Archive for July, 2013

BooksHolidaysLiteraturePoemsSpiritualityThe Norton Anthology

July 30, 2013

In Memoriam Tennyson

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“Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I thought that was Shakespeare’s line.  He’s usually my first guess when I’m unsure. But, surprise, it’s Tennyson.  I was surprised over and over at the many familiar passages in his long poem, “In Memoriam A.H.H.” A.H.H. is Arthur Hallam, a  Read the Rest…

BooksEnglandLiteraturePoliticsThe Norton Anthology

July 23, 2013

John Stuart Mill, Cosmic Comrade

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I have now left behind the Romantics and entered the age of Victorian Literature (1832-1901.)  What immediately strikes me is the similarity of the Victorian age to our own.  The anxiety, the social problems, the wide scope of attitudes towards sex, the arguments about religion, and the struggle of women all feel familiar.  After hacking  Read the Rest…

BooksCurmudgeonLiteraturePoliticsThe Norton Anthology

July 13, 2013

The Wollstonecraft Women

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I got a little exercised about Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 essay, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, after I watched, in 2013, women being dragged out of the North Carolina and Texas legislatures and arrested for peaceful protest on their Capitol steps. I wasn’t sure I wanted to write about it because I found it  Read the Rest…

BooksFriendsLiteraturePoemsThe Norton Anthology

July 9, 2013

Making Delicious Moan with a Pip-Civilian

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On the inside cover of my college text, Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of Keats (edited, with an introduction by Harold Edgar Briggs, The Modern Library) is a penciled note, “read in Mary-Ellis’ book pg. 312, 317, 329-30” that I’ve been puzzling over.  I think it has to do with Romantic Lit being at 9:00  Read the Rest…

BooksLiteraturePoemsThe Norton AnthologyWriting

July 5, 2013

O Blithe Spirit, Hire an Editor

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Percy Bysshe Shelley was an intense, wordy young man.  As I plowed through the Shelley selections in the Norton Anthology, I wondered why he was given so much more space than the other romantic poets.  Then I did a calculation (can you tell I am wearying of the Romantics?) and found that Byron, Coleridge, and  Read the Rest…