Cimorene

After I read Ivanhoe, I decided to read more of the works of Walter Scott because I read that he was a childhood favorite of William Morris and likely influence on his writing.

First of all, he definitely was. A lot of the archaic-seeming terms that Morris sprinkles throughout his quest novels were still in use in the 18th century in Scotland and are found abundantly in Scott's novels chronicling the recent past: the time of his life, his parents', and his grandparents'.

Ivanhoe was really hard to get into because of Scott's efforts at historical accuracy and the slow commencement of plot (a bit like Tolkien in that respect, except the language is much denser), but also because its primary themes are about racism ( Read more... ) Be that as it may, however, I found that the novel picked up a lot in the middle after its slow beginning; there were lots of fun and unputdownable parts. I like Scott's use of language and his sense of humor very much, and I found the parts about Robin Hood and his men extremely delightful.

So next I read Waverley, his first novel, which is about the Bonny Prince Charlie revolt, the one with Culloden. From the start I found it much more readable. It's explicitly set sixty years before its publication date, and the language and subject matter is more familiar to me (Scott was a contemporary of Austen, possibly the most comfortable narrative voice for me). In terms of the plot, Waverley, too, begins a little slowly, and it took me some months to read because of this, but it, too, picks up as it nears the halfway point, and develops a lively adventure plot and a strong thread of humor. ( Read more... )

The third book I read was The Antiquary, which was Scott's third published novel in 1816, and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. It is by far my favorite that I've read so far. By way of blurb, here's the beginning of the article on Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

The Antiquary (1816), the third of the Waverley novels by Walter Scott, centres on the character of an antiquary: an amateur historian, archaeologist and collector of items of dubious antiquity. He is the eponymous character and for all practical purposes the hero, though the characters of Lovel and Isabella Wardour provide the conventional love interest. The Antiquary was Scott's own favourite of his novels, and is one of his most critically well-regarded works; H. J. C. Grierson, for example, wrote that "Not many, apart from Shakespeare, could write scenes in which truth and poetry, realism and romance, are more wonderfully presented."

Scott wrote in an advertisement to the novel that his purpose in writing it, similar to that of his novels Waverley and Guy Mannering, was to document Scottish life of a certain period, in this case the last decade of the 18th century. The action can be located in July and August 1794. It is, in short, a novel of manners, and its theme is the influence of the past on the present. In tone it is predominantly comic, though the humour is offset with episodes of melodrama and pathos. (Wikipedia)

In terms of the plot and humor and vibes, The Antiquary reminds me strongly of some of Georgette Heyer's humorous adventure novels, like The Talisman. It is full of rural Scottish scene-setting, however, vivid portraits and examples of Scottish English dialect from all classes - deliberate, but carefully edited to be readable to an English audience, I am informed by the introductions. Someone might dislike these, but I enjoy them. The romance does not have such a central part in Scott's novels, though, compared with Heyer, although it does seem that he felt he couldn't write a novel without including one.

The vivid, fully-rounded, rather satirical character portraits are beyond Heyer, though, and a bit more similar to Austen perhaps (although Scott's writing isn't really like Austen's). The comedy of manners is delightful. The Antiquary himself, according to the introduction, was apparently based on a friend of Scott's father, and enabled someone who knew his family as a child to guess who had written the book (which was published anonymously, a practice Scott eventually stopped). But I recognized in him one of the more delightfully humorous characters from Waverley as well (Baron Bradwardine), although I gather it isn't the style of dialogue which these two characters have in common that gave Scott's identity away, but the details of the Antiquary's household and interests and so on. (These are also great.)

It's sad to think, after finishing something I enjoyed this much, that it is perhaps the one of his works I was most likely to enjoy, going by these descriptions. But I will continue to read more of them, at least for a while. I skipped Guy Mannering because it reportedly has a plot device quite similar to one in The Antiquary, and am about to read The Monastery.

I was planning to make a post about the few Rex Stout novels I've reread in the last week or so in between The Silmarillion and some fanfiction; but I started reading one of Jane Austen's unfinished novels, The Watsons, which I've never read before even though I've been a regular rereader of her published novels since childhood.

There are a couple of unfinished works of hers I haven't read, I think partly because I hate reading works in progress and suffering the knowledge that you'll never know. In a sense this is worse with something that's very good and enjoyable, like Austen, but perhaps they're more worth the price as well. Getting increasingly engrossed is creating a mounting dismay as the end approaches, though.

stultiloquentia posted: Mansfield Park and Slavery

Austen isn't exactly writing an overt screed against the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. What she IS doing is inexorably LINKING the moral corruption of slavery with the moral corruption of the patriarchy. Largely through a series of subtle but crucial language choices and situational comparisons.

