tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post8513812196743715696..comments2024-03-26T01:10:13.720+00:00Comments on Teach Me Tonight: What the Dickens! Lorraine Heath's In Bed with the DevilE. M. Selingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-62135290396054184932008-12-08T17:13:00.000+00:002008-12-08T17:13:00.000+00:00"Within her novel Heath thus toys with the concept..."<I>Within her novel Heath thus toys with the concept of reversing the direction of the source of inspiration.</I>"<BR/><BR/>I sometimes enjoy that way of meshing the story with the historical time, but yes, it can be twee. Sophie Gee's <I>The Scandal of the Season</I> was a fairly successful fictionalization of the true inspiration for a literary work, though the romance was rather stilted. I loved Elizabeth Hand's <I>Mortal Love</I>, which imagined a fantastical inspiration for the pre-Raphaelite painters. On the other hand, I was a little impatient with the name-dropping when Katherine O'Neal's <I>Just For Her</I> mentioned Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, and other historical figures; I forget which of them was inspired by the hero's exploits.<BR/><BR/>"<I>Laura, that's all we need--a library in which the books are classified by a secret code!</I>"<BR/><BR/>That sounds delightfully Umberto Eco'ian :) <I>The Name of the Rose</I> is all about knowledge being dangerous; best make the cataloguing system as impenetrable as possible.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-4189724808996533062008-12-08T10:44:00.000+00:002008-12-08T10:44:00.000+00:00the Snow Queen's is an undersized golden one calle...<I>the Snow Queen's is an undersized golden one called Citrine. We get to see her actually working as a librarian.</I><BR/><BR/>I'm looking forward to that! I really like the concept of BookWyrm librarian dragons.<BR/><BR/><I>Have you read the whole series?</I><BR/><BR/>Yes.<BR/><BR/><I>I've liked them all.</I><BR/><BR/>So have I. I'm waiting for <I>The Snow Queen</I> to come out in paperback, though, which doesn't happen until some time next year.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-24148580700837507582008-12-08T00:33:00.000+00:002008-12-08T00:33:00.000+00:00If you look at the Wikipedia entry on THE WATER-BA...If you look at the Wikipedia entry on <B>THE WATER-BABIES,</B> you'll find no mention of masturbation and some very different interpretations.<BR/><BR/>Incidentally, I remember coming across somewhere a quotation indicating that Kingsley said "Religion is the opiate of the people" before Marx did; but I've been unable to find it again. He was a reformer who thought religion should try to help people in this life rather than assure them that they will be rewarded for their sufferings in the sweet bye-and-bye.<BR/><BR/>Yes, the Snow Queen's is an undersized golden one called Citrine. We get to see her actually working as a librarian.<BR/><BR/>Have you read the whole series? I've liked them all. <B>FORTUNE'S FOOL</B> has a Russian setting, with Baba Yaga, <I>rusalka,</I> the seventh son of a seventh son, and the Sea-King's seventh daughter.<BR/><BR/><B>THE SNOW QUEEN</B> is a different take on the fairy tale; she's a Godmother with the job of reforming selfish people like Kay and overly devoted people like Gerda. Her life is actually boring until she winds up going on a quest for an evil witch impersonating her. Background is Finnish.talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-37155111654449259732008-12-07T11:08:00.000+00:002008-12-07T11:08:00.000+00:00I have encountered the argument that Charles Kings...<I>I have encountered the argument that Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies was intended as a tract against masturbation. Having never read the complete book, I cannot comment one way or another.</I><BR/><BR/>I shouldn't really comment either, since if I've read it it was either so long ago I can't remember or in an abridged version, but that's not going to stop me observing that if that <I>is</I> the point of the novel, then "Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-done-by" and "Mrs Be-done-by-as-you-did" begin to sound, respectively, like more of an encouragement and a promise than an admonishment or a threat.<BR/><BR/><I>a BookWyrm, a dragon who has a library for a hoard.</I><BR/><BR/>I first came across one of them in Lackey's earlier book in the series, <I>One Good Knight</I>. It sounds like a lovely kind of dragon.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-81602743749270150062008-12-07T06:02:00.000+00:002008-12-07T06:02:00.000+00:00I have encountered the argument that Charles Kings...I have encountered the argument that Charles Kingsley's <B>The Water-Babies</B> was intended as a tract against masturbation. Having never read the complete book, I cannot comment one way or another.<BR/><BR/>What you really need to meet your cataloguing needs is a BookWyrm, a dragon who has a library for a hoard. There's an excellent one in Mercedes Lackey's <B>The Snow Queen.</B>talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-22244423881467566102008-12-06T22:47:00.000+00:002008-12-06T22:47:00.000+00:00Much as I delight in being thought of as awesome, ...Much as I delight in being thought of as awesome, I do feel compelled to point out that if you hadn't asked me about Master Bates, I wouldn't have gone off and looked this up. I'm sure that by blogging at TMT and reading the comments other people make, I learn just as much, if not more, than any of the blog's readers. I benefit a lot from the "awesome" commenters who ask me interesting questions and make comments which get me thinking about things in new ways.<BR/><BR/>I didn't study any English literature at university at all. The system's different in Scotland from in the US, and I have the impression that we study far fewer subjects at university level, but do each one in more detail. And I have the feeling that under the English system students specialise even earlier.