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Unpublished Letters by George Macdonald
Defining Death as “More Life”: Unpublished Letters by George MacDonald Glenn Edward Sadler Who lives, he dies; who dies, he is alive. Phantastes ch. XIII ost readers of George MacDonald’s fiction, especially of his faerieM romances and fairytales, will recall his penetrating treatment of the subject of death and dying. A classic passage occurs, for example, at the conclusion of The Golden Key, when the Old Man of the Sea finally asks Mossy the ultimate question: [end of page 4] “You have tasted death now,” said the Old Man. “Is it good?” “It is good,” said Mossy. “It is better than life.” “No,” said the Old Man: “it is only more life.”1 Equally moving, in spite of its sentimentality, is the ending of At the Back of the North Wind, which depicts graphically Diamond’s dream-in- sleep death. Similarly, there is the ethereal death of the king, who becomes a sacrifice of “flaming red roses,” viewed by Curdie, at the end ofThe Princess and Curdie. As a writer of parables and fairytales, George MacDonald is at his best when he is seeing death through the eyes of a child. Through the eyes of his fictional children—Mossy, Diamond and Curdie—MacDonald envisions his cardinal belief in the cosmic role of the child, who as a redemptive figure participates in and exemplifies universal love and immortality. Mossy and Tangle become agents of life-giving renewal. Diamond is a source of lasting love. And Curdie is a symbol of universal victory over evil. In each case it is the process of dying-into-life (“more life”) that is MacDonald’s major concern: it is a theme which is to be found in everything he wrote. -
North Wind: a Journal of George Macdonald Studies
North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies Volume 39 Article 6 1-1-2020 A Personal Reflection on Colin Manlove and Stephen Prickett John Pennington Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/northwind Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Pennington, John (2020) "A Personal Reflection on Colin Manlove and Stephen Prickett," North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies: Vol. 39 , Article 6. Available at: https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/northwind/vol39/iss1/6 This In Memoriam is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Digital Commons @ St. Norbert College. It has been accepted for inclusion in North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ St. Norbert College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Personal Reflection on Colin Manlove and Stephen Prickett John Pennington At the end of George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind, the narrator enters Diamond’s bedroom and sees the young boy seemingly asleep on his bed. The narrator states: “I saw at once how it was . I knew that he had gone to the back of the north wind” (298). With utter certitude, I’m sure that Colin and Stephen are also at the back of the north wind. My career as an academic in literature is indebted to Colin and Stephen, for they paved the way for serious academic study of George MacDonald, hardly a household name outside of the devoted readers of fantasy, fairy tales, and theology when I started my PhD program in the mid- 1980’s. -
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat the Owl and the Pussy-Cat Went
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound-note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, 'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are, You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are.' Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl, How charmingly sweet you sing. O let us be married, too long have we tarried, But what shall we do for a ring?' They sailed away for a year and a day, To the land where the Bong-tree grows, And there in the wood a Piggy-wig stood, With a ring in the end of his nose, His nose, His nose! With a ring in the end of his nose. 'Dear Pig, are you willing, to sell for one shilling Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.' So they took it away, and were married next day, By the Turkey who lives on the hill. They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon. Edward Lear (1812-1888) 15 Gramercy Park New York, NY 10003 (212) 254-9628 / www.poetrysociety.org Sympathy I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opens, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels! I know why the caged -
Lewis Carroll: Author, Mathematician, and Christian