This post is an excellent read, and would have made a welcome intro to the editions of Mansfield Park I read as a child and teenager, because I completely failed to get that stuff. The bias in the American school system is well known, so it's probably unsurprising that the focus in my education was on the North American side of the politics of slavery and abolition, although of course the English role is integral - but mostly the English actions which affected the US directly, like the abolitionist movement and the outlawing of the trade there - I didn't learn anything about Lord Mansfield and the judgment that rendered all people free when they set foot in England until Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I don't think, even though we did Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre at the same time in high school.

Anyway, tl;dr, but this makes me determined to reread MP again with some additional historical background this time. And it accords entirely with my general view that Edmund is terrible and undeserving of Fanny. (Edmund: THE WORST Austen Hero? DISCUSS.)

When I watched the new LBD this morning, I read it as a strong commentary on Pride & Prejudice ( spoilers for Lizzie Bennet Diaries to 12 Feb 2012 )

Emma and Knightley in this version of Emma are both notably unique. There's a kind of deliberate staid and stateliness to older BBC productions which has been forcibly cast off here. Mark Strong's Knightley (the Beckinsale mini version) I have found to be closest to my mental book-based Knightley in the past, though Jeremy Northam was most infectiously charming: because Knightley's maturity and dryness seemed lacking in Northam, who played him too sunnily amiable. On the other hand, though, Strong's interpretation was too heavy. He seemed inwardly tortured sometimes, and had a slight air of Rochester about him. In short, he seemed too old, and not fun-loving enough, because Knightley has a great sense of humor, even though he is also very serious in matters of duty, manners, kindness, and doing the right thing.

But back to my main point, which is trying to explain why Jonny Lee Miller's Knightley is my favorite, and why I think he is actually the best of these three most recent versions. You see his dryness, sarcasm and humor with a peculiar clarity as the distancing mechanisms they so often are with this interpretation. Everything about his affectation of uncaring and distance, where really he is mentally engaged, is echoed in his body language, where a thread of tension underlies a constant series of elaborately lounging poses. His face is serious, and you see in his eyes when he is caught in thought, but he doesn't make the kinds of exaggerated and revealing facial expressions which Emma does, young and unguarded as she is. You can sometimes see his attachment to Emma, usually if you know what you're looking for, but it's not made too obvious so as to spoil the "mystery without a murder". The acting he does, and Romola Garai's too, build on a palpable chemistry, and are so convincing and so layered, that the connection between them is really intense and moving.

Good screenwriting and directing, too, though not flawless, contribute to keeping the tension more even and providing more of a window to what's going on for Mr. Knightley's side of the story - something that is almost entirely opaque in the book until you go back searching for clues, and which different productions try to handle in different ways, but usually don't alter very much. I appreciate the alteration, though, and think it works very well for the screen. The bits of his point of view build and come together slowly, until by the end of the 3rd episode a pretty whole picture has emerged. You really feel for JLM's Knightley, and Emma starts to as well, though she seems fairly unconscious of what/why; the confusion is very well-achieved.

And the result is probably the most romantic version of Emma I've ever seen, which I really like. And can't wait for the ending. :(

A hilarious music video: Period Drama Montage "It's Raining Men" by DreamyViper @YouTube. Fairly decent vidding relying mostly on Austen films, Hornblower, and Wives & Daughters. There's some stuff like North & South that I haven't seen; the absence of Master and Commander struck me forcibly, especially given Hornblower's presence.

But then, even more striking is the extreme lack (in existence, I mean, not in the vid) of other dramas from near the same period as Austen. I want more delicious production design and costumes. Sigh.

Well, you know, it's not like Merlin is trying to be historically accurate. It's not even disregarding it so much as ignoring the existence of historical accuracy. Even aside from the fact that Arthurian legend is not exactly history, Merlin is rather like, oh, The Flintstones. Your inner medievalist no more need cringe than your inner archaeologist or evolutionary anthropologist need cringe at The Flintstones or BC (that hideously stupid comic strip).

