To explain, I've tried telling people that cheese shares an acid with something unpleasant (the name of which i won't share here) and to which I'm perhaps a little more sensitive, but, when I do, that only seems to compound the shock with disgust, and I end up friendless, cheeseless, and alone.
I recently read William Empson's Milton's God and was really saddened to realise what a steep decline there has been in academic writing about literature and ideas. He's deeply partisan, but clear and witty with it.
Thank you for the post. I tried reading The Anatomy of Criticism in 2021, but I wasn’t that equipped to get much from it or even get interested in it enough; I only got to the ‘third essay’: Archetypal Criticism. (Bloom nudged to him, by the way.) I should try to read it again. I always know that Northrop Frye is up to something, but I just couldn’t understand what it is. But I will definitely try again. Or do you have a particular recommendation as a reintroduction to his works? I would appreciate it.
I'm still triumphant about having picked up the Longman Milton, in a wonderful clean hard-back edition, for only 50pm from Cambridge Public Library about 20 years ago. I do agree about the importance of good editions done by real scholars but produced (and priced) for the general reader.
It's a wonderful edition. Very decent on the Latin verse too. Yes I don't think Longman are egregiously priced at all, though most similar levels of commentary now tend to be in very expensive university press editions. In any case, I still remember the thrill when I found it in the "for sale" tray at the public library!
‘Later on, I discovered [Woolf] was the best critic of the twentieth century….’
I encourage you to write more on this subject. I’m here for it!
Would love to
I love literary theory … but the first pass should be on the text alone — apply different lenses after that.
I also, in what must be by now a series of mounting disappointments in my personality, do not like cheese.
see this just shocks me
and I have come to learn that, for many people, this shock really is quite genuine
oh yeah, I really don’t get it
To explain, I've tried telling people that cheese shares an acid with something unpleasant (the name of which i won't share here) and to which I'm perhaps a little more sensitive, but, when I do, that only seems to compound the shock with disgust, and I end up friendless, cheeseless, and alone.
:(
I recently read William Empson's Milton's God and was really saddened to realise what a steep decline there has been in academic writing about literature and ideas. He's deeply partisan, but clear and witty with it.
Thank you for the post. I tried reading The Anatomy of Criticism in 2021, but I wasn’t that equipped to get much from it or even get interested in it enough; I only got to the ‘third essay’: Archetypal Criticism. (Bloom nudged to him, by the way.) I should try to read it again. I always know that Northrop Frye is up to something, but I just couldn’t understand what it is. But I will definitely try again. Or do you have a particular recommendation as a reintroduction to his works? I would appreciate it.
I like his Shakespeare writing very much. Frye on Shakespeare. A Natural Perspective.
Thank you, Oliver. I will check it out. Have you written about him before on here?
I have not
Alright.
I'm still triumphant about having picked up the Longman Milton, in a wonderful clean hard-back edition, for only 50pm from Cambridge Public Library about 20 years ago. I do agree about the importance of good editions done by real scholars but produced (and priced) for the general reader.
My God I love that book. They seemed fairly well priced to me. But I bought most of mine some twenty years ago...
It's a wonderful edition. Very decent on the Latin verse too. Yes I don't think Longman are egregiously priced at all, though most similar levels of commentary now tend to be in very expensive university press editions. In any case, I still remember the thrill when I found it in the "for sale" tray at the public library!
yeah you did very well there!