Bibliography
May. 11th, 2010 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyBritish Women Writers, 1914-1945: Professional Work and Friendship - Catherine Clay
I've had this sitting on the study floor for months because I haven't felt I've had the time or inclination to get around to it; a library recall notice at the weekend did wonders, however, and I zipped through it during the commute to and from my singing lesson today. This is reading for the HM Project, as if you hadn't guessed, and is actually Jolly Interesting as far as that's concerned. Clay looks at the nexus of female friendships centered around Time and Tide magazine and examines how the diaries and letters of those friends construct an economy not only of supported professional work, but also desire. It's actually an excellent case study of how to move beyond the 'OMG LEZBIANS??' style of scholarship that people get their knickers in a twist about. In her own words, "this book is concerned with tracing lesbian desire in the lives and writings of women who were not necessarily lesbian, or who did not desire to identify themselves as such, but of which ‘some reckoning must be made’. This ‘reckoning’ must take into account the different ways in which these writers articulated, imagined and explored lesbian desire, but the ambivalence and denials surrounding sexuality in this material also prevent any simple ‘celebration’ of women’s friendship" (3). Which pretty much sums up what she goes and does, and jolly illuminating it is too. Obviously, those of you without an interest in creative relationships between women in the 1920s couldn't care less, but I note it.
The Arts of Love: Five studies in the discourse of Roman love elegy - Duncan Kennedy
This is again from the Roman Literature and Its Contexts series, and I think it will be the last of them for a while. I have to say that I wasn't terribly impressed with this. Kennedy does some nice thinking around the idea of what words mean, and the sorts of nuances and different registers that get invoked when you choose to use, say, military vocabulary in a love poem, and gives some good case studies. But the question is, what next? And honestly, if you're going to start destabilising language much further, there isn't really anywhere to go, except into the void of the meaningless, and that's no fun. Also, I rather wish Kennedy hadn't written in quite such jargon-heavy prose. All full of referents and paradigms and reification. Some of which must be necessary window dressing, but not that much.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves – M.T. Anderson
The sequel to this book, which follows the life of a young black man, which ended as he escaped from slavery and went to seek refuge in Boston. In this volume, he enlists in the Royalist army, in something called the Royal Ethiopian regiment. This was a regiment formed of slaves given their freedom by Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, if they would fight for the King against the rebels.
This is Not A Good Move, and most of the book takes place while Octavian and his compatriots are trapped on ships in the bay off Norfolk, as the soldiers get sicker and sicker with an outbreak of smallpox and general FAIL. Not to mention Massive Emotional Betrayal by the men into whose hands Octavian and his companions have trusted himself.
I have to say that I actually preferred the first book, mainly because this one is so overwhelmingly depressing. It's basically nothing but sitting around being ill in shit conditions, under the racism of white officers, suffering the explosion of one's optimism and seeing dear friends die. Now, I appreciate why something like this has a place in literature, and even in Young Adult literature (which I understand this is). I understand that writer deciding to place his protagonist in the position that Octavian is in doesn't really have many other options, and that the whole situation is grindingly unpleasant. But given the kind of variety and movement that Anderson managed to conjour up in the first book, the sheer monotony of suffering that we encounter here is - well, ugh, frankly. And the excellent Dr. Trefusis dies an unpleasant but speedily merciful death, which was Very Sad Indeed.
So, yes. It is worth reading if you enjoyed the first volume enough to find out what happened next, and it is a brave piece of fiction that tries to enter into the kind of sheer ugh that people in this position experienced at this period. But I have to say that it really isn't much fun.
The Private Life of Helen of Troy – John Erskine
I picked this up after hearing a paper on its reception at the APA in January. The paper examined the difference between the novel and its film adaptation; the novel was a best seller and very Intellectual, while the film went for wild whimsey and ridiculousness. The plot basically picks up Helen's life when she returns to Troy with Menelaos - the disapproval of her gatekeeper, Eteoneus; her renegotiation of her relationship with her husband and her dreadfully prissy neighbour Charitas; her reaction to her first proper meeting with her daughter, Hermione, who is determined to marry her cousin Orestes out of Duty. Of course, this last point becomes complicated as the news of Agamemnon's murder and then Clytemnestra's murder filters back to the house, parents working out what the best next move is.
Helen, throughout, advocates following the Love of Life, and worries about people who don't have enough of it; she also says that she believes in regretting first and being optimistic afterwards, and indeed demonstrates that philosophy throughout, to the confusion of all around her. She embodies a Terribly Modern Ethics, which scandalises her conventional friend Charitas, even though Charitas' son gets Helen's maidservant pregnant and Charitas' reaction is not, shall we say, helpful. There's a lot of mileage spent portraying clashing value systems - Helen clashes with the male value system held by Menelaos and Eteoneus, the prissy conventionalism of Charitas, and the dreadful puritanism embodied by Hermione. The conflicts and battles over initially small but increasingly large issues really does a nice job of articulating anxieties over various sorts of social change in the 1920s. It does make for quite a wordy, intellectual sort of novel, but that shouldn't stand in its way - it's actually surprisingly readable once you get used to the style. So if you think this is likely to be your sort of thing, I heartily recommend you have at it.
