Literature musings

Jane Eyre
Frankenstein
Macbeth
Paradise Lost
In Memoriam
Virginia Woolf

As you can see, I have cut the pile down to a few here.

Jane Eyre everyone might as well read, and everyone might as well read it early. I have no particular love of it, though I admit to being in a minority in that regard. My lost masterpiece on how The Whicker Man was a complete rip off of Jane Eyre, is something I stand by or distance myself from, depending on the individual mood of the day. For the Brontes, it's either this or Wutherings as the best novel. I might give the nod to Wutherings, as whilst both are moralistic, that has a more ambigious outcome which is aesthetically more enjoyable, whereas Jane is more in your face, and not in an alltogether good way.

I have mentioned Frankenstein above in the thread. As long as you do not plan to have an asthma attack and collapse during a Presentation on the novel, you have nothing to fear from it. Apart from archaic language, but even from that the ideas break through.

I trust you will have already read some Shakespeare before now? Hamlet, Julius C, King Lear, Merchant of Venice, Othello (like Much Adu about Nothing, but with a much more pleasing ending!), something? MacBeth is his shortest and most well known, but by no means his best. (Personally, I recommend Richard III!) But even a weaker Shakespeare has its moments. Though watching a performance may suit better.

As for Paradise Lost: I know many people have trouble coming to Milton. A way around this "lostness" is to read around before the text.

So, if you read first:

[URL="http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/areopagitica/index.shtml"]Milton - Areopagitica [/URL]

And then:

[URL="http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/of_education/"]Milton - Of Education[/URL]

Or at the very least:

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica[/url]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Education[/url]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_of_Martin_Bucer_Concerning_Divorce[/url]

To get the jist of it, then you can paint the picture in your minds eye of what this man was setting out to do through his words, not merely to entertain, but to change the entire focus and shape of his world as he knew it, by speaking out against what he thought was unjust, and in the days when you could well pay a price for that!

Milton can be a long, laborious read, and my! Doesn't he show off his far-read abilities! But if you understand - or at least, half understand - where he is coming from, its enjoyable enough.

Myself, I respect his stance, if not his politics. And his importance to writing, if not his writing!

In Memoriam - we are talking about Tennyson, yes? Fantastic. One of my favourite poets. In Memoriam is a great read, though you may well find it a bit heavy going in the one sitting. It kept Victoria sane the rest of her Albertless life, you know. And it got Alfie the post of Poet Laureute.

As for Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse is a bit heavy to start with. Maybe try Mrs Dalloway as an introductionary. Its very stream of consciousness, and tinged with more than a little shade of depression, but it is an enjoyable read none the less.

I started War and Peace - it's on my to finish pile one of these days.

I have read The Vindication of the Rights of Women. It's not half as bad as her husbands stuff, but read in juxtaposition with The Rights of Man, as we did, its clearly the weaker piece. With its sentimentality creeping in at every opportunity - thinking of her man as she combs her hair - its certainly not the piece people might expect it to be!

Paradise Lost - uhm, I read Book One. In 2004. I've managed to supress it now with Betjeman and Tennyson and Byron and Mary Robinson and all those poets I much prefer.

As for Popularists vs Literaturists...

Yes, the children should study that Dickens inste....hang on, he was the great popularist.
Oh well, back to SHakespe....hang on, he was a popularist too!

Chaucer? You don't write about sex in the way he did and be considered high brow, if high brow and low brow had even existed as terms in the 14c!

What is considered "Popular" is the stuff that tends to last, and is studied. What is considered "Literate", like, say Laurence Eusden, has been mostly forgotten.

So in 100 years time, Rowling will get studied and Martin Amis will be a footnote.

STAY AWAY FROM JOYCE IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!!!!

That's my message to budding Classical readers. The uni Joyce club started reading Finnegans Wake every Wednesday for 2 hours three years ago - they've got to page 50.

Dickens is great. People might not want to rush into Bleak House or Nicholas Nickleby, but one of the shorter pieces like Christmas Carol or even Great Expectations (well, 300 pages IS shortish) for getting into him. No one else has hypothetical dinosaurs rampaging down the London streets on page one of their novels. I think if they studied Page One of Bleak House in schools, Dickensmania would sweep the country like never before. Instead of "When Marley appears to Scrooge, what does the writer's use of alliteration tell us about the spirit?"

If we're going onto Melville, might as well read Bartleby. 30 pages where nothing happens, with an insane suggested ending that really is meant to sound far more impressive than it actually does. But it is nicely written, for all its insignificance.