He did not like her when she was wilful; it contrasted too strongly with her elaborate clothes, all designed to show a total inadequacy outside the domestic interior. The thin end of the sensible clothes wedge had been inserted in society by the disgraceful Mrs Bloomer a decade and a half before the year of which I write; but that early attempt at the trouser suit had been comprehensively defeated by the crinoline - a small fact of considerable significance in our understanding of the Victorians. They were offered sense; and chose a six-foot folly unparalled in the most folly-ridden of minor arts.
Showing posts with label quotations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotations. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Markers of folly.
From The French Lieutenant's Woman (chapter 34):
Monday, 22 December 2008
Navigating feelings....
Whilst reading a collection of essays on Shakespeare's sonnets, I came across this quotation from William Reddy's The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (CUP 2001) and had to share it:
'Suffering that results from goal conflicts is seen also in love relationships... Seeking out a loved one may realize a high-priority desire to be with the person, but it may also expose one to rejection - and thus to the knowledge that one has not embraced the loved one's own goals. This happens most obviously when the loved one makes clear the desire to avoid the lover... When and in what ways ought one to seek out the loved one in order to bring about a change of heart? When and in what ways ought one to accept the loved one's expressed aversion for oneself? Emotional suffering occurs when high-priority goals are in conflict in this way'. (p.123)
Unfortunately, the quotation ends here without answering these questions. Anyone tempted to seek out the book and see if it has any good suggestions?
'Suffering that results from goal conflicts is seen also in love relationships... Seeking out a loved one may realize a high-priority desire to be with the person, but it may also expose one to rejection - and thus to the knowledge that one has not embraced the loved one's own goals. This happens most obviously when the loved one makes clear the desire to avoid the lover... When and in what ways ought one to seek out the loved one in order to bring about a change of heart? When and in what ways ought one to accept the loved one's expressed aversion for oneself? Emotional suffering occurs when high-priority goals are in conflict in this way'. (p.123)
Unfortunately, the quotation ends here without answering these questions. Anyone tempted to seek out the book and see if it has any good suggestions?
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
In the dark
Because I liked it, today I'm sharing with you a short passage from Jo Baker's novel The Telling that I'm reading - and thoroughly enjoying - at the moment. (No spoilers in the comments, please. I haven't finished it yet...):
"Sally and I made our bed up on the rug, and lay down. She fell instantly and deeply asleep, and began to snore.
A light continued on upstairs; it filtered down between the floorboards. I lay awake, looking up at it, my eyes gritty with fatigue. Dad knew, and Mam knew, and Sally knew, and Thomas knew, and everybody knew what was going on, everybody but me. It was not a pleasant feeling, to be alone in the dark."
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Wise Words
These wise words are borrowed from a conversation I had with a friend today. I thought they were important enough to be published somewhere, and hope she doesn't mind:
So, even if you're not sure exactly why your instinct is telling you something, it shouldn't be ignored.
"Instinct: not always eloquent, but usually right"
So, even if you're not sure exactly why your instinct is telling you something, it shouldn't be ignored.
Thursday, 10 July 2008
On a shop door:
During the summer, opening hours will be:
Monday: 10.30am -4pm
Thursday: 10.30 - 4pm
Friday: if it's raining
Thursday, 14 February 2008
Milk messages
A bottle of milk has appeared in the staff room (for want of a better name for it) fridge. On it, a post it note reads "Drink Me". Well, given that we are an English Literature Department, I'd have thought we all would know what happens when we drink liquids marked in such a fashion...
"Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, `which certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well
to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your
finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding
it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.
`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.' And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going though the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, `in my going out altogether, like a
candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing. "
(Text taken from here)
So perhaps I, like 'wise little Alice', may not be doing THAT in a hurry. (Well, unless someone also leaves very small cakes marked 'EAT ME' too...)
"Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, `which certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well
to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your
finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding
it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.
`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.' And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going though the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, `in my going out altogether, like a
candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing. "
(Text taken from here)
So perhaps I, like 'wise little Alice', may not be doing THAT in a hurry. (Well, unless someone also leaves very small cakes marked 'EAT ME' too...)
Monday, 4 February 2008
Sonnets
I love sonnets. Intricately constructed, carefully argued, neatly written. There's something very pleasing in the form of a sonnet.
I like teaching sonnets too. In my first-year classes at the university at the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss, I asked students to find a sonnet and bring it with them to the tutorial. I told them Shakespeare wasn't allowed though - that's too easy to find. We could then talk about the sonnet form in relation to poems that they chose ("See, it doesn't just work with sonnets I pick; we can talk about the use of the sonnet structure in all sonnets..."). It's surprising how few times two students brought the same one, and I now know of some beautiful sonnets that I wouldn't otherwise have read.
