If anybody remembers my first post it was basically that I played a demo of a Robinson Crusoe pc game and gave a very short description of it. I had planned on saying something about Defoe’s work but became too frustrated with trying to put pictures up on this blog that I decided to call it a night and just ended up never doing it ( I still have no idea how to put them up). Robinson Crusoe was one of the most difficult reads of my life. The lack of chapters and paragraphs made it difficult, I guess that is why “prose” and the “novel” are different beasts. Although it was difficult to read I do remember enjoying certain parts a lot. I mostly enjoyed the parts where Crusoe would recount his inventory. I’m just kidding, his inventory updates made me want to throw the book across the room. I did admire Crusoe’s wilderness survival skills, he seemed like a lesser Les Stroud (Survivorman) and that is how I preferred to envision him. If I remember correctly Crusoe didn’t express any interest in any female characters (I can’t remember if he got married and had kids at the end), but he spent 27 years with nothing but savages and wild animals for company and there was hardly any expressed desire for female companionship after he got back to civilization. His underground tunnels and hideouts were neat but nothing beats the canoe that he spent months on in the middle of the jungle only to finish it and not be able to move it to shore. What I loved most about Robinson Crusoe were the spin-offs that I enjoyed as a kid. There was something about being stranded on an island and making something of yourself (ideally like the tree house of the Swiss Family Robinson).
False expectation of Rasselas and a rant on Twilight
Probably because I play too many video games and watch more T.V than I probably should I half expected and hoped that Rasselas would end up being something like The Prince of Persia. I know, I know… anyone that is actually reading this is probably thinking: “come on Tom, just because it’s set in that general area and has a similar setting doesn’t mean it’s going to be a wild adventure to save princesses and kingdoms”. That’s fair enough, but can I really be blamed? For as early as I can remember I have been bombarded with this magnificent stereotype over and over again with things like: Aladdin, Prince of Persia, Ali Baba, The Magic of Schehrazade, Arabian Nights, and countless other tales to tickle the imagination. I realize that this is sort of a rant but I feel like I need to say something. For the past couple weeks the class has been under attack from Twilight fans. I don’t know anything about twilight except that a friend recommended it because it was a vampire story, I got about 5 pages into it and came across a page long paragraph that describes one of the characters sweaters. It was too much to bear. I had already put the book down for good before I learned that it was a teen vampire love story of the forbidden Romeo and Juliet flavor.
http://surfme.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/nightlight-twilight-parody-by-harvard-lampoon.jpg
Has anyone read “Nightlight: A Parody” from The Harvard Lampoon? It’s about a girl that falls for a computer geek because she thinks that he has some undead qualities. If my copies of Dexter don’t get in before next week I think that I might have some Christmas reading material.
Twilight New Moon Plot from collegehumor.com:
Rasselas: Legend of the Little Philosopher
All right, so I’m a little behind. Between juggling essays/readings for other classes sometimes I have a hard time keeping everything up in the air. Rasselas is a pretty interesting read. I know that it was mentioned in class that the Arabian theme is fairly weak and that it could have just as easily have taken place in Joe Blow’s apartment or an amusement park, but I thought that it was good regardless. What I thought was really interesting about it was that the book is about a philisophical quest for “happiness” and that it never really defined what “happiness” was for any of the characters; they all just kind of wandered around waiting for it to catch them by surprise. It’s kind of funny when you think about it. It’s like the #1 commandment of philosophy: “define what you seek or else you will not find it”. What I enjoyed the most was that it didn’t feel like Johnson was trying to cram his ideas down our throat, instead it was as if he wanted to expose us to a bunch of ideas and tell us that none were right. Memories of Dr. Jones saying that Johnson said that it was impossible to be happy come leaping to mind, perhaps that is why it leaves such an empty taste in our mouths.
At the beginning when Rasselas was searching for a way to escape Happy Valley I was absolutely certain that Johnson was going to pull something straight out of Greek myth and have them sail away with man made wings of wax and feathers. Although it became clearer and clearer as the novel went on that nothing like this was ever going to happen it helped keep things going.
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/englit_1/images/rasselas.jpg
P.S I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to pictures and videos here. This is just an alternate (better) cover for Rasselas.
My thoughts on Pamela
Part of what makes a book easy to read is that the characters are interesting and at least the main character has some sort of psychological depth. For me the story is almost always secondary to how the characters tackle their problems; failure and success don’t matter here. I don’t claim to have any deep insight into the female mind or women’s psychology but I can say one thing for certain; Samuel Richardson didn’t either. I did not believe for a second that this Pamela could exist as a real person (then or today). After about thirty pages I could tell that Pamela was sculpted to be the most prim and propper female roll model of his time. She had virtue, beauty, didn’t sleep around, considered refusing expensive gifts because of the context that they had been given, spoke out (above her station) at social injustice, and even at one time chose poverty for herself and family rather than being subject to a work environment that could dirty her reputation. Maybe it’s because I have very little pride, but if I was forced to pick between poverty and a job that had room, board, meals, free clothing and the occassional butt squeeze I would learn to grin and bare the squeezes and stop whinning so much. There was very little character growth so she was typically the same for most of the book. I could not get over how unrealistic she was which made the story really hard to get through. The use of letters to drive the story did help in making the book more manageable as far as reading it went. At least her life was slightly more exciting than Robinson Crusoe’s. I stand by my conviction that Fantomina rules the prose before 1800′s reading list.
