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edettethegreat · 1 year

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In honor of the end of my second year of college, here’s a short summary of every short story, book, and play I had to read:

(this is part 2 of this post)

[ trigger warning: mentions of both abortion and rape somewhere in here. Probably also murder. Because yeah these are literature class assignments, what sorta subject matter do you expect? ]

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short stories

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The Tell-Tale Heart-

Narrator, while killing a guy: I am definitely not crazy.

Cops: hey we heard some noise here, is everything alright?

Narrator: haha yeah I definitely didn’t kill a guy!

Cops: oh that’s good, well have a good night sir!

Narrator:…

Narrator: ok OK you caught me I killed him!! I killed him because his eye was just too weird!!

Cops: I think.. this guy might be crazy.

Rapaccini’s Daughter-

Giovanni: wow that girl next door is so pretty

Beatrice: *touches a lizard, which instantly dies*

Giovanni: that was kinda creepy actually.

Beatrice: *smiles at him*

Giovanni: nevermind she’s still pretty

Bartleby the Scrivener-

Narrator: hey would you mind doing your job for once

Bartleby: I’d prefer not to.

Narrator: that’s fair have a nice day

Lamb to the Slaughter-

Mary’s Husband: so I may have cheated on you…

Mary: oh, that’s perfectly fine

Mary, killing him: I don’t mind at all actually.

The Necklace-

Mathilde: oh no I lost my friend’s diamond necklace!!

Mathilde: *spends the next ten years working to pay off the debt*

Her friend: You idiot. You absolutely buffoon. That necklace was fake.

The Story of an Hour-

Loise: it sure sucks that my husband died, but it doesn’t suck enough to trigger my fatal heart condition

Her husband: ‘Sup! I’m alive!

Louise: Oh no! My heart! *dies*

Hansel and Gretel-

Hansel: wow our parents really hate us don’t they

Gretel: well I mean they abandoned us in the woods so they wouldn’t have to feed us anymore. So. Figure it out for yourself.

Little Red Cap-

Little red-cap: I would absolutely love to murder a wolf.

Rumplestiltskin-

Rumplestiltskin: I bet you’ll never guess my name!

Rumplestiltskin: It’s Rumplestiltskin by the way.

The Queen: is it by any chance Rumplestiltskin?

Rumplestiltskin: asdjkhskl WHAT how did you guess??

The Dog and the Sparrow-

Sparrow: hey please don’t kill my friend Dog over there

Carter: hey how about you shut up. *kills the Dog*

Sparrow:…

Sparrow: I see. So you have chosen Death. *proceeds to torture and kill this man, as he should*

Young Goodman Brown-

Goodman: I had this really weird dream and now I gotta be suspicious of my wife for the rest of my life

The Lottery-

Townspeople: Ritualized murder is fun!!

A Good Man is Hard to Find-

Grandma: you seem like such a sweet young man. Please don’t kill my whole family.

The Misfit, actively killing them: you seem like a sweet old lady. Sorry I’m gonna kill you now. *kills her too*

The Smallest Woman in the World-

Everyone: wow that woman sure is small!

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings-

Priest: yeah that’s not an angel, that’s just a dude with wings.

Everyone in the town: Shut up— that totally is an angel!

The old man with the wings: *just wants to be left alone. Is Not having a good time*

The Guest-

Daru: On the one hand, ACAB. On the other hand, I don’t condone murder. So it seems I find myself in a moral conundrum.

Hills Like White Elephants-

The girl: I may or may not want an abortion.

The guy: so… which is it?

The girl: guess.

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books

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin-

Tom: well, after all of the things I’ve been through, I am now dying.

Everyone, including the audience: NO NO don’t you dare die DON’T-

Tom: *dies*

Everyone: *crying, sobbing, screaming, overall not having a very good times*

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas-

Frederick Douglas: …and that’s how learning to read and write helped me gain my freedom!

Walden-

Thoreau: I’m not like other girls. I live in the woods.

The Stranger-

Meursault: I killed a guy because it was very hot outside.

The court: The’s the dumbest reason to commit murder we’ve ever heard.

Meursault: huh it seems they’ve given me the death penalty. Why’s they do that? That’s so unfair.

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plays

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Oleanna-

Carol: hey I see you’ve given me a failing grade.

John: Yes, that’s because you didn’t understand the material. But I can tutor you to help you get a better mark on the final.

Carol: Or, alternatively, I could accuse you of rape and pass by default?

John: wait. what.

Andre’s Mother-

Cal: It sure is tragic that Andre died, isn’t it?

Andre’s Mother: …

Cal: great talk we’ve had here today.

A View from the Bridge-

Eddie: guys, I think Rodolpho is gay.

Everyone: what makes you say that?

Eddie: well he’s just so pretty…

Eddie: …and kissable..

Eddie: y’know. He looks like the sort of guy I’d wanna kiss

Everyone: …

Dutchman-

Lula: hi stranger. I’m gonna aggressively flirt with you now.

Clay: haha well this is kinda weird, but at least you’re not a serial killer or something, right?

Lula, while stabbing him: lmao yeah that would be pretty messed up!

Topdog/Underdog-

Lincoln: hey isn’t it messed up that our parents names us Lincoln and Booth? It’s like they want you to kill me or something—

Booth, killing him: yeah that would be pretty messed up, wouldn’t it?

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inhersepulchrebythesea · 1 year

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You seem to like horror. What movies and books do you recommend?

Ooh! I do! It depends on what you like.

Movies:

Skinamarink if you're into vibes

Eraserhead if you're into David Lynch stuff

I also really enjoyed His House, Rosemary's Baby, and Spree.

