Hi just registered, like reading the classics am reading Wuthering heights at the moment, never read a book with such a lot of hate in it Heathcliff was not a lover his hate was endemic to every character in the book?
Hi just registered, like reading the classics am reading Wuthering heights at the moment, never read a book with such a lot of hate in it Heathcliff was not a lover his hate was endemic to every character in the book?
Welcome to the site, Tosh. There used to be someone else here with a similar name (t0sh, I think), so you may be mistaken by some at first. Welcome in any case.Originally Posted by tosh
I dislike Wuthering Heights for the same reason. It just seems like this nasty bag of class hatred. Some here like it, but I'll let them speak for themselves. I greatly prefer Henry Fielding, who seems no less aware of social injustice, but manages to treat his characters with a sense of humor. (I also love the way the servants in Fielding have all the faults of the ruling class--they just excercize them in a different realm). I suppose one could argue that Bronte's class hatred has more to do with the real world than Fielding's worldly humor, but Heathcliff's world is not one I choose to live in. Give me Tom Jones any day.
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 11-16-2017 at 07:03 AM.
I think the difference is more about the fact Wuthering is really a romantic novel. All emotions in Heathcliff are extreme to the point you cannot even distinguish which one is fueling his actions. Considering those emotions in a way blend with the atmosphere of the place, we may have a good example of the psychological novel that would come to be during XIX century, replacing the more traditional (and ironic) novels like Fielding wrote. Frankly, I admire Emily a lot, not only Wuthering heights, but her poetry too.
Hey, JC! Great to hear from you again.
Wuthering Heights is certainly a novel that pushes passion to the limit (for the times). For me, it doesn't work as a love story--it's just too nasty. You are right to point out the relationship between the wild natural setting and the emotion-driven plot. In that way, Wuthering Heights is an effective romantic novel (not kiss-kiss romantic--the other kind). I'm sure you know the history of the novel better than I do, but I'm under the impression that Wuthering Heights was a rather obscure novel until the 20th century when its reputation was revived by class-conscious academics. But perhaps that's fallen by the wayside now.
By the way, when you call Fielding's novels traditional, I assume you mean retroactively traditional. Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews are so early that they didn't have a lot of novelistic tradition to draw on (Fielding explicitly states that Cervantes was his model for both). Tom Jones in particular works the old picaresque format into something closer to what became the traditional novel. But the tradition was still in the future when Fielding wrote.
Yes, because of course, prose novel was something relatively new. But when Bakhtin analyses Dostoievisky work, he traces the influence of the novel to way back, to the philosophical tradition (what he calls carnaval, but works fine as picareque) from Lucian and the cynics and the Menippean Satyre, which was the use of irony for social critics and we went by Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift and Fielding is in this field. The kind of novel Bronte wrote, is slighty different.
Wuthering Heights was not unknown exactly, but Charlote was the "star" of the sisters (Anne novels being a bit too radical, and most people unable to relate and understand the style of Wuthering Heights). This was more or less true until the early XX centuries (Virginia Woolf for example still says more nice things about Charlote), but slowly, Emily novel raised up to be considered the true masterpiece of the sisters. There was a recent revival of the novel, related to the "dark romantism" (not romanticism) represented by Heathcliff, because the characters in Twilight read Wuthering Heights. However, they do act as if it is pure love story and not a story about an obssession and extreme moral desconstruction of a character and all the class relation they had in the place.
Perhaps that works for Dostoyevsky--I don't know. I can see Roman satire, especially Juvenal, as important (or at least similar) to Swift. But there is a problem with constructing an ancient novelistic pedigree for Fielding via Petronius, Lucian, Apuleius, etc. That's because Fielding is explicit in placing his work in the context of Homeric epic, not Menippean satire, not Milesian tales, not--whatever Lucian thought he was doing. Fielding, who knew his Classics well, put his cards on the table from the start: he was writing, he said, in the tradition of Homer; but his work would be a comical epic and (as a defect) in prose. This is from Fielding's preface to Joseph Andrews (but the same applies to Tom Jones):
"...it may not be improper to premise a few words concerning this kind of writing, which I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language.
"The EPIC, as well as the DRAMA, is divided into tragedy and comedy. HOMER, who was the father of this species of poetry, gave us a pattern of both these, though that of the latter kind is entirely lost; which Aristotle tells us, bore the same relation to comedy which “his Iliad bears to tragedy. And perhaps, that we have no more instances of it among the writers of antiquity, is owing to the loss of this great pattern, which, had it survived, would have found its imitators equally with the other poems of this great original.
