Elaby's LiveJournal - 57 Academics

I've been reading The Green Carnation, a book that was originally published anonymously in 1894 and which is about characters who are essentially Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. According to Wikipedia, the book was scandalous, but as far as I've read, I'm not really sure why. Unless being a veiled fictional story about a living person is scandalous. Anyway, so far, it's pretty much one of those Victorian novels where people sit around and expound about their opinions on life, the universe, and everything. While this is intellectually stimulating, it's only entertaining if you're in the right mood. I have been, luckily :)

Lord Reggie, the Lord Alfred Douglas character, has only once so far reminded me of me, but it was in a very funny passage. Mrs. Windsor (the "she" in the first line), at whose cottage the main characters are staying, thinks that Lord Reggie is going to propose to another of the guests.

"Something has happened," she thought. "Can Reggie have said anything already?"

She walked into the breakfast-room, where she found Lord Reggie alone.

He was holding up a table-spoon filled with marmalade to catch the light from a stray sunbeam that filtered in through the drawn blinds, and wore a rapt look, a "caught up" look, as Mrs. Windsor would have expressed it.

"Good morning," he said softly. "Is not this marmalade Godlike? This marvellous, clear, amber glow, amber with a touch of red in it, almost makes me believe in an after life. Surely, surely marmalade can never die!"

"I must have been mistaken," Mrs. Windsor thought, as she expressed her sense of the eternity of jams in general in suitable language.

*giggles*

This is me, being a dweeb.

( In which I make connections between House of Cards and Icelandic Sagas, with a little medieval romance thrown in, but cut because it could be construed as HoC spoilers (though nothing explicitly stated) )

On the recommendation of various lovely people on Twitter, I started reading "The Amateur Cracksman" today. This is a collection of Victorian-era stories about A.J. Raffles, gentleman thief, and his unabashedly adoring sidekick, Bunny. Yes, Bunny. It's a public school nickname.

They were written by E. W. Hornung, who I believe was Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, and probably the biggest concurrent-era ACD fanboy I've ever heard of. The Raffles and Bunny stories I've read so far are absolutely freaking delightful, and are almost mind-blowingly slashy. Hornung did base Raffles on George Ives, early gay rights activist, but I think it's debated whether Hornung was aware of that part of Ives's career. At any rate, holy moly on a cracker, the slashiness.

( In which I babble and make inevitable comparisons to Holmes )

I love you, Oxford English Dictionary!

I'm so lucky my wife works at a University and can get me into the OED online. It's so incredibly useful. I'm working on some annotations for janeturenne's Slasher's Annotated Sherlock Holmes, which is already so darn awesome. I'm doing "The Six Napoleons," and I'm LOVING IT, I tell you. Can I be a professional fan? This is why I went into English Lit in school, by the way, because what I do for fun is try to figure out why such-and-such fictitious character used this phrase instead of that one.

Poor Mr. Rochester never gets his icon used *uses it*

My BRAIN, she is MUSH.

I'm a teensy bit behind on my Nano (bwagh!) but my Excel tracker thing still says I'll be done on the 30th, so. Oh well. I'm at a place which I had meant to be interesting but is blah in the extreme right now. I just need to skip it to get to more murder and death. *bloodthirsty*

I'm reading The Woman in White right now, another Wilkie Collins book, and OMFG I LOVE IT. I want to go read it right now, actually, instead of working on my Nano. I'm greatly enjoying helping caitirin with her GO Exchange fic, though, which is largely why I haven't gotten much written otherwise tonight. Muaha. Also, there is the braindeath. I blame Friday.

Tomorrow there will be bagels with coastal_spirit and then there will be much listening to Clive Merrison and Michael Williams in the BBC Sherlock Holmes, which by the way I got the entire series of for my birthday *SPLODES WITH JOY* and maybe even some watching of new Granada Holmes what I got, and then Quantum of Solace! And Sunday there will probably be Without a Clue! YAY! I'm so lucky!

Thank you to everyone for birthday wishes and presents and everything :) So much love for you guys. *squishes you all with love*

We all knew this was what you were really up to, Catullus.

Two short (funny, brilliant, exactly what I was imagining in Roman Authors class) fics by meretricula:

Odi et amo, and other contradictions

Party like it's 99 BC

I wonder how many times now Catullus has shown up in my LJ.

Theory paper first draft = finished except for conclusion

[eta: Conclusion done!]

I thought it was high time for another round of "elaby posts ridiculous quotations from the lit she's reading for school." The last time was all the way back when I read Dido, Queen of Carthage, and that wasn't even silly... it just sounded like a Dido song.

This, on the other hand, is pretty damn silly. Uhh, Shakespeare... I'm really sorry about this, but I think I may be leaving you for Marlowe.