Books:

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Haddix

The Upstairs House is on my to-read list.

If you're into graphic novels, Uzumaki by Junji Ito is one of the most unsettling things I've read in my life.

And then my specialty, literary short stories:

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (which I've been talking about a lot lately lol)

"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates

And honorary mention: the poem, "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe (which is where I got my URL)

I think I mostly like horror where people are kinda trapped--where their surroundings are changing and it's not a monster or demon threatening them. It's very Romantic. I live nature as an antagonist. But I do like other types of horror as you can see from the list!

#horror #horror thoughts

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sheetmusiclibrarypdf · 1 year

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George Gershwin at the Piano "Oh, lady be good" (George Shearing) Sheet Music

George Gershwin at the Piano "Oh, lady be good" performed by George Shearing

with Sheet Music Download from our Library.

https://vimeo.com/694346364 "Oh, Lady Be Good!" is a 1924 song by George and Ira Gershwin. It was introduced by Walter Catlett in the Broadway musical Lady, Be Good! written by Guy Bolton, Fred Thompson, and the Gershwin brothers and starring Fred and Adele Astaire. The song was also performed by the chorus in the film Lady Be Good (1941), although the film is unrelated to the musical. Recordings in 1925 were by Paul Whiteman, Carl Fenton, and Cliff Edwards. A 1947 recording of the song became a hit for Ella Fitzgerald, notable for her scat solo. For her album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook (1959), it was sung as a ballad arranged by Nelson Riddle. Recorded versions

- Rob Agerbeek – Three of a Kind (1998) - Fred Astaire – rec. December 1952 – The Astaire Story - Count Basie – rec. February 4, 1939 (Decca) - Buck and Bubbles – rec. December 26, 1933 (Columbia) - Kenny Burrell - rec. August 25, 1959 - On View at the Five Spot Cafe (Blue Note) - Joe Carroll – The Man with the Happy Sound (1962) - Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards – rec. January 2, 1925 - Carl Fenton and His Orchestra – recorded on December 11, 1924 (Brunswick) - Ella Fitzgerald – with Bob Haggart (1947) - Ella Fitzgerald – rec. 1959 – Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook - Benny Goodman Trio – rec. April 27, 1936 as the B–side of China Boy (Victor) - The Gordons with Dizzy Gillespie and Stuff Smith – rec. April 17, 1957 - Jack Hylton and his Orchestra – rec. March 29, 1926 - Buddy Lee with the Gilt–Edged Four – rec. May 17, 1926 (Columbia) - Charlie Parker and Lester Young for Jazz at the Philharmonic, January 28, 1946 - Dianne Reeves – We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song (2007) - Slim & Slam – rec. May 3, 1938 (Vocalion) - Mel Tormé and Buddy Rich – Together Again: For the First Time (1978) - Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra – rec. December 29, 1924 (Victor) - John Wilson Orchestra– Gershwin in Hollywood, live at the Royal Albert Hall (2016) - Django Reinhardt- Django Reinhardt swing de Paris 4 CD set (2003) See also - List of 1920s jazz standards “When Lester Young played on the second chorus, the jazz world was introduced to another way of playing the tenor saxophone ... Jazz would never be the same.”- Chris Tyle As improvisational vehicles, many songs could not endure the transition from the loose Dixieland style of the “Roaring Twenties” to the smooth, swing sound of the 1930’s. They were dropped from jazz musicians’ catalogs, performances, and recordings and relegated to period collections and specialty bands. There are, however, a handful of songs written in the mid-twenties or earlier that have persisted as the topmost jazz standards: WC Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” (1914); the Ken Casey, Maceo Pinkard, Ben Bernie composition “Sweet Georgia Brown” (1925); and George and Ira Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” (1924) and “Oh, Lady Be Good” (1924). Walter Catlett introduced “Oh, Lady Be Good!” on the stage of the Liberty Theater December 1st 1924. The song was included in the Broadway Musical Lady, Be Good! a popular show that would run for 330 performances. The show starred Fred and Adele Astaire, Walter Catlett, Alan Edwards, Jayne Auburn, Kathlene Martyn, and Cliff Edwards. It opened to generally favorable reviews, with the critics raving about the Astaires’ footwork and the “jazzy” Gershwin score. In 1925 “Oh, Lady Be Good!” went on to become a pop chart hit three times with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra (1925, instrumental, #2) Carl Fenton and his Orchestra (1925, instrumental, #9) Cliff Edwards (1925, #13) Lady Be Good was one of several shows in 1924 that represented a significant departure from the romantic operetta style. According to Edward Jablonski’s book Gershwin: A Biography, these pioneering productions were “... brittle in tone, ‘smart,’ characterized by athletic dances, tongue-in-cheek love songs”; in other words, forerunners of the modern musical comedy.

Best site for sheet music download.

“Oh, Lady Be Good!” was one of a dozen songs in the all-Gershwin Broadway score. Also becoming hits were “So Am I,” “Little Jazz Bird,” “The Half of It, Dearie, Blues,” and “Fascinating Rhythm.” Lady Be Good was also a turning point in the career of Cliff Edwards. Edwards’ ukulele rendition of “Fascinating Rhythm” stole the show and would prove to be the beginning of a string of Broadway appearances for him. Read the full article

#gershwin #partitura #pianomusic #sheetmusic #sheetmusicdownload #sheetmusicscoredownloadpartiturapartitionspartiti楽譜망할음악ноты

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thatstudyblrontea · 2 years

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Young Goodman Brown | ★★★.75/5

I had to read this for my Anglo-American Literature class, and I chose it as the Titled After the Protagonist prompt of the Tackle Your Classics reading challenge, and the Short Story entry of the 2023 Genre Bingo. It was a quick read, a good way to spend an evening.