This week I'm teaching Shakespeare's sonnets. I'd forgotten how much I like them. Here is one of my favourites. Enjoy!
Sonnet 138
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not t'have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
I like teaching sonnets too. In my first-year classes at the university at the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss, I asked students to find a sonnet and bring it with them to the tutorial. I told them Shakespeare wasn't allowed though - that's too easy to find. We could then talk about the sonnet form in relation to poems that they chose ("See, it doesn't just work with sonnets I pick; we can talk about the use of the sonnet structure in all sonnets..."). It's surprising how few times two students brought the same one, and I now know of some beautiful sonnets that I wouldn't otherwise have read.
This week I'm teaching Shakespeare's sonnets. I'd forgotten how much I like them. Here is one of my favourites. Enjoy!
Sonnet 138
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not t'have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Monday, 28 January 2008
Essay mountains
I have just emerged from behind a mountain of theory essays. I stayed up late last night and got up again very early this morning to finish the marking so that the students could have their essays back today. I am behind with the returns; they have been patient and I promised them today was the day. But, I find that of those left to do last night that I stayed up late to mark, only 2 students collected them today. I'm starting to wonder why I felt bad about the time it has taken to mark them...
One of the last ones that I marked (which is yet to be collected) was not good. Barely on topic, badly punctuated and a forced theoretical analysis that is best described as 'making it fit' without any sensitivity to what was actually happening in the play. Imagine the self restraint involved not to make terse comments when the final sentence of the essay concluded, 'despite how well the theory fits it must be remembered that we are forcing it upon the text'.
Indeed.
One of the last ones that I marked (which is yet to be collected) was not good. Barely on topic, badly punctuated and a forced theoretical analysis that is best described as 'making it fit' without any sensitivity to what was actually happening in the play. Imagine the self restraint involved not to make terse comments when the final sentence of the essay concluded, 'despite how well the theory fits it must be remembered that we are forcing it upon the text'.
Indeed.
Monday, 21 January 2008
Frogs
That's what it said down the side of a poem in one of my anthologies.
I was writing a lecture on a poem I'd studied in detail on my MLitt course, on which I had written a note to myself at the time. Frogs.
On re-reading it, I had no idea what it meant. I thought maybe it was just a random scribble in a margin. Sometimes I do that - a thought comes to me, someone asks me to do something, etc. and I write it down in pencil on the closest paper thing handy. This could have been a message from my past that had lost its significance now.
But no. I have carefully joined it to a word in a line of poetry with a line and a circle. Frogs are important. They mean something. I wouldn't randomly write frogs and connect it to a line of poetry. So I went looking to see if I could find the poem elsewhere in my collection of poetry anthologies - maybe one of those, with better footnotes, would tell me.
I found one. And it did. But I'm not telling you what it meant.
I like the idea of frogs in the margin.
I was writing a lecture on a poem I'd studied in detail on my MLitt course, on which I had written a note to myself at the time. Frogs.
On re-reading it, I had no idea what it meant. I thought maybe it was just a random scribble in a margin. Sometimes I do that - a thought comes to me, someone asks me to do something, etc. and I write it down in pencil on the closest paper thing handy. This could have been a message from my past that had lost its significance now.
But no. I have carefully joined it to a word in a line of poetry with a line and a circle. Frogs are important. They mean something. I wouldn't randomly write frogs and connect it to a line of poetry. So I went looking to see if I could find the poem elsewhere in my collection of poetry anthologies - maybe one of those, with better footnotes, would tell me.
I found one. And it did. But I'm not telling you what it meant.
I like the idea of frogs in the margin.
Monday, 3 December 2007
Quiet lawyers...
I have been teaching The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde this term. A group of my students took a dislike to the lawyer, Mr Utterson. Here is, amongst other things, a description of him:
"A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent reputable men, and all judges of good wine; and Mr Utterson so contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed. This was no new arrangement, but a thing that had befallen many scores of times. Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the lighthearted and the loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit awhile in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich silence, after the expense and strain of gaiety."
(text taken from bibliomania)
He sounds like quite a nice man to me...
"A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent reputable men, and all judges of good wine; and Mr Utterson so contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed. This was no new arrangement, but a thing that had befallen many scores of times. Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the lighthearted and the loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit awhile in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich silence, after the expense and strain of gaiety."
(text taken from bibliomania)
He sounds like quite a nice man to me...
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Absolute monarchy...
