via middle Whitman. At least I'm blanking on where else it might come from - even Triumph and Adonais have separate locations for different focuses, even Resolution and Independence or Childe Roland. Tintern falls apart into slightly different reactions to one stimulus, but the stimulus itself isn't really multifaceted. I'll think more about this later - this hesitation at the nexus of story and picture and thought.
49. The Country Wife (2)
50. Whitman's Selected Poems, ed. Bloom (2)
51. Keats' Lyric Poems (contents Nth)
Missed a couple reading nights, in part because they gave us a practice test. Which went sufficiently well that I'm wondering if reading books of marginal interest is worth my time - the questions were of broad enough application that I chose texts I'm very familiar with. I only used Great Expectations among the new ones. Perhaps I should just stick to what I consider the basics. Maybe even prepare notes, however one does that.
Rereading Scandal and Country was curious - fifteen years ago I was impressed by Sheridan and hated the Wycherley for being nasty and predictable, to the point of wondering why it was even in anthologies. This time School seemed boring and pointless while The Country Wife was a fairly clever farce. Maybe Congreve was too fresh in my mind, but you'd think that comparison would annihilate Sheridan too. Or maybe it was The Rivals I liked and I'm confusing it with School.
Those were the last two plays, except for Mariam Queen of Jewry which I'm not having much luck with. They were also pre practice test. I've been reading a lot more Whitman and Keats than are on the list - mission resolve is sinking, given the new circumstances.
I haven't been following chronological order, clearly, but just reading all these different texts across a brief period of time is clarifying the ways many connect. Autobiography of Red is haunted by Crusoe in England, Whitman's Lilacs by much in In Memoriam, The Sleepers and Out of the Cradle by some Shelley moments - and Keats' Nightingale Ode pops up all over in Whitman. The thorough indebtedness of which Ode to Hymn to Intellectual Beauty always surprises me. Cradle group weds Hymn, the end of Adonais, Nightingale, Poe's Raven for some reason, conceivably Shelley's widow bird, and Wordsworth's Ruined Cottage (maybe filtered through Isabella) - like some shore odes written in its wake it attempts to streamline most of the Romantic gestures into one set piece. The difference from Shelley or Wordsworth is that they'd stick several together across a vague narration, like in the Two Book Prelude or Epipsychidion (or Song of Myself for that matter). The concentration of somewhat separate symbolic elements into one quivering tableau or diorama, the Cornellian mini-genre characteristic of Bishop, to a lesser extent Frost, seems like it maybe comes via middle Whitman. At least I'm blanking on where else it might come from - even Triumph and Adonais have separate locations for different focuses, even Resolution and Independence or Childe Roland. Tintern falls apart into slightly different reactions to one stimulus, but the stimulus itself isn't really multifaceted. I'll think more about this later - this hesitation at the nexus of story and picture and thought.