This short story serves as an allegory of the every man's journey towards evil, of the corruption of morals that the author deems intrinsic to New England's society, and to Man's nature in general. It read as a cautionary tale – a very well written one, with interesting images and figures of speech, a well executed plot, and good pacing – whose absolute pessimism, however, lead to a flattened and one-sided worldview that fails the contemporary reader. I don't believe that saying something along the lines of "actually, clergymen and seemingly innocent people can be just as bad and corrupted" is as much of a astounding concept to read nowadays. I feel like very few works of this kind manage to be as striking nowadays as they were at the time they were written. And this one didn't pass the test, for me.

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goodverbsonly · 2 years

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January 2023:

Novels: 1/50

Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter #2) - JK Rowling ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5: not my favorite harry potter book and never has been but some highlights are: the subtle understanding of teens/pre-teens, the absolute nostalgia blast, genuinely enjoyable read

Non-Fiction: 2/10

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Great Courses: Masterpieces of Short Fiction - Michael Krasny

Comics/Graphic Novels:

Short Stories:

Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Overcoat - Nikolai Gogol

The Necklace - Guy de Maupassant

The Lady with the Dog - Anton Chekhov

The Real Thing - Henry James

My First Goose - Isaac Babel

The Killers - Ernest Hemingway

A Hunger Artist - Frank Kafka

The Rocking Horse Winner - DH Lawrence

The Garden Party - Katherine Mansfield

A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Flannery O��Connor

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings - Gabriel Garcia Márquez

The Jewbird - Bernard Malamud

No Name Woman - Maxine Hong Kingston

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smalltownfae · 2 years

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My most disliked books according to Goodreads:

I've heard people say that books with an average rating of 3.7 is low for goodreads so that is what I am considering as low rating.

The book with the lowest average rating that I read is something that has just 12 pages and comes as an offer in the portuguese edition of a book of short stories by Joanne Harris. I have no idea if it was sold in english because GR only presents the portuguese version. It only has 10 ratings and an average of 2.60 stars. It's called A História de Anouk (The Story of Anouk) and it's just that character reflecting on some events in her life. I thought it was alright, gave it 3 stars and I think people are being mean about a free thing 😆

The books I agree with low ratings:

At 3.13 there's a short story collection by Mary Shelley (yes, that author of Frankenstein). I gave it 3 stars and it was pretty meh so I can see why the rating is so low.

Ghostgirl by Tonya Hurley

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

The Vampyre by John Willian Polidori

The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by John Tiffany

Poison Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Youth by Joseph Conrad

This was fine

Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

The Room in the Dragon Volant by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson

Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard

The Suicide Shop by Jean Teulé

Jigs & Reels by Joanne Harris

The Last Forgiveness Day by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Red Pony by John Steibeck

Little Tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Into the Water bu Paula Hawkins

The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

How dare you rate this so low?

Give Yourself Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine (you monsters! This series was so fun)

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Watchtower by Elizabeth A. Lynn

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Lady Susan by Jane Austen

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

Portuguese books:

There are a few portuguese books for those that don't believe me when I say portuguese classics suck: Felizmente há luar (3.21, I gave it 2), Fanny Owen (3.52, I gave it 1) and Auto da Barca do Inferno (3.68, I gave it 3). Not a classic, but the portuguese fantasy trilogy O Cetro de Aerzis has pretty low ratings and I gave it an average 3 stars too. O Cavaleiro da Dinamarca has 3.66 and I didn't even rate it but I remember thinking it was one of the worse books by the author.

Then there are my bad purchases of collections of legends. I say bad because the writing is atrocious and not engaging at all. There's Histórias e Lendas Fantásticas fos Celtas, Scottish Myths and Legends, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales . Neither of them is good but the last one at least has a pretty cover and it's the only one I didn't get rid off.

#most disliked books according to goodreads #booklr

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dereksmcgrath · 2 years

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Below is practically a written script that I am using as the basis for today’s livestream, Day 14 of the non-credit American Literature I survey course, going live at 1 PM EDT today.

In today’s livestream, we continue discussion about Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1672), looking at two of her poems that tap more into her appeal to Greco-Roman classical tropes: “The Prologue” (1650) and “The Author to Her Book” (1678).

Feel free to read along with the script below, and leave a comment or email me to join the discussion!

youtube

Video Description

Today we continue discussion about Anne Bradstreet, looking at how her poems use Greco-Roman classical tropes.

A lesson plan and transcript for today’s livestream is available at http://www.dereksmcgrath.wordpress.com

Check your voter registration and vote by November 8, 2022: http://www.vote.org

Support this livestream at http://www.ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath

Catch up on previous installments of this livestream with the American Literature I playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu0KxaVhLTK4-pkqfu7I8McDuJboqpBfl

Anne Bradstreet’s poems:

“The Prologue” (1650): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43705/prologue-56d22283c12e1 ;

“The Author to Her Book” (1678): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43697/the-author-to-her-book ;

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works:

“Young Goodman Brown” (1835): http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/158/

Excerpt from the preface to The Scarlet Letter, “The Custom-House” (1850): https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/127/the-scarlet-letter/2264/introduction-the-custom-house/ ;

Music: “Beautiful Piano” by Lesfm https://pixabay.com/music/modern-classical-beautiful-piano-115480/

Intro

Okay, let’s get started: it’s 11 AM EDT on Friday, October 28, 2022. This is a livestream for Day 14 of the American Literature I survey, a non-credit pseudo-class hosted on YouTube and Twitch that looks at United States literature from before 1865.