From Hero and Leander (rewriting classical myths for the win!) Leander, the boy, has just asked Hero, the girl, who she's pledged her closely-guarded virginity to.

'To Venus,' answered she, and as she spake,
Forth from those two translucent cisterns brake
A stream of liquid pearl, which down her face
Made milk-white paths, whereon the gods might trace
To Jove's high court.

Wackiest metaphor for crying ever.

And just to balance that with prettiness, a description of the city where they're having a festival to Adonis:

For every street like to a firmament
Glistered with breathing stars

I [heart] Marlowe's extravagant writing. Always good for a laugh!

hak_42 kindly brought it to my attention, through asking about some of my HP fanart, that I apparently am teh suck at LJ tagging. Because I can't find ONE PIECE of HP fanart through using my tags. And I know I've posted some. WTF. I also have been thwarted many times in the past looking for things and not finding them because I apparently haven't tagged them. In the move over from DeadJournal, which was a thousand times less complicated than caitirin's move, I managed to organize things very badly, I think.

So I've been going through my posts and tagging them better. Most of them are all right, but sometimes I miss stuff. I've also created some new tags - one for "words," and one for "utena" that's separate from my "anime" tag, which I usually file Utena stuff under.

Also, reading some of my posts about Brit Lit class when I was a sophomore = MORTIFYING.

Sophomore Year elaby: *rants about how stupid Gawain is and totally misinterprets everything* *goes on to talk about how Poe is so much more talented than Shelley*

MA elaby: *pulls shirt up over head in embarassment*

Yeezus, how could I have said that the alliteration in Gawain was ANNOYING? It's hysterical! And after reading Malory for four weeks, OMFG give me alliteration ANY DAY. I also didn't even APPROACH understanding of Gawain's character or the narrator's attitude toward purity and being a normal human. *hides under desk*

And while Shelley may drive me BANANAS sometimes, and while I might like Poe's lyrical style better and enjoy reading his poetry more, there is no denying that Shelley kicks Poe's ass in terms of being a... a... a wordsmith, I guess. Poe's stuff is beautiful and musical, and I can read it without my head threatening to explode, but it doesn't approach the level of care and attention that Shelley's does. You could probably write twenty pages on how Shelley's use of grammar mirrors his subject matter and never even have to break out the BS. His stuff is masterfully constructed in every aspect, not just in how it sounds.

That doesn't mean I have to like his poetry. But not to respect it would be just dumb.

Er, I think I got a little off track... what I was I talking about? Oh, yes, tags. I got up to 2004 and stopped there for now.

Since we skipped a day yesterday going to a wedding, caitirin and I have to do double word count today for Nano ^_^ We were both somewhat ahead of schedule (caitirin moreso than myself), but it would be good to keep ahead.

I've decided to name the Earl in my novel after Novalis, who wrote one of the most cracked-out books I've ever read, Heinrich von Ofterdingen. So if you're looking for a Romantic poem-in-the-form-of-a-novel that reads like a Classicist's acid trip, this is the book for you. It is, unfortunately, unfinished. I think it would have made a great deal more sense if Novalis had gotten to write the whole thing.

I'm working on my paper for Medieval Epic and Romance this morning, which involves Gawain's treatment of kin loyalty in "The Death of Arthur." It's pretty fun to write; however, I am seeing me going onto about seven or eight pages of "blah blah blah whee Gawain angst familial relations poor Gareth blah" when I'm only supposed to have 5 e_e Oh well. Better too much, and having to condense, than too little and having to BS.

I also am having a fun time thinking about how this dialogue would translate into modern English.

"Alas," said Sir Gawain, "that ever I should endure to see this woeful day!"

Modern English translation:

"Man," said Sir Gawain, "this BLOWS."

Just wait'll I get to the part where everyone keeps swooning for very pure sorrow.

Random rerouting of conversation time. At the end of May, I'm going to be going to a middle school around here and teaching kids how to draw anime-style for their Student Enrichment Day. I've asked if they want me to teach them any Japanese, because that seems more enriching to me (as _melisande_ suggested) but I think it's more that it's just a fancy term for Field Day. They e-mailed me today, and somehow got the impression that I have no car O.o even though I didn't mention a car at all in my reply to them. Oh well. They're going to get me a list of anime characters that the kids like, because my luck would be that they would say "We want you to draw Naruto!" and I'd be like "... er, how about Sailor Moon?" And they'd all go "Who?"

Fifteen minutes until I should go heat up lunch. *ponders getting further into her paper, but isn't sure she wants to open up that can of worms, or kettle of fish, or saddlefull of venison, yet*