"And farther, as this poetry may be tragic or comic, I will not scruple to say it may be likewise either in verse or prose: for though it wants one particular, which the critic enumerates in the constituent parts of an epic poem, namely metre; yet, when any kind of writing contains all its other parts, such as fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only, it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the epic; at least, as no critic hath thought proper to range it under any other head, or to assign it a particular name to itself."
I take Fielding at his word. Cervantes was his novelistic model under a larger framework of Homeric epic. If other influences were involved, I imagine Fielding would have mentioned them.
Thanks. I have to defer to your (much trusted) judgment. I went to school in the heyday of the Marxist-materialist academy, and Wuthering Heights was taught to us as a political and feminist text. I appreciate getting a wider perspective on it.
Oh dear. I hope "dark romantism" doesn't equate to "swarthy Gypsy." I'd prefer failed Marxism to Millennial-era racism.
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 11-17-2017 at 11:46 AM.
I do not mistrust Fielding intent. I just have no idea what is an comic epic poem in prose as he said about Joseph Andrews, or about comedy being part of epic tradition... Sometimes, I guess he is talking about drama and how the trojan circle (and teban circle) was part of it. Anyways, i do not think we have a problem at all, after all Cervantes is central for Bakhtin argument (Dostoievisky often said Quixote was alongside with Jesus the perfect character - and Jesus was also used by Bakthin as an example of a carnavalesque character), so Cervantes influence is pretty much enough in mention a serie of very alikely different kind of books. Recently I read the correspondence exchange between Henry James and Stevenson and they also have a long argument about the two different kind of novels (each one of them linked to one of those sides, albeit of course, they had no idea about bakhtin analyses of Dostoievisky).
Bakhtin does talk specifically about Tom Jones (i havent read the full book on this) as an example of a biographical novel, with different discuss modes, but Bakhtin is more concerned about how this kind of novel was the source behind the modern realistic novel than its origem and was more concerned with Fielding influence over Gogol. Since you dislike the matter of literary perdigree, this may bother you
Well, Charlote is a lot responsable for this. Being the only sister alive, she "molded" the reception of her sister works (editing it or supressing information about their private live which helped to create mythical vision of them) and Charlote is quite a feminist at her time, I suppose this helped to create this approach. Anne works are also a bit "liberal" for the time, sexual tension and all, so it took sometime for appreciation. Wuthering Heights I think suffered the same problem to be understood as Moby Dick, both are books that are work as surrealism precussors, challenging realism norms and too mephysical for romantism style. But I have no idea how it could be considered feminist, with Heathcliff presence poisoning everything, unless it is all about countering the claims the sisters were not the authors of the books, pretty much like Mary Shelley story.Thanks. I have to defer to your (much trusted) judgment. I went to school in the heyday of the Marxist-materialist academy, and Wuthering Heights was taught to us as a political and feminist text. I appreciate getting a wider perspective on it.
They seem to read the book only until Cathy dies and say that famous line about she and heathcliff belong together beyond death. Pretty much forgetting how Heathcliff spent more years without her and the whole story of the second generation that works as a denial of the first generation drama. Of course, they did the same with Copolla sugary version of Dracula or Don Juan version (the one with Deep), turning all in tragic love stories and forgetting the entire moral fable behind those byrons.Oh dear. I hope "dark romantism" doesn't equate to "swarthy Gypsy." I'd prefer failed Marxism to Millennial-era racism.
Aristotle mentions (in the Poetics, I think) a great comic epic called the Margites, which he attributes to Homer. (The protagonist, Margites, is so stupid he doesn't know which of his parents gave birth to him). Only fragments of the work have survived, and many modern scholars believe it was actually written by Pigres of Halicarnassus (which is fine, since Homer per se probably never existed). This is the comic epic tradition that Fielding is referring to. He doesn't actually have the Margites to use as a model (Don Quixote is his stated model), but he uses the idea of comic epic, as he says, in "fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction...". A good example is the Homeric metaphor (in which the metaphor assumes a life of its own and far overshoots its original comparison). Fielding loves these and uses them to great comic effect. Another example that comes to mind is a street brawl in a poor English village that is described as a (mock) noble battle, closely after the manner of the Iliad. Part of the joke (and Fielding is full of jokes) is that he keeps a straight face while all this is going on.
No, literary pedigrees don't bother me, but I grow skeptical of ancient ones (unless, as in Fielding's case, the author acknowledges the debt). But I agree that Tom Jones was the bridge between picaresque novels and the 19th century English novel (Dickens learned from him; but unfortunately also from Richardson, whom Fielding famously despised). I would be very interested to hear what you learn about Fielding's influence on Gogol's realism. Please let me know what you find out.IBakhtin does talk specifically about Tom Jones (i havent read the full book on this) as an example of a biographical novel, with different discuss modes, but Bakhtin is more concerned about how this kind of novel was the source behind the modern realistic novel than its origem and was more concerned with Fielding influence over Gogol. Since you dislike the matter of literary perdigree, this may bother you
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 11-28-2017 at 04:47 PM.