I’m Derek S. McGrath, my pronouns are he/him/his. I’m not on camera right now–if I was, you would see a white man with glasses and brown hair. I’m opting to instead use a slideshow presentation–while most of what I have to say is already on the slide, there are some details from the slides that I will read aloud.

For example, this slide features an illustration of Anne Bradstreet, the poet we are reading today. She is dressed in traditional 17th-century New England Puritan attire, including a woman’s cap and a dark dress. She is looking up towards the sky.

Update

And before we get going, I want to apologize for not livestreaming yesterday. The short version is that a lot had to be done, and I needed to take care of my health, so time was not available to livestream or even announce I wasn’t going to. So, we have a Friday morning livestream rather than a Thursday morning livestream.

And speaking of announcements: if you want updates about this livestream, please follow me on YouTube, Twitch, Tumblr, Medium–all the links I have–and turn on for updates. Seeing as a dumbass is now running one of the most popular social media platforms, I am no longer on that platform, which will make promotions more challenging. This decision is going to limit my reach, so if you could chip in a few dollars at ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath, that would help a lot. Thank you for your consideration.

Last Time

This week we are looking at the work of Anne Bradstreet, the first North American English colonial poet to be published.

On Tuesday we read two of her poems, “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” and “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House.”

To make sense of those poems, we had to review a lot of context about her life.

We talked about her family’s wealth, access to education, and political power.

We showed how Bradstreet’s brother-in-law wrote a preface to her first poetry collection, as a way to intervene on her behalf against a reading audience in both England and the North American English colonies that were antagonist towards women as authors and expected her to perpetuate traditional notions for how a woman should act in Puritan society.

With that in mind, we considered how Bradstreet both reinforces and undermines traditional gender norms of her time and our own time. We’ll see more of that today as we look at how she compares the writing process to giving birth and having children. But we saw it in another spot: as we read “Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” we saw how Bradstreet still managed to insert an authoritative stance, that her husband better take care of her kids after her death, while couching her message in traditional poetic structure to mitigate the potential severity of that message.

And we also discussed just why college professors insist on positioning Bradstreet inside the American literary canon even as she was technically an English writer–and what that says about the larger challenges the canon has to fill out enough context ahead of the official founding of the nation–and whether that founding is even relevant for designating a start date for a canon.

Today

Today we wrap up reading Bradstreet by looking at two of her poems: “The Prologue” (1650) and “The Author to Her Book” (1678). We’ll be talking about her use of the invocation of the muse as a method to ground her poetry in classical tropes, and how she lowers expectations in readers for an attempt at humility as an author who is a woman.

Vote for Democrats by November 8

As a reminder, early voting has started in many parts of the United States, as has absentee voting. We have a rightwing political party that has embraced violence: death in childbirth without access to an abortion, death by gunfire by not regulating weapons, a literal armed insurrection on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

If you are legally able to vote where you are, then check your voting registration at vote.org, check vote.org where to vote, and go vote for Democrats by Election Day, November 8, to oppose this rightwing nonsense, violence, and madness. Your vote is a first step in retrieving the right to an abortion, retrieving lost civil rights, reducing gun violence, and improving the economy and people’s health by protecting Social Security and Medicare and expanding Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Vote, and keep persisting.

Today’s Questions

But there I went being political again. Let’s turn to the three questions we ended with in the last stream, towards motivating discussion in today’s livestream:

How is Bradstreet using these texts to defend herself as a poet, not only to be a woman writing poetry but also to write on these particular topics, and to be believed to be the actual writer of these poems?

How does Bradstreet pull from older literary traditions in writing her poetry?

How does Bradstreet reinforce traditional gender norms, whether in our time period or at the time when she was writing? And how does she undermine those same norms of the present and the past? (This is pretty much the same question as Question 3 for today, so, just pretend this is different…)

Close Reading: “The Prologue”

Let’s look at one of the two poems, starting with “The Prologue.” But before we get into the close reading, I want to repeat what I said on Tuesday, as pertains to how being a woman is part of how Bradstreet constructs a persona, a public image to justify herself as a writer who happens to be a woman. If you want to answer Question 1 for today–how Bradstreet defends herself as a published poet who happens to be a woman–that is answered by “The Prologue.”

Repeating myself from Tuesday: in 1987, for the journal Feminist Studies, scholar Susan Standford Friedman wrote that Bradstreet was using her role as a mother as a way to talk about the writing process–they are both about creating. Friedman argues that this is not just the typical Greco-Roman idea of thinking of the muse and birth and so on–more on those classical tropes in her writing later. Rather, Friedman is looking at how puritan the Puritans were with sexual politics–so, to be able to talk about motherhood, but couching it in terms of, “Oh, I’m just writing about the writing process,” is pretty revealing when it comes to trying to get discussions about the difficulties of procreation and birth clear to an audience that just doesn’t want to hear all of this.

Keep all of this in mind–how she keeps reinforcing the writing process as like having children–as relates to her efforts to put on the image of a traditional Puritan cisgender woman.

Let’s turn to “The Prologue,” starting with its first stanza. We can hear in these first lines how she is trying to sound like old cliche ideas, invoking traditional topics of classic literature such as wars, kings, and the founding of civilizations:

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings,

Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun,

For my mean Pen are too superior things;

Or how they all, or each their dates have run,

Let Poets and Historians set these forth.

My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.