Lewis Carroll: Author, Mathematician, and Christian David L. Neuhouser Mathematics Department Taylor University Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known as Lewis Carroll, is best known as the creative and imaginative author of the Alice stories, but he was also a mathematician at Christ Church College, Oxford University and a devout Christian. His mathematics, especially mathematical logic, contributed much to the charming “nonsense” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. However, his Christian thought is not evident in those books. In fact, they contain many parodies of morality poems for children. As a result of reading just these books, one might conclude that he was not even interested in morality. But to those who knew him personally, he seemed to be a rather pious, stodgy person. Also, he wrote essays and letters in defense of morality and Christianity as well as books and articles on mathematics. His writings on morality showed little of his literary imagination and his writings on mathematics give no indication of his Christianity. Only in Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded did Dodgson attempt to bring his literary creativity, mathematics, and Christianity all together in one artistic creation. This paper will attempt to answer the following questions. What motivated him to make this attempt and how successful was it? The Alice stories were the first really successful children’s stories which did not have obvious moral teachings. They were just for fun. However he wrote articles and letters against “indecent literature,” joking about sacred things, and immorality in plays. Some projects that he planned but never completed were: selections from the Bible to be memorized, selections from the Bible with pictures for children, and selections from Shakespeare with inappropriate content for young girls deleted. -
Edward Lear's Lines of Flight
Journal of the British Academy, 1, 31–69. DOI 10.5871/jba/001.031 Posted 18 July 2013. © The British Academy 2013 Edward Lear’s lines of flight Chatterton Lecture on Poetry read 1 November 2012 by MATTHEW BEVIS Abstract: ‘Verily I am an odd bird’, Edward Lear wrote in his diary in 1860. This article examines a range of odd encounters between birds and people in Lear’s paint ings, illustrations, and poems. It considers how his interest in birds—an interest at once scientific and aesthetic—helped to shape his nonsense writings. I suggest that poetic and pictorial lines of flight became, for Lear, a means of exploring the claims that art might make on our attention. Keywords: Edward Lear, poetry, painting, flight, birds, Charles Darwin, nonsense, evolution, Alfred Tennyson. until now I never knew That fluttering things have so distinct a shade. Wallace Stevens, ‘Le Monocle de Mon Oncle’ (1918) ‘If you cannot tell me how the shadows of the blessed jackdaws will fall I don’t know what I shall do’, wrote Edward Lear to William Holman Hunt in 1852.1 The poet’s feeling for the life of things was often enhanced by his regard for their fleeting effects. ‘Myriads of pigeons!’, he later exclaimed, ‘And when they fly, their shadows on the ground!’2 Notwithstanding the lessons of Plato’s cave, shadows, for Lear, inhabit the realm of the knowable; they are not simply a mistake, or a deception, or a diversion from the real. At once copies and reanimations, shadows may also stand as an analogue for art. -
'Saved from the Sordid Axe': Representation and Understanding
1 ‘Saved from the sordid axe’: representation and understanding of pine trees by English visitors to Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Pietro Piana, Charles Watkins and Ross Balzaretti Abstract Pine trees were frequently depicted and celebrated by nineteenth century English artists and travellers in Italy. The amateur artist and connoisseur Sir George Beaumont was horrified to discover in 1821 that many Roman stone pines were being felled and paid a landowner to preserve a prominent tree on Monte Mario. William Wordsworth saw this tree in 1837 and celebrated that it had been ‘Saved from the sordid axe by Beaumont's care’. Pines continued to be painted by amateurs and professionals including Elizabeth Fanshawe, William Strangways, Edward Lear, John Ruskin. These trees were also an important element of local agriculture; in parts of Liguria they were grown in vineyards in an unusual type of coltura promiscua providing both support for the vines and fertiliser from pine needles; in Tuscany and Ravenna pine plantations and forests were an important source of pine nuts. In this paper we combine the analysis of local land management records, paintings and traveller’s accounts to reclaim differing understandings of the role of the pine in nineteenth century Italy. Introduction: Sir George Beaumont, Wordsworth and the pines of Rome With the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in June 1815 Italy, especially Rome, once again became a favourite destination for British cultural tourists (Buzard, 1993, Liversidge and Edwards, 1996, Black, -
Lewis Carroll, George Macdonald and Charles Dickens