It's good to see some discussion of literature on these boards, and good to hear from Pompey and JCamillo again. Welcome back (I haven't been posting much myself, of late).
"Wuthering Height" is a strange novel, populated by strange characters. It's not one of my favorites, but it attests to Emily's genius. If poetry is the essence of literature, Emily was the literary genius of the Bronte family.
Writing that last sentence reminded me of Emily Dickinson's poem:
This may have little to do with Emily Bronte, but I wonder if Dickinson was comparing her poems to literary "essences", before sticking them away in those drawers.Essential Oils—are wrung—
The Attar from the Rose
Be not expressed by Suns—alone—
It is the gift of Screws—
The General Rose—decay—
But this—in Lady's Drawer
Make Summer—When the Lady lie
In Ceaseless Rosemary—
"Wuthering Heights" is a strange novel, awkward in construction, unappealing in characterization, and strangely plotted. Nonetheless, its "essence" remains powerful.
Hey, ecurb!
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 11-17-2017 at 02:23 PM.
Nothing more comic than a tradition that left no traces but plenty of adepts
Anyways, this "fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction...", the part of fables of course, it is too close of that tradition of the watever the romans were doing that was less epic, more whimiscal... It is not strange to those XVII and XVIII writers to profess a classical model, but having something quite different in the end. Voltaire was a bit like that (not with Homer, whom he despised), and of course, Voltaire was a master of straigth face too and a model to Dostoievisky in the end. I do not think it must be a matter of direct reading, but humor in literature has many similar examples of players who wouldnt share a laugh if they could...
It is a controversial take. Apparently Gogol couldnt read english and his possible contact with Fielding would be from french translations (Fielding status was big enough to make him well know back then). The point (and therefore, i am just repeating others) is that Fielding translations to french were "unfaithful", sometimes bowdelerized and lost some of the language, losing some realism. Gogol is humorous, but russian humor is so different from english humor, and some similar elements such as Gogol adressing to the reader like Fielding did may be concidental since many authors did. In other hand, the influence of Fielding and cia on the development of prose is big enough and Gogol clearly is not very sentimental (like Dostoievisky would be), so it makes some logic that Bakhtin finds motives to see Fielding influence on him.No, literary pedigrees don't bother me, but I grow skeptical of ancient ones (unless, as in Fielding's case, the author acknowledges the debt). But I agree that Tom Jones was the bridge between picaresque novels and the 19th century English novel (Dickens learned from him; but unfortunately also from Richardson, whom Fielding famously despised). I would be very interested to hear what you learn about Fielding's influence on Gogol's realism. Please let me know what you find out.
About both Emilies:
I am not at home now, but if I recall correctly there is an early poem by Emily that indicates her knowledge of the sisters. I am not sure which works from which sisters, but it is always tempting to put together the two sphinx.
Nothing more comic than a tradition that left no traces but plenty of adeptsTrue. Still you can see Fielding's train of thought well enough: Homer is supposed to have written a comic epic. I don't have it, but I know Homeric poetry well enough. Why not write a comic novel like Cervantes' but with jokes based on Homer instead of Medieval romances? And he pulls it off. Tom Jones is a hilarious book. So is Joseph Andrews.
Interesting. I haven't read Gogol, but I think I'll put Dead Souls on my 2018 list (I know the premise, which is funny in a grim sort of way). It should be fairly clear whether Gogol's talking to the reader is an sign of Fielding's influence. Fielding doesn't just talk to his reader; in Tom Jones he begins each of the book's parts with an extended address, in effect an essay, but warm, wise, funny, and confiding. Part of the book's power is the closeness between reader and writer this inspires. If Gogol goes to that extent then maybe he is channeling Fielding. Otherwise, as you say, many authors spoke to their readers so it may not mean anything.
It strikes me also that Dead Souls (so I have been told) is largely a satire of provincial Russian tows and their inhabitants. This obviously has resonance with Tom Jones' and Joseph Andrews' exploits in rural England. So maybe that works, too.
As for Russian humor being different from English (or American for that matter), I take your point. The mature novels of Dostoyevsky have boundless wisdom and genius; but I confess that (with the possible exception of the Idiot) their humor went right over my head. On the other hand, I'm currently reading Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus, a modern Russian novel that some have compared to Dostoyevsky's best works--and so far it has me laughing to tears. So maybe there's hope for us all yet. We'll see.