And here we can answer Question 2 for today: how Bradstreet pulls from older literary traditions. This is both Bradstreet acknowledging her familiarity of traditional topics for poetry in her time–war, kings, cities–before taking on modesty (referring to her poetry as “my obscure lines”) before practically asking forgiveness of the reader: “my obscure lines shall not so dim their worth,” shall not so dim the worth of all those ancient and famous poems that already exist. She is saying that her work, however low in quality compared to that of other poets, still deserves to be here–but she has to couch it in not saying she deserves to write poetry but that she knows these great works already exist and will be praised because they handle topics bigger than what she will.

This is also Bradstreet marking the boundaries of her literary topics: she may write about God’s will, as we saw in “Burning of Our House,” but she is not here to write about the founding of Rome as with The Aeneid, or of wars and kings like The Iliad. What will she write about?

Let’s keep reading, moving onto Stanza 2:

But when my wond’ring eyes and envious heart

Great Bartas’ sugar’d lines do but read o’er,

Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part

‘Twixt him and me that over-fluent store.

A Bartas can do what a Bartas will

But simple I according to my skill.

Who is “great Bartas”? She likely means Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, a 16th-century French poet. I know next to nothing about him. At most I know that Bradstreet brings him up quite a bit, and he is an apparent influence, as he is another Christian poet who sees God as his muse for what to write–so, yeah, kind of easy to see that influence on Bradstreet. But where we sit today in the year 2022, think also what this tells us as United States readers. I don’t specialize in French literature–but Bradstreet here knew about a French poet from 100 years ago. She is flexing. She is immediately setting up that you should think she is humble–while she is name-dropping poets that her educated readers would know, but anyone else wouldn’t pick up on.

She gets to have it both ways: she shows off her knowledge, while continuing to insist she is humble. After all, she praises Bartas’s poetry as “sugar’d lines,” while admitting she is envious of his writing and holds a grudge that the Muses–a Greican idea, in the middle of this Christian poetry–did not bless her with the same talent.

Think also how she is setting up a problem right at the beginning of her poem: envy. I know that reducing Bradstreet to just her religion is a disservice to her complex identity, but when you are a Puritan author who is invoking God repeatedly, it is hard to think how a writer is trying to communicate to readers that, yes, she has sinned, due to her envy. This is the problem she establishes–before stating the solution: “A Bartas can do what a Bartas will / But simple I according to my skill.” She has to accept facts: Bartas can write the best poem that someone like Bartas can write, and Bradstreet can write the best poem that she can write, and their ways of writing will never be identical, and it is possible that Bradstreet will be considered to write poetry that just is not as good to readers or herself as is the poetry of Bartas.

Let’s continue, moving onto Stanza 3:

From School-boy’s tongue no Rhet’ric we expect,

Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings,

Nor perfect beauty where’s a main defect.

My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings,

And this to mend, alas, no Art is able,

‘Cause Nature made it so irreparable.

“Nature made it so irreparable.” I know reading gender into this may be seen as going too far–our modern times in the year 2022 expecting that all creators are to be judged by the quality of their work, without letting their identity reduce that quality. But it is a bit uncomfortable to read her practically reducing her talents to that of a child, a “school-boy,” not that being a child is a bad thing, but that a child is just starting their education, so they are less mature in their skill set. She is saying she just is not as good–and saying it is Nature that did this.

What does she mean by “Nature”? Does she mean “Fate”? Well, if she meant “Fate,” she would have said “Fate”--that is part of Helen Vendler’s poetry analysis, that to get to the meaning of a poem, you must acknowledge choices the poet made, and assume that there is a reason this poet chose “Nature” and not “Fate.” When you invoke “Nature,” you suggest this is not just fated or destined but natural, the way things should be. When she says it was Nature that made her Muse so “broken,” is that just out of her existence as a person? Or maybe we can do a disability reading here, given that Bradstreet did have health concerns. Or is she suggesting her gender as a woman is what makes her Muse so “broken”? That is troubling–and especially for me, where I sit, as a cisgender man talking about this poem.

Let’s skip to Stanza 5, where the tone of Bradstreet’s poem now comes to defend her choice to write poetry:

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue

Who says my hand a needle better fits.

A Poet’s Pen all scorn I should thus wrong,

For such despite they cast on female wits.

If what I do prove well, it won’t advance,

They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.

Stanza 3 was how Nature made her this way. Stanza 5 now tells us that she will not be told that, as a woman, she should instead take up needlework over poetry. (Keep the needlework reference in mind when we get to Tuesday’s reading, with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Custom-House.”)

And here we reinforce why Bradstreet had her brother-in-law John Woodbridge write that preface to her poetry collection, to assert as Woodbridge’s preface does that she is the author: here, Bradstreet has to loudly say, yes, I wrote these poem, and yet her opponent will “say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance,” that she either plagiarized or just got lucky and happened to be a good mimic of other poets’ style. That is also another reason why she brings up Bartas so early in the poem: she may have read Bartas, but she insists she is not ripping him off. In fact (stealing from Wikipedia on this one), Bradstreet once said the following about Bartas: “I honour him, but dare not wear his wealth” (this comes from The Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Jeannine Hensley in 2005).

With Stanza 6 we have Bradstreet again name-dropping Greco-Roman references to show her education: “antique Greeks” and “Calliope.” And this is when Bradstreet throws down the gauntlet: up to this point, she has suggested, “Oh, yes, my broken muse,” “Oh, yes, you see women as somehow inferior.” And then, in Stanza 6, she asks: if you think we’re so beneath other sexes and genders, then why did “the antique Greeks” make the Muses women, and on top of that make the muse of poetry Calliope?

Also notice the last two lines of Stanza 6 here from Bradstreet:

But this weak knot they will full soon untie.

The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie.