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository FANTASTICAL REFLECTIONS: LEWIS CARROLL, GEORGE MACDONALD AND CHARLES DICKENS By HAYLEY HANNAH FLYNN A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2015 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis examines the presence and importance of the fantastical in literature of the Victorian period, a time most frequently associated with rationality. A variety of cultural sources, including popular entertainment, optical technology and the fairy tale, show the extent of the impact the fantastical has on the period and provides further insight into its origins. Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald and Charles Dickens, who each present very different style of writing, provide similar insight into the impact of the fantastical on literature of the period. By examining the similarities and influences that exist between these three authors and other cultural sources of the fantastical a clear pattern can be seen, demonstrating the origins and use of the fantastical in Victorian literature and providing a new stance from which it should be viewed. -
The History of Children's Illustration and Literature Has Always Offered
MARCELLA TERRUSI CHILD PORTRAITS. REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CHILD BODY IN CHILDREN’S ILLUSTRATION AND LITERATURE: SOME INTERPRETATIVE CATEGORIES RITRATTI DI BAMBINO. RAPPRESENTAZIONI DEL CORPO INFANTILE NELLE ILLUSTRAZIONI E NELLA LETTERATURA PER BAMBINI: ALCUNE CATEGORIE INTERPRETATIVE A critical path in the history of children’s illustration and literature, discovering the portraits and metaphors of childhood that attract the scholar’s attention to pedagogical thought on the imagination, and some ideas for interpreting representations of the child body. Un percorso critico nella storia della letteratura e delle illustrazioni per bambini, alla scoperta dei ritratti e delle metafore di infanzia che hanno attratto l’attenzione degli studiosi per un pensiero pe- dagogico sull’immaginazione e di alcune idee per interpretare le rappresentazioni dei corpi infantili. Key words: history of children’s literature, history of illustration, metaphors of childhood, collective imagi- nation, body. Parole chiave: storia della letteratura dell’infanzia, storia delle illustrazioni, metafore dell’infanzia, imma- ginazione collettiva, corpo. The history of children’s illustration and literature has always offered images of childhood in which different children’s figures emerge from the folds of the story with the strength of a visual representation that gives scholars different eyes for interpret- ing the underlying symbolic universe. The rich heritage found in the best works of children’s illustrated literature offers an ideal opportunity for deciphering the depth of childhood metaphors. Children’s literature, or invisible literature (Beseghi e Grilli 2011) while increasingly less invisible as new contributions enrich its critical study, invites us to observe the children’s world in all its intricate details, in the figures that render its fundamental “otherness” (Bernardi 2016) compared to the adult world, in all its complexity and wealth. -
Objects of Nonsense, Anarchy, and Order: Romantic Theology in Lewis Carroll’S and George Macdonald’S Nonsense Literature Adam Walker
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St. Norbert College North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies Volume 37 Article 2 1-1-2018 Objects of Nonsense, Anarchy, and Order: Romantic Theology in Lewis Carroll’s and George MacDonald’s Nonsense Literature Adam Walker Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/northwind Recommended Citation Walker, Adam (2018) "Objects of Nonsense, Anarchy, and Order: Romantic Theology in Lewis Carroll’s and George MacDonald’s Nonsense Literature," North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies: Vol. 37 , Article 2. Available at: https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/northwind/vol37/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Digital Commons @ St. Norbert College. It has been accepted for inclusion in North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ St. Norbert College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Objects of Nonsense, Anarchy, and Order: Romantic Theology in Lewis Carroll's and George MacDonald's Nonsense Literature Adam Walker Introduction “Nonsense criticism, as it currently exists,” writes Josephine Gabelman in her new book A Theology of Nonsense (2016), “is essentially a secular enterprise. It is philosophical and psychoanalytical, philological and mathematical; it may be studied from a historical or cultural perspective, but apparently not a religious one” (162). Past scholarship has, in fact, not only avoided a serious consideration of theology regarding nonsense literature, but some scholars have gone so far as to insist that nonsense literature lacks any sense of the religious at all. -
Edward Lear - Poems
