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Jul. 29th, 2012 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoception30. Henry 4, Part 1 (Nth)
31. Midsummer Night's Dream (Nth)
32. A Winter's Tale (Nth)
33. Autobiography of Red (3rd)
34. Faerie Queene, Book 3 (3rd)
35. Othello (Nth)
36. Rasselas (2nd)
37. Volpone (3rd)
38. Utopia
Whittling away at the list. Haven't read anything this year that wasn't for Comps or a class.
Only new to the last, which was pretty interesting. Rasselas held up awful well - it really is the best statement of what it's stating. A bit tedious, but even that fits its bubblebursting agenda, and Johnson is wisely brief. Main artistic flaw is that everyone is Johnson, but that's also its most entertaining aspect. Still amazed at how much of this Shelley internalized; fuse Rasselas with Wordsworth's wanderers and Milton's magi and you get something like a Shelley figure. Enough so that Peacock's main way of deflating his friend was by bringing him back among those elements of the Rasselas context he'd cast aside. But you can only deflate Shelley in fiction - his rejection of comedy as escape was principled and relentless. And right.
Wistfulness aside, Utopia functioned, through negation, as a satire not dissimilar to Rasselas. It's unclear to what extent More anticipates Johnson's qualified despair, is bringing things to a similar 3x - y = Jesus closure. Take out the Jesus and comedy, satire, most forms of despair no longer fit. Shelley inverts Johnson but it's often the same skin.
FQ 3 is beautiful crazy and fun, but of course the still center, 3-6, is much more. And Marlowe's response to Book 3 (and 2-12) in Hero & Leander and Shakespeare's to both Hero and Spenser in Venus & Adonis were much on my mind - and how closely these responses parallel those of the more godless of the Romantics to Paradise Lost. Obviously Shakespeare and Marlowe went on to do other things with their time, plays and whatnot, whereas in a sense the Romantics never did, but it's fascinating that secularizing Spenser, with some help from his source spots in Ovid, was such an important gesture for both.
A Winter's Tale felt a lot like my life, for reasons I may go into sometime. Iago's two or three scenes alone with Othello still strike me as the best things anyone's ever done with drama.
Different parts of Carson light up for me each time I read her. She's an incredibly various poet. This may be a flaw on some level but makes her easy on rereading eyes.
Volpone is okay, I guess.
31. Midsummer Night's Dream (Nth)
32. A Winter's Tale (Nth)
33. Autobiography of Red (3rd)
34. Faerie Queene, Book 3 (3rd)
35. Othello (Nth)
36. Rasselas (2nd)
37. Volpone (3rd)
38. Utopia
Whittling away at the list. Haven't read anything this year that wasn't for Comps or a class.
Only new to the last, which was pretty interesting. Rasselas held up awful well - it really is the best statement of what it's stating. A bit tedious, but even that fits its bubblebursting agenda, and Johnson is wisely brief. Main artistic flaw is that everyone is Johnson, but that's also its most entertaining aspect. Still amazed at how much of this Shelley internalized; fuse Rasselas with Wordsworth's wanderers and Milton's magi and you get something like a Shelley figure. Enough so that Peacock's main way of deflating his friend was by bringing him back among those elements of the Rasselas context he'd cast aside. But you can only deflate Shelley in fiction - his rejection of comedy as escape was principled and relentless. And right.
Wistfulness aside, Utopia functioned, through negation, as a satire not dissimilar to Rasselas. It's unclear to what extent More anticipates Johnson's qualified despair, is bringing things to a similar 3x - y = Jesus closure. Take out the Jesus and comedy, satire, most forms of despair no longer fit. Shelley inverts Johnson but it's often the same skin.
FQ 3 is beautiful crazy and fun, but of course the still center, 3-6, is much more. And Marlowe's response to Book 3 (and 2-12) in Hero & Leander and Shakespeare's to both Hero and Spenser in Venus & Adonis were much on my mind - and how closely these responses parallel those of the more godless of the Romantics to Paradise Lost. Obviously Shakespeare and Marlowe went on to do other things with their time, plays and whatnot, whereas in a sense the Romantics never did, but it's fascinating that secularizing Spenser, with some help from his source spots in Ovid, was such an important gesture for both.
A Winter's Tale felt a lot like my life, for reasons I may go into sometime. Iago's two or three scenes alone with Othello still strike me as the best things anyone's ever done with drama.
Different parts of Carson light up for me each time I read her. She's an incredibly various poet. This may be a flaw on some level but makes her easy on rereading eyes.
Volpone is okay, I guess.