That reminds me of Brothers Coen Where art thou Brother, which is my favorite movie from them. This shows Homer is good for a lot of things, even to stabilsh models that he never intented to.
Gogol is funny, but in the way Kafka is funny. He is more Laconic than Fielding too. But this can be take as a russian trade, english has a swift rythim on its own. But I think the main difference is that Fielding and most of those comic writers from XVIII century seem to be more casual, less concious than the XIX generation (even the more comic writers of the time have some sense of deepth and importance, I mean even Wilde is full of self-importance, Dickens of the melodrama, etc) and Gogol is somehow heavy. The circumstances seem to drag the characters around, Tom Jones is, in other hand, a very lighty character that seems to be jumping from chapter to chapter, almost as if he occurs to the story and not vice-versa. So, are Candide, or Gulliver or even Vathek or Don Juan seems to be like this.Interesting. I haven't read Gogol, but I think I'll put Dead Souls on my 2018 list (I know the premise, which is funny in a grim sort of way). It should be fairly clear whether Gogol's talking to the reader is an sign of Fielding's influence. Fielding doesn't just talk to his reader; in Tom Jones he begins each of the book's parts with an extended address, in effect an essay, but warm, wise, funny, and confiding. Part of the book's power is the closeness between reader and writer this inspires. If Gogol goes to that extent then maybe he is channeling Fielding. Otherwise, as you say, many authors spoke to their readers so it may not mean anything.
It strikes me also that Dead Souls (so I have been told) is largely a satire of provincial Russian tows and their inhabitants. This obviously has resonance with Tom Jones' and Joseph Andrews' exploits in rural England. So maybe that works, too.
This (about the satyre of the provinces in Gogol) is one of the points that seems controversial. It appears to be also a general trait of russian literature before Gogol, born from Peter and Caterine inovations, that create a big split inside Russian society, one "Modern" with Diderots and cia and other provincial countryside russia, so it may just indicate an indirect influence, but since i only read russian authors from Pushkin onwards, I cannt talk much about this.
Yes, Dostoievisky humor is not for laughs, it is very cynical, plus he has all that influence of Dickens unfunny side (or what Tolstoy would lament to be an excess of good humanity). Chekhov strikes me like this too. However, Bulgakov Master and Marguerita is a chaos blast, but I think he was very concious of creating a farse, hence the more comic side. It is very funny too.As for Russian humor being different from English (or American for that matter), I take your point. The mature novels of Dostoyevsky have boundless wisdom and genius; but I confess that (with the possible exception of the Idiot) their humor went right over my head. On the other hand, I'm currently reading Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus, a modern Russian novel that some have compared to Dostoyevsky's best works--and so far it has me laughing to tears. So maybe there's hope for us all yet. We'll see.
Yes, great movie. The Homer character (pushing the little railroad car) is my favorite. The day I retired I drove home, sat down in my chair, dusted my hands off, and said, "I woik for no man!"
But I think the universality of Homer is quite ancient. His epics were much like the Bible later came to be. . People took meaning from his poetry that may or may not have been latent in the original intent. And of course it helped that he never really existed. People could make all sorts of things out of him. (But please draw no false equivalence here with God
Well, God knows Dickens was full of self-importance. If Tom Jones had been a Dickens character he would have been deceiving villain like Harold Skimpole or at best a tragic youth-led-astray like Richard Carstone. I don't think Dickens believed in winning young men with a few all-too-human flaws.
When I first read Tom Jones I found him too much like some "Our Hero" from an old silent movie. But in fact he's a lot more than that--if only because this "Our Hero" likes to get laid now and then, and has to extricate himself--humanely--from all the trouble that makes for him. I love Candide, but he and Gulliver are really just stage props for their authors' lampoons. Don Juan is a somewhat better comparison, but I see that character as having a little more flesh to him, perhaps because I conflate him with Byron--especially in that first glorious canto. (I never read Vathek so I can't offer an opinion). Tom Jones is certainly an early character in the English novel, but I think he's a bit better than his reputation (which seems somehow apt.
Well, if it's intensely cynical humor, then I suppose I do get Crime and Punishment. Actually, the scene from The Idiot I was thinking of is profoundly cynical. (SPOILER ALERT IF ANYONE IS FOLLOWING THIS THREAD WHO HAS NOT READ THE IDIOT). I mean the final scene in which Myshkin (the Christ figure) and Rogozhin (in my view a kind of Satanic counterpart) are in the sack together, with Nastassya Filippovna, the women for whom they have been competing, dead before them like a human sacrifice. The image is shocking--and perhaps cynically humorous? I've sometimes wondered if the visitation of the devil/devil hallucination to Ivan Karamazov didn't have a kind of gallows humor to it as well.
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