Mimesis: the representation of reality in Western literature by Erich Auerbach.
Type: Posts; User: Jackson Richardson; Keyword(s):
Mimesis: the representation of reality in Western literature by Erich Auerbach.
The Leopard and Gone with the Wind both begin with a wealthy and privileged family reciting the rosary and proceeds to trace the decline of their way of life against a background of major historic...
When he was Warden of the Cinque Ports his official residence was Walmer Castle. Somebody noticed his bed there was a camp bed and asked how he managed when he wanted to turn over. The story I...
But Mr Picwick is a comic figure who gains depth and dignity unlike Mr Brownlow and the Cheerybles. And although he fixes things for others, he is constantly getting into trouble himself.
My...
I feel a bit of a thicko asking this but I’m honestly confused. I was expecting Ahab and the whale to both perish together but that isn’t at all clear.
Ahab pierces the whale with a harpoon –...
They did indeed kev and the town museum at Derby used to have a lot about them (as well canvases by Joseph Wright of Derby).
Scots is the name of the language of Burns and the Scots characters in Walter Scott, sometimes called Lallans (ie Lowlands). It is mutually comprehensible with English English, and many English...
Even in the children's book Reward and Fairies the constant refrain of the historical characters they meet is "I had no choice. What else could I have done?"
Scott did two sorts of heroine. The drippy one (Rose, Rowena) and the feisty one (Flora, Rebecca). I'll leave you to guess which one the hero ends up with.
Do keep me posted how you go.
Glad you like it. Things get going once you meet a man in a kilt.
I’m fascinated by an author who was once compared to Shakespeare and has virtually now sunk without a trace.
Incidentally,...
I wouldn’t be in a hurry. Dr Johnson said “Why Sir if you were to read Richardson for the story your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the...
Just finished reading it on Project Gutenburg. I can see why it was admired and loved as the Great C18 Novel - it isn't coy about sex unlike every other mainline novel until the C20.
I agree...
The Whigs were the very grand aristocrats like the Duke of Omnium - they were the successors to the grandees who had ousted James II. They would be allied politically to the rising merchant class....
Miss Dunstable.
Apparently the most popular of Trollope's novels during his lifetime. But it lacks the slightly grotesque caricature of Barchester Towers.
It was Trollope's favourite. It does not have the broad comic aspect of Barchester Towers and sets the tone for his following novels.
There's a splendid older, single, wealthy woman whose name...
I realised that I got all the references to Gilbert and Sullivan. And then thought how many other references to contemporary popular Dublin culture am I missing?
William Hazlitt, not Henry. He was a great enthusiast for painting and very knowledgeable on the subject. He was a leading literary critic of the time and wrote a lot about Shakespeare, often with...
I was thinking of the comparison as well. They are both working class women. But Lizzie is a character in her own right, whereas Little Em'ly is only seen through the sentimental eyes of David and...
Why does there only have to be one? There is more than one contender of the Great British, French or Russian novel?
Great implies a wide range of society or historical or cultural background,...
The two Dickens heroines admired by kev's critic are Bella Wilfer in Our Mutual Friend and Florence Dombey in Dombey and Son.
Bella starts of as a brat and is almost a comic version of Estella,...
I think he was a deist rather than an atheist. He certainly has great contempt for women, monks, non-Europeans and the vulgar. But I have to say that I do enjoy reading someone with such a sense of...
As regards Amy and Fanny, it is noticeable that they both in very different ways have energy whereas their father, brother and uncle certainly do not. Indeed William Dorrit is a good example of...
It is indeed a mark of social class and that's why I find it patronising and sentimental. The middle class characters speech is not rendered phonetically because of course they speak normally.
Love’s Labours Lost and the Merry Wives of Windsor, I believe, were original plots and in the case of LLL not gripping IMHO
I get the impression that Othello going on about how it was a very special handkerchief is all rot, just trying to give himself an excuse for being so angry and hurt.