She’s showing off again: “knot” as in tying a knot, but “nought” also as another way of stressing a negative. “This weak knot”--this tied thing–”will full soon untie,” and “The Greeks did nought”--didn’t–”but play the fools and lie.” It’s wordplay.

But there is something else behind that wordplay and rhymes hidden within lines: what does she mean here? Is she saying the Greeks did get things wrong and even lied? If so, why did she bring it up? Is this a rhetorical trick? Is she telling the audience, “Here is my argument that even the Greeks say women as writers should be appreciated–but, oh well, those are the Greeks, and they got a lot wrong, so you in my audience probably will ignore my point anyway, so let’s move on”?

If that is her approach, she is expertly playing around with rhetoric.

She is telling the audience that she anticipates their counter-argument–and rather than persist with her point, she’s dropping it. This is like a courtroom drama: the lawyer asks a question, knowing it will be challenged by the other side in an objection to the judge, so the original lawyer withdraws the question–and yet, that jury just heard that question, and they will still entertain that question. Bradstreet has got that audience: the ones who disagree with her now can’t bring up the problems with the Greeks because she already withdrew the point–but anyone who was convinced just heard her logical argument and is still in agreement with her. After all, if she really withdrew this point, why didn’t she erase those lines when editing the poem? If she knew it was pointless, she wouldn’t keep it in the final draft: she would delete them. So she kept them here because it wasn’t pointless, it was all her ploy. That is smart.

And that leads to Bradstreet’s concluding argument, which is not in the final stanza but the penultimate stanza: “Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are.” And that means, if she writes, then she’s a writer–let her write. Yet she still couches this in modesty and claiming she knows her place as a woman, as she next says:

Men can do best, and Women know it well.

Preeminence in all and each is yours;

Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

She points out that these two genders do fine as is–men can do best (so, do better or just do well enough?), and women know that and acknowledge it. Is she essentializing gender? Maybe–I can’t ignore that she is trying to act like men go to war, and her reinforcement, false or honest, that she thinks women may not compare to the works of men. But she is asking that, as women will acknowledge what men do well, why can’t men also acknowledge what women do well? It doesn’t even have to be equal treatment–it can be “some small acknowledgement,” not even as big as how women acknowledge men. This is hardly as emphatic as I would prefer in this debate, but it gets across how Bradstreet keeps couching her arguments within this attempt to sound more humble in her strong commands. (If you’re teaching Bradstreet in your American Literature I class, I strongly recommend pairing “The Prologue” with Abigail Adams’s writing, including her remarks asking John Adams to remember women in his political dealings.)

The only part of the final stanza I’ll bring up is the potentially unclear symbolic value of the gift she asks for:

Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays.

Bay leaves were used to make the laurels that were given as rewards–you know, “rest on your laurels,” that old saying. She’s not asking for those leaves–she’s asking for a lesser spice, like thyme or parsley. She just said she wants a small acknowledgement–and just some spices from Penzeys is enough for her. (Buy from Penzeys, go support some businesses that actually speak out against fascism. They don’t pay to advertise in this livestream–I just really like their product.)

What Bradstreet’s remarks about accepting thyme and parsley say about women’s roles in a traditional Puritan setting when it comes to cooking, I can’t speak to: I am ignorant just how strictly the separation of tasks was in the Puritan era, given that I can see enough examples of men cooking that a strict separation of the work, while not impossible, is always going to have exceptions in the historical record.

Close Reading: “The Author to Her Book”

So, that takes care of a lot of “The Prologue.” Let me try to move more quickly through the other poem for today, “The Author to Her Books.”

We already had, with “The Prologue,” this repeated reference from Bradstreet that her Muse was broken. Now with Line 1 of “The Author to Her Book,” we have her statement to her own book of poetry–and speaks to it as such:

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain

Holy crap, she is beating up on herself so badly that she’s beating up on her book, too. If you are teaching this poem, you know you can ask students to answer, if they so want to, whether they too have ever looked at their own writing and wanted to say, “My fail-child.” As with John Woodbridge’s preface to Bradstreet, in which your students too can relate to her struggle to write poetry while fulfilling family obligations, you know you can get students to relate to this level of beating-yourself-up that Bradstreet has reached.

But let’s continue, as we see how she is referring to her book as if birthing a child–again, couching her work in Puritan traditional notions of what a cisgender woman is expected to do:

Who after birth didst by my side remain,

Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,

Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view,

Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge,

Where errors were not lessened (all may judg).

Kind of lends a new point of view about how she may have regarded her brother-in-law publishing her poem, huh? If she wanted her brother-in-law to publish her poems, why would she use such a crude word like “snatched”? What kind of a friend “snatches” someone you made? Again, you have to use Helen Vendler’s approaches to analyzing poetry to teach this stuff, looking at the roads not taken: Bradstreet doesn’t say that the poem was “borrowed,” or “received,” or “given to”--it was snatched, taken, seized. And it was “exposed,” not “shared.” She is representing the writing process as private, intimate, like cradling your baby next to you–only now that baby has been taken from you and flung into the public where everyone is judging it, finding new errors. She even says that the errors “were not lessened,” they are all exposed, “all may judge” all those flaws.

We continue:

At thy return my blushing was not small,

My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,

I cast thee by as one unfit for light,

Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight

I repeat again: holy crap. She already built herself up as a parental figure, now calls herself the literal “mother” of this “rambling brat,” e.g. her book so full of words but so poorly written that it is just rambling (not unlike my remarks in this livestream). And she wants to “cast thee by as one unfit for light, / Thy Visage [...] so irksome.” She is practically saying, “My baby is too ugly to be seen in public.” This is her casting herself as the bad guy. What good parent would ever do that to their child? It isn’t just that her child was put into the public against her will–not that her child has returned, she is too traumatized to look at them. This is as much her acknowledging herself as a poor creator, for not accepting that this is her creation, even if she screwed up in writing it: this is almost that close to her acting like the publishing was traumatizing. But is that the case, or do you think Bradstreet is putting on a persona of humility again? Let me know in the comments. Maybe this is one way she is undermining those gender norms.

