Archive for June, 2013

BooksLiteraturePoemsPsychoanalysisThe Norton Anthology

June 30, 2013

Romantic Imprisonments

Tags: , , , , ,

I just spent a week getting reacquainted with Byron—George Gordon, Lord Byron–and the magic wasn’t happening. When I was in college, he was my favorite of all the romantic poets because he was easiest to understand and he was funny. This mid-life trek through the Norton anthology is highlighting how much I have changed: my  Read the Rest…

AnglophiliaBooksEnglandLiteratureThe Norton AnthologyWriting

June 25, 2013

The Opium Essayists

Tags: , , , , , ,

Thanks to a chilly morning which got my annual yard sale off to a slow start, I had the leisure to power through the Norton Anthology’s selection of Romantic period essayists, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Thomas De Quincey.  They were all fond of laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol) which led the Norton editors to  Read the Rest…

BooksLiteraturePoemsPostsThe Norton AnthologyWriting

June 20, 2013

This Norton Anthology My Prison

Tags: , , , ,

In which I find in Samuel Taylor Coleridge a kindred soul. It might be his struggle with depression.  It might be his experience—so common to women—of feeling that nothing he does is respected as much as something a(nother) man does, in this case Wordsworth.  The two of them conceived of a book they called Lyrical  Read the Rest…

BooksEnglandLiteraturePoemsPsychoanalysisThe Norton AnthologyTravel

June 15, 2013

Wordy Wordsworth

Tags: , , , , ,

A week ago I would have told you that I loved William Wordsworth. After reading the selections in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, I have concluded that it’s only a few of his poems that I love, and a few lines from here and there. I was all excited to read The Prelude because  Read the Rest…

BooksChoir SingingHolidaysLiteraturePoemsSingingThe Norton Anthology

June 9, 2013

Re-Discovering Robert Burns

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Who couldn’t like Robbie Burns? Well, the British, I suppose.  And he didn’t wear well with the Edinburgh Scots.  When I turned the page from William Blake in my trek through The Norton Anthology of English Literature, there was Robert Burns with all his apostrophes.  After I got used to the a’s, the whas and  Read the Rest…

AnglophiliaBooksEnglandLiteraturePoemsSongsThe Norton Anthology

June 5, 2013

Summer Reading Program

Tags: , , , ,

It hit me the other day what I wanted to do for a summer reading project: read The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. I and II.  Collective gasp all around.  This venerable collection has been around a long time but I don’t believe anyone has actually read it—certainly not the college students for which  Read the Rest…