Lorenzo Reading Society
Now don’t get me wrong here, I have nothing against the Lorenzo Reading Society it just never seems to benefit me when I go see it. I mean sure it’s cool to go see the authors read from their book and share their ideas (it isn’t everyday that this kind of thing happens), but there is something magical that happens when you meet an author while you are in the middle reviewing his/her book; You (I) feel that it is kind of mean to not recommend their book after having seen them. It happened with me when I was working on a review for Barbra Gowdy’s Helpless and now again with Colin McAdam’s Fall. I knew it was going to happen, it always does. Last night I went in uncertain of how I felt about the book. It was slow starting and it’s excitement fizzled up pretty quickly. The characters didn’t have the same amount of depth that I was used to and I wasn’t a fan of the three viewpoints on the story. But as I walked out of Ganong Hall towards my car I thought “that book wasn’t all that bad, Come on Tom… What are you? A heartless monster”. I think it has something to do with the fact that without meeting the author and hearing them explain what they intended on accomplishing and their ideas on things I was free to credit them or discredit them as I saw fit. I think that anybody who went to the reading last night lost any hope of being able to critically review that book.
Coming next! Thoughts on Pamela and Anti Pamela
-Tom
Final Idea’s on Fantomina
Ok before I post on Pamela I need to wrap things up with my Fantomina. I said a couple weeks ago that I considered Fantomina and Beauplasir are the same person; sex aside. They are both educated, deceptive and manipulative, see people as a means to their happiness, and both have money (although Fantomina is higher in the social world). The only real difference is that Fantomina is made to pay for her actions through pregnancy and getting sent away to a nunnery. Haywood tackled many touchy subjects in her time, in Fantomina we have a sexually adventurous woman who lies and manipulates people to have her way. I believe that having a male and female character that are so similar helps to highlight the differences that one gender may have over the other. It is especially clear after having witnessed both Beauplasir’s and Fantomina’s sexual escapades that neither of them are sound role models, or even good people (subjective, yes I know). The fact that Beauplasir gets off scott-free suggests (at least to me) that their is more going on. For Fantomina to get sent to the nunnery while Beauplasir “lives to Koop another day” is particularly illuminating on how both sexes were treated for conduct unbecoming of a male or female for that period.
Eliza Haywood’s Career and Fantomina!
Well Since I didn’t give a handout for my presentation yesterday I will post my notes up here today and dive into Fantomina a little bit more later on.
Acting:
-By 1715 Haywood had appeared in a leading role on the Dublin stage and had taken on the last name of Haywood. Until this point she had been using her maiden name Fowler.
- In 1717 Haywood had left for London in order to further pursue success in acting. After a few months Haywood became disappointed and decided to start writing.
-In 1726 Haywood returned to the theater after a 6 year absence. In the years 1730,36, and 37 Haywood traveled with the Henry Fieldings Troupe performing plays.
Political Satire:
-The Adventures of Eovaai, Princess of Ijaveo explores gender and power in the social world. The majority of the satire is focused on Robert Walpole’s corruption during his interim Leadership of England. The character who is supposed to represent him is an evil wizard.
-The Female Spectator addresses some of the most controversial topics of her time period: marriage, children, religion and politics. The Female Spectator was Haywood’s most successful piece of literature. It ran for 24 installments through April 1744-May 1746. The finished collection had nine different Edition over the next 30 years and was translated into multiple languages. In this period in time writers did not earn royalties for each copy sold for their works, instead they were paid a lump sum each time it was published which means that she was paid 9 times for this piece.
- A Letter from H–G–g, Esq. was written concerning a political uprising caused by Charles Edward Stuart. Haywood ended up getting arrested over this piece and but did not get prosecuted.
-The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless touched upon an unheard of topic; which was martial discord. This is her work that she is best remembered for.
What is not Known:
When was she born?
- There are two sets of Fowler families that had daughters named Elizabeth. Historians are not certain which family Haywood belonged to but most tend to believe that it was the family with the daughter born in 1693.
-In her time she was believed to be the runaway wife of Rev Valentine Haywood. Which was recently disproved.
Hello world!
Well it’s Monday, which means that I have missed my Friday deadline. It looks like I am going to have to do double duty this week. As a professional procrastinator I have found that Google’s image search can be an invaluable resource. How else would I have discovered that our novel of concentration, Robinson Crusoe, was made into a pc game titled “Adventures of Robinson Crusoe”. The game is flavored in the same style as the late 80′s/early 90′s adventure games where you collect objects to solve puzzles in order to progress through the story. Check it out!