I finally got rid of the chapter I've been working on last night - well, I finished rewriting it (although getting rid of it has been tempting for most of the week!). It's taken far too long, but I'm hoping it was worth the time. To give myself a little break today, but still do something useful, I've been collating my bibliographies of primary texts (at the moment I have separate bibliographies for each chapter but not one for the whole thesis) and making sure it has all of the necessary information for each entry. I was struck by the all-encompassing implications of the title of this text:
Mocket, Richard 1615 God and the King: or a dialogue shewing that our soveraigne Lord King James, being immediate under God within his dominions, doth rightfully claim whatsoever is required by the Oath of Allegeance.
Ah, absolute monarchy. You'd never get away with that these days!
Mocket, Richard 1615 God and the King: or a dialogue shewing that our soveraigne Lord King James, being immediate under God within his dominions, doth rightfully claim whatsoever is required by the Oath of Allegeance.
Ah, absolute monarchy. You'd never get away with that these days!
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
Stage directions
I'm falling way behind with revising the drafts of my thesis chapters - hence I am still awake and at my laptop at 3am.
The stage direction on the page of the play I have open next to me reads 'Exeunt omnes Rustici'.
Perhaps it's because it's late/early that this appeals to me. But anything that can make you smile while you're still working at this time in the morning has to be worth sharing!
The stage direction on the page of the play I have open next to me reads 'Exeunt omnes Rustici'.
Perhaps it's because it's late/early that this appeals to me. But anything that can make you smile while you're still working at this time in the morning has to be worth sharing!
Monday, 16 July 2007
'A baggage for all gamesters'?
Here is a brief passage from Act V of John Ford's The Ladies Triall (1638), a play that I'm currently writing about in my thesis. Martino finds his niece Levidolche with Benatzi, a man that he does not know she has already married (Benatzi is actually her first husband in disguise whom she marries a second time - she has, since first marrying him, been seduced and abandoned by one man and rejected by another, and been staying with her uncle since). Martino lets loose this tirade against her:
Oh thou monster
Thou she-confusion! are you growne so rampant,
That from a privat wanton thou proclaimst thy selfe
A baggage for all gamesters, Lords or Gentlemen,
Strangers, or home-spun yeoman, foot-posts, pages,
Rorers or hangmen, hey day, set up shop,
And then cry a market open, toot, and welcome.
They don't write rants like that these days! Although sometimes, as a fellow Teaching Assistant just pointed out to me, undergraduate essays (critical and creative writing) come frighteningly close...
(Lest you think Ford is the misogynist this quotation might imply, I have to defend him by saying that the play actually attempts to knock down some of the contemporary cultural and social assumptions about gender and sexual misconduct upon which Martino's outburst is based.)
Oh thou monster
Thou she-confusion! are you growne so rampant,
That from a privat wanton thou proclaimst thy selfe
A baggage for all gamesters, Lords or Gentlemen,
Strangers, or home-spun yeoman, foot-posts, pages,
Rorers or hangmen, hey day, set up shop,
And then cry a market open, toot, and welcome.
They don't write rants like that these days! Although sometimes, as a fellow Teaching Assistant just pointed out to me, undergraduate essays (critical and creative writing) come frighteningly close...
(Lest you think Ford is the misogynist this quotation might imply, I have to defend him by saying that the play actually attempts to knock down some of the contemporary cultural and social assumptions about gender and sexual misconduct upon which Martino's outburst is based.)
Saturday, 23 June 2007
Quote for today
Not much time today - I'm still working on the introduction which has, since the last post, progressed a little but is now way behind schedule. Supervisor, whose whip-cracking is a constant background noise to me, will not be pleased.
While researching one of my other chapters I came across a description in Conrad Russell's book, Parliaments and English Politics 1621-1629, of the reaction in Parliament when the King did not respond to a parliamentary petition as they had expected that I thought I'd share with you:
"Digges proposed to sit in silence, since they were so miserable they did not know what to do, and Seymour, seconding him, suggested that the silence should be confirmed by order" (1979, p.378).
While researching one of my other chapters I came across a description in Conrad Russell's book, Parliaments and English Politics 1621-1629, of the reaction in Parliament when the King did not respond to a parliamentary petition as they had expected that I thought I'd share with you:
"Digges proposed to sit in silence, since they were so miserable they did not know what to do, and Seymour, seconding him, suggested that the silence should be confirmed by order" (1979, p.378).
I like the way it's written - it almost reads like a novel, doesn't it? It made such an impression on me in the writing style and the description of the Members of Parliament that I've stuck it to the wall over my desk. Perhaps it's because it conveys the mood of the moment so well. Perhaps it's because I see some profound advice here somewhere...
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