I've had this sitting on the study floor for months because I haven't felt I've had the time or inclination to get around to it; a library recall notice at the weekend did wonders, however, and I zipped through it during the commute to and from my singing lesson today. This is reading for the HM Project, as if you hadn't guessed, and is actually Jolly Interesting as far as that's concerned. Clay looks at the nexus of female friendships centered around Time and Tide magazine and examines how the diaries and letters of those friends construct an economy not only of supported professional work, but also desire. It's actually an excellent case study of how to move beyond the 'OMG LEZBIANS??' style of scholarship that people get their knickers in a twist about. In her own words, "this book is concerned with tracing lesbian desire in the lives and writings of women who were not necessarily lesbian, or who did not desire to identify themselves as such, but of which ‘some reckoning must be made’. This ‘reckoning’ must take into account the different ways in which these writers articulated, imagined and explored lesbian desire, but the ambivalence and denials surrounding sexuality in this material also prevent any simple ‘celebration’ of women’s friendship" (3). Which pretty much sums up what she goes and does, and jolly illuminating it is too. Obviously, those of you without an interest in creative relationships between women in the 1920s couldn't care less, but I note it.
The Arts of Love: Five studies in the discourse of Roman love elegy - Duncan Kennedy
This is again from the Roman Literature and Its Contexts series, and I think it will be the last of them for a while. I have to say that I wasn't terribly impressed with this. Kennedy does some nice thinking around the idea of what words mean, and the sorts of nuances and different registers that get invoked when you choose to use, say, military vocabulary in a love poem, and gives some good case studies. But the question is, what next? And honestly, if you're going to start destabilising language much further, there isn't really anywhere to go, except into the void of the meaningless, and that's no fun. Also, I rather wish Kennedy hadn't written in quite such jargon-heavy prose. All full of referents and paradigms and reification. Some of which must be necessary window dressing, but not that much.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves – M.T. Anderson
The sequel to this book, which follows the life of a young black man, which ended as he escaped from slavery and went to seek refuge in Boston. In this volume, he enlists in the Royalist army, in something called the Royal Ethiopian regiment. This was a regiment formed of slaves given their freedom by Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, if they would fight for the King against the rebels.
This is Not A Good Move, and most of the book takes place while Octavian and his compatriots are trapped on ships in the bay off Norfolk, as the soldiers get sicker and sicker with an outbreak of smallpox and general FAIL. Not to mention Massive Emotional Betrayal by the men into whose hands Octavian and his companions have trusted himself.
I have to say that I actually preferred the first book, mainly because this one is so overwhelmingly depressing. It's basically nothing but sitting around being ill in shit conditions, under the racism of white officers, suffering the explosion of one's optimism and seeing dear friends die. Now, I appreciate why something like this has a place in literature, and even in Young Adult literature (which I understand this is). I understand that writer deciding to place his protagonist in the position that Octavian is in doesn't really have many other options, and that the whole situation is grindingly unpleasant. But given the kind of variety and movement that Anderson managed to conjour up in the first book, the sheer monotony of suffering that we encounter here is - well, ugh, frankly. And the excellent Dr. Trefusis dies an unpleasant but speedily merciful death, which was Very Sad Indeed.
So, yes. It is worth reading if you enjoyed the first volume enough to find out what happened next, and it is a brave piece of fiction that tries to enter into the kind of sheer ugh that people in this position experienced at this period. But I have to say that it really isn't much fun.
The Private Life of Helen of Troy – John Erskine
I picked this up after hearing a paper on its reception at the APA in January. The paper examined the difference between the novel and its film adaptation; the novel was a best seller and very Intellectual, while the film went for wild whimsey and ridiculousness. The plot basically picks up Helen's life when she returns to Troy with Menelaos - the disapproval of her gatekeeper, Eteoneus; her renegotiation of her relationship with her husband and her dreadfully prissy neighbour Charitas; her reaction to her first proper meeting with her daughter, Hermione, who is determined to marry her cousin Orestes out of Duty. Of course, this last point becomes complicated as the news of Agamemnon's murder and then Clytemnestra's murder filters back to the house, parents working out what the best next move is.
Helen, throughout, advocates following the Love of Life, and worries about people who don't have enough of it; she also says that she believes in regretting first and being optimistic afterwards, and indeed demonstrates that philosophy throughout, to the confusion of all around her. She embodies a Terribly Modern Ethics, which scandalises her conventional friend Charitas, even though Charitas' son gets Helen's maidservant pregnant and Charitas' reaction is not, shall we say, helpful. There's a lot of mileage spent portraying clashing value systems - Helen clashes with the male value system held by Menelaos and Eteoneus, the prissy conventionalism of Charitas, and the dreadful puritanism embodied by Hermione. The conflicts and battles over initially small but increasingly large issues really does a nice job of articulating anxieties over various sorts of social change in the 1920s. It does make for quite a wordy, intellectual sort of novel, but that shouldn't stand in its way - it's actually surprisingly readable once you get used to the style. So if you think this is likely to be your sort of thing, I heartily recommend you have at it.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-12 02:24 am (UTC)The Helen of Troy one looks really interesting, I shall add it to my "list of books I maybe should pick up" file!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-12 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-12 12:17 pm (UTC)Have you seen the film (or what survives of it)? If you get a chance, take it, as it's really rather charming.
Bettany Hughes reproduces the cover of a 1948 edition in her Helen of Troy book (you can see it here). By this time, it was being sold as soft-core porn.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-12 10:56 pm (UTC)I've seen snippets from the film, which was what the APA paper was discussing, and it looks rather cheerful fun.
WTF at the 1948 edition?? That's nothing like what happens in the actual book! Brilliant! Mind you, that's pretty standard for 1940s covers...