I was trying to apply a similar principle to Lost in Austen, and I found that, as I saw someone else post about Merlin, that was much more enjoyable once my inner Regency-genre fan (to say nothing of my inner P&P fan, because it's not just history but also all semblance of characterisation that went by the wayside - true blue badfic, there. I'd be surprised if the source text didn't include some tittering Author's Notes with missing commas) fainted dead away. In Lost in Austen, of course, one doesn't have to go all the way to Flintstones-esque allegory, since a great deal of evidence seems to point more to the whole thing being set inside the rather dim protagonist's mind (which should explain the lack of historical detail, and her limited reading comprehension can explain the lack of characterisation). (It's as if, as wax_jism said, she's read P&P 50 times but it's the only book she's ever read, and she didn't really understand it very well.) I saw some signs that the Regency world simply represents a blue-collar protagonist's fantasy of a more upper-class and mannerly world, and the surprises she finds there certainly make more sense if it were modern. Of course, people are people (and thus people are assholes) everywhere. Also all the gross changes to Austenian canon introduced - ie the characters of Wickham & Georgiana, Mrs Bennett and Miss Bingley - speak to class, with the upper class (GD, CB) villified at the expense of lower-class characters (W, Mrs B) who are found to be more worthy/substantial than in canon. (The side-effect is to remove any sign, in the text, of the true gender power imbalance in the period - which again makes sense if it merely represents modern life, where women's agency is not such an issue.) Ultimately this still doesn't do much to explain the claim that she's actually been literally in love with Darcy, a fictional character, since childhood; but I suppose that her choice, in the end, to throw aside reason, logic, and everything she's now learned about her chosen world and choose it anyway for the sake of her personal attachment to Darcy - that is the artefact of the romance genre, and probably doesn't need to be explained any other way.

I noticed two film!Stardust pieces about Robert DeNiro's swishy, amazing Captain Shakespeare. They're remarkably similar, except for length.

• Names, Navigation, and Other Issues Arising on the Caspartine. This is from the POV of Shakespeare's first mate and follows his whole career from long before the movie. It's of medium-length, not truly epic, but it does justice to that original character without really moving the focus away from Shakespeare either, and allows him to be admired as I, at least, felt he deserved after the movie.


• To Sir, with Love is a little drabble on the same theme, also from the point of view of an OC first mate, with a slightly different feel.

And then some odds and ends -

• Terry Pratchett - Nation Hands Across the Sea. "The young Princess Ermintrude, heir to the crown of England, stared at the paper in front of her and tried to think how to begin her letter." It's just about perfect in every respect. I could have kept reading ten times as long, but at the same time, it's not too short to feel complete in itself and entirely convey its purpose in just the tone of the book, sensitive and hopeful and wry.



• The Chronicles of Master Li Three Jade Mice, a funny casefic with some really delightful details of magic and mystery to make it memorable.



• Jane Austen - Emma Poignant Sting A very good and authentic-tasting (which you might not think meant much until you consider that I've never recced or even bookmarked a Regency-period AU or an Austen piece before, because I consider that nearly everyone fails at getting period voice right) look at the Austenian world of Emma through a darker and more supernatural lens.That isn't something you would automatically think would work, and yet it does. A little heartbreaking perhaps, but ultimately heartwarming and engrossing. Featuring Emma's and Jane Churchill's pregnancies, Mrs Elton's frustrated social ambitions, and Miss Bates, the Cassandra of Highbury in a more literal sense than is usually meant!

And yesterday in the Die Hard 4 recs I forgot one which I had lost in my initial orgy of reading, I don't know how. It's one of the best Die Hard stories I've read in quite a while in fact:

• I'll Be Hard for Christmas, A solid, funny, quirky, satisfying, believable sequel to the movie, all about the War on Terrorism and John and Matt's War on Congressional Committee Hearings.

Regency Dress Up Doll by savivi. Regency dress-up me (!):



The artist says at the link that the costumes are taken from Austen movies. This one is quite recognisable as Keira's from P&P 2005 and one of my favourites.

I say that this spring's TV version of Northanger Abbey was surprisingly porny because I was surprised, but I use a (?) because I'm not sure I should be surprised. It isn't an Austen adaptation nowadays without a sex, or almost sex, or making out, or references to sex. There's also the obligatory multiple-girls-in-nightgowns content in pretty much all of them. But, okay, in this movie the nightgowns scene is all wet, and in corsets. On a candlelit bed.



There's also some rather sexy dreams and a strong implication of masturbation: she dreams she's bathing when Tilney appears and tells her not to be ashamed, and offers her his hand and she stands up out of the water naked, before waking up flushed and confused. There's also some rather sexy face-touching when they're at the Abbey. Mmm, sexy face-touching.