But moving onto the rest of the poem, we get here the turn in the poem, where the argument shifts, and along with it, the energy:

Yet being mine own, at length affection would

Thy blemishes amend, if so I could:

I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw,

And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.

This book is her own, so she can’t help but be affectionate. Yeah, we already went through her saying that the return of this book makes her want to not look at it. So she tries to spruce up the book–and finds that, in trying to make the book into what an audience would want, she makes things worse. You try to clean up the book, but you find more flaws. You try to fix it–and you actually create another flaw. Again, I recommend asking your students to be honest and admit that they too have had the same problems: that they find a new flaw to their writing, or other endeavor, and keep kicking themselves over more errors in their work. (Heck, I know there are still typos in my livestream lesson plans on my WordPress, as well as mispronunciations, the wrong words, or stumbling over my words in my livestreams.)

So, as she keeps struggling to fix her book, Bradstreet’s personia in this poem realizes that the problem is not her, or her book–it’s the problem of critics.

In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come;

And take thy way where yet thou art not known,

If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none:

And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,

Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.

She is saying, avoid any critic that you may encounter, my book. If a critic asks where this book comes from, the book would do better to be anonymous. (Is it any wonder Edgar Allan Poe’s first book of poems, Tamerlane, was also published anonymously?)

What do we take from all of this? That even imperfections in a book doesn’t mean the writing process should stop–but that still leaves the author feeling like they can’t admit ownership of their own work, lest it reflect badly on them. That’s kind of a depressing way to end the livestream.

Next Time

But I’ll wrap up there for today. Thank you for listening to our final day of discussion about Anne Bradstreet.

What did you think of Bradstreet’s poetry? I know it’s not as groundbreaking–it’s not like modernist poetry–but how do you think her writing has stood the test of time? Has she helped you acknowledge the anxiety that stays with you no matter how you write or edit and revise your works? I’d appreciate your thoughts about her poetry–drop your remarks in the comments section or email them to [email protected].

I will address questions before or during the Section 2 review about the Puritan authors, which will be here on YouTube and Twitch on Tuesday, November 8, at 11 AM EST–please keep your questions coming in.

And next time we leave the Puritans behind–by talking instead about one of their descendants. Next time is a full week of discussion about Nathaniel Hawthorne, the descendant of one of the Salem witch trial judges. Hawthorne is kind of in the same boat with readers as I imagine readers may approach Bradstreet: it’s there, it’s fine, nothing groundbreaking. But I have a ton to say about Hawthorne, given all the research and writing I did on him–so I want to try to pick out some of his best or most significant works.

We’ll start on Tuesday with his parable “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), a text set in the Puritan’s time, and a text that owes a bit to Washington Irving–and probably helped influence how Herman Melville wrote, helping us bridge Section 1 about “Who Reads American Literature” to Section 2 and “Community Building and Puritans.”

And to give some context into Hawthorne’s writing philosophy as he was putting together “Young Goodman Brown,” we will read his essay “The Custom-House,” the preface to his book The Scarlet Letter (1850).

As you read these two text, please consider these questions:

How does Hawthorne define “the romance” as a literary genre in “The Custom-House”?

Summarize what you think is the moral to “Young Goodman Brown.”

Do you think Hawthorne’s story portrays the character of young Goodman Brown as indeed a sinner? Do you think Hawthorne regards him as a sinner? And do you regard him as a sinner? And as an additional question–do you think any of this story really happened, or was it just in Brown’s imagination?

Thanks again for joining this livestream.

Vote by November 8

And remember: check your voter registration and where to vote at vote.org, and make sure to vote before November 8: what is good about the United States can persist only by voting for Democrats and removing these rightwing fascists from office.

Contact and Credits

The royalty-free music in today’s livestream was titled “Beautiful Piano” by Lesfm. You can find their music at Pixabay–link is in the video description.

If you enjoyed this livestream, please consider a monetary contribution at ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath–your financial support helps keep me working in education.

Until Tuesday at 11 AM EDT, I’ve been Derek S. McGrath. You have a good afternoon. Bye.

#anne bradstreet #american literature i #livestream #Youtube

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the-mad-prince-of-denmark · 5 years

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Books I’ve Read Recently: Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Evil is the nature of mankind.”

#personal #moodboard #aesthetic #books #literary joke #young goodman brown

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crymeariveronceagain · 2 years

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river's best book recs!

for @wings-in-a-dream!

Short stories that take the emotional strength of reading a 10-20k fanfic:

Bernice Bobs Her Hair, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. HILARIOUS. 10/10 WOULD RECCOMMEND. A short read, but OH MY STARS. SO WORTH IT. It's ridiculous, a story of peer pressure, rash haircuts, and the cruelty of jealous teenage girls. It's so funny and so sad and it's just. Ugh. It's a trip, and the ending is so satisfying. I loved this story.

Rappaccini's Daughter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A poison girl lives separate from the rest of the world. A man falls in love with her despite her deadliness. How on earth can he be with a woman who will kill him? Or, a deep discussion of the toxic nature of relationships based on only infatuation and emotions. It's a blast, romantic as frick, and original and disturbing as all get out. It's amazing. I love this short story, and wrote a thesis on it for my Literary Analysis class. Just skip the first paragraph. It's a bunch of boring dates. There's meaning there, but it doesn't really tie into the plot all that much.