Classic Poetry Series Edward Lear - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Edward Lear(12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised. <b>Biography</b> Lear was born into a middle-class family in the village of Holloway, the 21st child of Ann and Jeremiah Lear. He was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann, 21 years his senior. Ann doted on Lear and continued to mother him until her death, when Lear was almost 50 years of age. Due to the family's failing financial fortune, at age four he and his sister had to leave the family home and set up house together. Lear suffered from health problems. From the age of six he suffered frequent grand mal epileptic seizures, and bronchitis, asthma, and in later life, partial blindness. Lear experienced his first seizure at a fair near Highgate with his father. The event scared and embarrassed him. Lear felt lifelong guilt and shame for his epileptic condition. His adult diaries indicate that he always sensed the onset of a seizure in time to remove himself from public view. How Lear was able to anticipate them is not known, but many people with epilepsy report a ringing in their ears (tinnitus) or an aura before the onset of a seizure. In Lear's time epilepsy was believed to be associated with demonic possession, which contributed to his feelings of guilt and loneliness. -
Clarence Bicknell and George Macdonald: Figureheads of Society in Bordighera
Clarence Bicknell and George Macdonald: Figureheads of Society in Bordighera By Susie Bicknell February 2015 George MacDonald and Clarence Bicknell both settled in Bordighera in 1878. George was already an established literary personality with a large family and little money. Clarence was unknown with no particular vocation except as a priest, a bachelor (which he remained) and with enough private means to support himself. Within a few years, they had established themselves as pivots of society in Bordighera. However, it is strange not to know how much contact they had with each other, considering how much they had in common as stalwarts of Bordighera. They both had stints as priests. Reacting possibly to his Unitarian upbringing, Clarence, when he left Cambridge, favoured a return to a more Catholic orientated Anglican Church. Ordained in 1866, Clarence was a curate in a tough parish in Walworth, Surrey and then from 1873 spent six years on and off at Stoke on Tern with the rather mysterious “Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit” created by Roland Corbett which pursued High Church Anglo-Catholicism. But by the late 70s, the Brotherhood must have lost its allure for Clarence, and he travelled considerably, going as far afield as Morocco and possibly New Zealand. He ended up in Bordighera in 1878 invited by the Fanshawe family and became chaplain to the Anglican church there. Eighteen years older than Clarence, Scotsman George MacDonald also started with a religious calling. He left Aberdeen to study Congregationalism at Highbury Independent Theological College. After three years, he became pastor in 1850 at a Congregational Church in Arundel, Sussex. -
APPENDIX ALCOTT, Louisa May
APPENDIX ALCOTT, Louisa May. American. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, 29 November 1832; daughter of the philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott. Educated at home, with instruction from Thoreau, Emerson, and Theodore Parker. Teacher; army nurse during the Civil War; seamstress; domestic servant. Edited the children's magazine Merry's Museum in the 1860's. Died 6 March 1888. PUBLICATIONS FOR CHILDREN Fiction Flower Fables. Boston, Briggs, 1855. The Rose Family: A Fairy Tale. Boston, Redpath, 1864. Morning-Glories and Other Stories, illustrated by Elizabeth Greene. New York, Carleton, 1867. Three Proverb Stories. Boston. Loring, 1868. Kitty's Class Day. Boston, Loring, 1868. Aunt Kipp. Boston, Loring, 1868. Psyche's Art. Boston, Loring, 1868. Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, illustrated by Mary Alcott. Boston. Roberts. 2 vols., 1868-69; as Little Women and Good Wives, London, Sampson Low, 2 vols .. 1871. An Old-Fashioned Girl. Boston, Roberts, and London, Sampson Low, 1870. Will's Wonder Book. Boston, Fuller, 1870. Little Men: Life at Pluff?field with Jo 's Boys. Boston, Roberts, and London. Sampson Low, 1871. Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag: My Boys, Shawl-Straps, Cupid and Chow-Chow, My Girls, Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving. Boston. Roberts. and London, Sampson Low, 6 vols., 1872-82. Eight Cousins; or, The Aunt-Hill. Boston, Roberts, and London, Sampson Low. 1875. Rose in Bloom: A Sequel to "Eight Cousins." Boston, Roberts, 1876. Under the Lilacs. London, Sampson Low, 1877; Boston, Roberts, 1878. Meadow Blossoms. New York, Crowell, 1879. Water Cresses. New York, Crowell, 1879. Jack and Jill: A Village Story.