Tagged: literature

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From Golding’s Ovid

I’ve just finished reading what is sometimes called Shakespeare’s Ovid because the playwright borrowed from it extensively. The passage below comes in the twelfth of the poem’s fifteen books.

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Descent Into Hell: Finale

I am going to start this post as a sort of thread, introducing some themes and eliciting comments and questions.  My first question is:  Who is Mrs. Samille, and is her name of any significance? NOTE: THIS HAS BEEN ADDED TO.

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Descent Into Hell

No, the title of this brief announcement  does refer to the birth of a baby, trailing clouds of glory, into the abyss of human life in the New America.  It is the title of a Charles Williams novel that has been termed a “theological thriller.”

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Revenge of the Book Club

Some time ago, I abandoned the regular discussion of  selected books.  The reason should have been obvious.  The cause has disappeared, and we can resume.  Working on the second volume of Properties of Blood, I need to rewrite the chapters on revenge.  This is a good occasion for looking at the classic work of the English stage, The Avenger’s Tragedy….

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Poem by Thomas Chatterton

Chatterton, a late 18th century poet, is more famous as a legend–the teenage poet who died at 17–than as a writer.  The Romantics, French as well as English, lionized him.  His best known poems are the medievalizing  verses he attributed to a 15th century poet, but his talent for painting satiric portraits is evident in “Apostate Will”–a fine sketch of the clergy on the make,