Young Goodman Brown, again by my best dude, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Say you're an upstanding gent. You head out for the evening, and meet Satan. And you're not smart about it. And you find out that everyone in your town who you thought was upstanding, from your wife to your parish priest, is in cahoots with the devil(probably?). You're never going to trust anyone again, are you? Read this to be enthralled with a hell-tinged fever dream. It's spectacular writing, and there are so many layers to this story. But, if you only read it for the plot, it's still just as thrilling, because the veil between the written reality and the written fake is so thin and imperceivable that while you read you're just going to vibe along with it. It will really stretch your brain in funky ways as you try to grasp what's happening!

The Importance of Being Earnest, a comedic play by OSCAR WILDE. Do you need more convincing to read this? Let me say it again. COMEDY! PLAY! OSCAR WILDE! IT's hilarious on every level, and a really enjoyable plot, super deep and super funny all of the time. There's a whole muffin discourse, and the title is a pun. It's a case of mistaken identity, and lies, and miscommunication. I love it, and you will too.

The Monkey's Paw, by W.W. Jacobs. This was featured in a Simpson's episode, so you know it's good. It's a really disturbing thriller story about a magical paw that grants three wishes. But, as always. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. I wholly recommend reading this in the afternoon, so one someone slams the door in your house, you don't need to feel like the two main characters of this story.

Longer books for the long haul!

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. Always fun to take on a book labeled as a classic, and a pretty easy read, honestly. The plot is straight forward, and follows a girl who goes from a really dark childhood to an okay life to a sad life to a happy? Ish? Ending? It's not super long, but it's super dark and it's really dreary, but the ending will leave you shook, and you might throw the novel across the room. It's also really inspiring, because no matter what you think of her and her choices, Jane's a person who starts in the dark and has to fight tooth and claw for the good. At the end, she gets the good, but it doesn't feel like a real good. Her ideas of good are realistically a little twisted, but she's honestly doing her best. It's written in first person, and it's about a girl who is seriously doing her best. There's nothing super awful in it, except for, like. All the little, implied things, and the themes of childhood trauma, broken marriages, and mental illness. Oh, and the arson. Yeah.

Spontaneous, by Aaron Starmer. A YA novel that's just as disturbing as it is sickeningly beautiful. One of my favorite books of all time. It's a really disturbing dive into hedonism and self-destruction inspired by events that happen to teenagers in a highschool. Basically, kids start blowing up, spontaneously combusting, and it spirals completely out of control and the world goes out of control with them. It got me through Covid and was a huge comfort for me. It's full of twisted gallows humor, and it's sarcastically darkly funny. It really makes you grateful for living, and it makes you want to sit outside and breathe air and just enjoy life? And do something responsible? Idk. If it was a movie it would be R for language, gore, and sexual content, but it's really, really, really interesting.

All of The Hunger Games series. It's dark, deep, and it's a read that pulls you in and sets you in front of a well-developed world. If you want something snappy to pull you out of your reading slump, wholly recommend re-reading Catching Fire. It usually works for me. And it will make you want to read Mockingjay. So there's that. It's a win-win. Catching Fire is one of my favorite books of all time. Like, if I had to rate books, this would be in my top ten. It's just soooo good.

The Truth About Forever, by Sarah Dessen. It's a really cute, sweet romance novel. Overcoming the traumatic loss of her dad, the main character has pushed and pulled herself into the strictest, most perfect boss queen ever. The girl is uptight and perfect but the boy isn't a bad boy. He's actually the sweetest man this world has ever seen, and I'd die for him, but her mom is like "You're ruining your own life by being around him!!!" and she has to make a choice between perfection and what she really actually wants. 10/10.

Bookish Boyfriends: A Date With Darcy, by Tiffany Schmidt. Okay, i know the title sounds cringey af. I know it does. But hear me out. This is hilarious. This is beautiful. This is everything i've ever wanted. It made me laugh. It made me cry. I just. I loved it. It was really sweet and really relatable. But yeah. Also, the sequel(with the equally cringey name Talk Nerdy To Me) is about 300x better, which is saying quite a bit since I liked this one so much. 10/10, if you've ever had a crush on a fictional character, this will be relatable.

One Small Thing, by Erin Watt. This book destroyed my soul. This book literally destroyed me. A girl goes to her first party in an act of teenage rebellion, and sleeps with the guy who killed her sister in a reckless driving incident. I usually hate books that start with a one-night-stand, but this book hooked me, and pulled me in. It's beautiful, and achingly sad, and it actually promotes working through your issues and not relying on a significant other to save you! It starts out in a really rough place in both the boy and the girl's lives, and they GROW??? They function??? They grow together??? It's beautiful!!! This book is amazing. 10/10, would recommend.

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. Okay. Maybe she drowns herself at the end of the story. Okay. Maybe she's a coward, and a loser, and wants to be amazing but completely fails. But y'know what? Edna didn't even try. Anyways. This book is just interesting, and a really good study on being yourself, and the price you have to pay for complete authenticity but demanding acceptance. Yeah. It's neat, and the descriptions are gold, and it's another classic!!! So!!! yeah!!! 10/10, wrote a thesis on this as well.

Anyways, hope you enjoy these recommendations! :DDD

#book reccomendations #books and novels #books and literature #books and libraries #books and reading #thanks for asking!#tons of books #the hunger games #jane eyre #f scott fitzgerald #kate chopin #nathaniel hawthorne #literature #books #good literature(maybe)#original literature(yes)

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