<BR/><BR/>Getting back to <I>Oliver Twist</I> and masturbation, the impression I got from that first quote was that this may very well be the kind of theory which some academics didn't (and perhaps still don't) agree with.<BR/><BR/>Still, Cohen does seem to me to have some evidence to support his argument, at least as far as I can tell from reading a short excerpt from <A HREF="http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-9278581_ITM" REL="nofollow">one 1993 article</A>:<BR/><BR/><I>When he first appears, for instance, he is described as "a very sprightly young friend . . . who was now formally introduced to |Oliver~ as Charley Bates." Further down on the page, he is referred to as "Mr. Charles Bates." Finally, he delivers the gear for cleaning up whatever mess his name might imply: "'Wipes,' replied Master Bates; at the same time producing four pocket-handkerchiefs."(3)<BR/><BR/>The peculiar attention to the young scoundrel's name is dramatically amplified by the following exchange</I><BR/><BR/>The "exchange" that Cohen quotes is from <A HREF="http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54ot/chapter18.html" REL="nofollow">Chapter 18</A>:<BR/><BR/><I>‘What a pity it is he isn’t a prig!’<BR/><BR/>‘Ah!’ said Master Charles Bates; ‘he don’t know what’s good for him.’<BR/><BR/>The Dodger sighed again, and resumed his pipe: as did Charley Bates. They both smoked, for some seconds, in silence.<BR/><BR/>‘I suppose you don’t even know what a prig is?’ said the Dodger mournfully.<BR/><BR/>‘I think I know that,’ replied Oliver, looking up. ‘It’s a the—; you’re one, are you not?’ inquired Oliver, checking himself.<BR/><BR/>‘I am,’ replied the Doger. ‘I’d scorn to be anything else.’ Mr. Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock, after delivering this sentiment, and looked at Master Bates, as if to denote that he would feel obliged by his saying anything to the contrary.</I><BR/><BR/>Cohen then continues:<BR/><BR/><I>Through this, one of the many scenes depicting Oliver's initiation into the secret community of male adolescence, the term "prig" floats with as much instability as that of "Master Bates." The gloss on "prig" that Oliver is incapable of uttering is presumably "thief," yet the persistence with which the term goes undenoted throws us deliberately back upon the signifier -- where, with the alacrity of any English schoolboy, we might take the usual phonemic detour from a bilabial to a fricative and detect a "frig" (Victorian slang for manual stimulation of the genitals). If the revelation that Master Bates himself is a "prig" merely establishes a relation of synonymity, the Dodger nonetheless asserts superiority over the smaller boys with his "ferocious cock."</I><BR/><BR/>Gail Turley Houston, in her article "Broadsides at the Board: Collations of <I>Pickwick Papers</I> and <I>Oliver Twist</I>." <I>Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900</I> 31.4 (1991): 735-755 suggests that there may be another masturbating character in the novel, namely Monks, Oliver's half-brother. She thinks that "the 'hideous disease' of his face" (750)<BR/><BR/><I>intimates that Monks may carry a sexually transmitted disease, or at the least, in good Victorian moralistic fashion, that he has acne because he masturbates. Dickens's own private joke - so private it may be unconscious - connects sexual sin with the criminal: as Edward Le Comte has pointed out, in a Freudian autoerotic slip of the tongue, the narrator repeatedly refers to Charley Bates as Master Bates. See Le Comte's Afterword to <I>Oliver Twist</I> (New York: Signet, 1961), p.483.</I> (754-55)Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-59520134499819721102008-12-06T18:11:00.000+00:002008-12-06T18:11:00.000+00:00Laura Vivanco, you are just completely awesome. T...Laura Vivanco, you are just completely awesome. That is fascinating stuff, and opened a new window into the novel--and its depiction of women--for me. It's a curious novel, so vivid and richly imagined, and yet Oliver consistently strikes me as one-dimensional, almost a plot place-holder instead of a Real Boy. Obviously I should have studied Dickens in college, but at that point I was much more into Forster, Lawrence, Conrad, Waugh, etc. Also at that time in my life quite unacquainted with sex, which probably hampered my understanding of many subtleties of literature, LOL!RevMelindahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09266250590472359357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-63842337990425671302008-12-06T12:55:00.000+00:002008-12-06T12:55:00.000+00:00Don't scholars labor under sufficient difficulties...<I>Don't scholars labor under sufficient difficulties already?</I><BR/><BR/>I think the people it would really cause a lot more trouble for would be the overworked librarians who'd have to do extra cataloging. Unless it disturbed the usual shelving arrangements, I don't think it would cause any difficulties for scholars if there were a few more classification categories listed at the front of books.<BR/><BR/><I>Or is my mind just dirtier than the average?</I><BR/><BR/>I doubt it, because other people have mentioned this. William A. Cohen's 1996 <I>Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction</I> <A HREF="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3643/is_/ai_n8793779" REL="nofollow">seems to have</A> caused controversy:<BR/><BR/><I>one should remember the whiff of scandal more traditionally-minded scholars have detected in Cohen's claim that </I>Great Expectations<I>, an exemplar of canonical coming-of-age stories beloved by many, has at its heart numerous meditations on male masturbation. Dickens is of course the author who, in </I>Oliver Twist<I>, named one of his characters Master Bates. Such a reference is rather hard to miss.</I><BR/><BR/>According to <A HREF="http://www.brynmawr.edu/bmrcl/Summer2004/Laqueur.html" REL="nofollow">one review of</A> Thomas W. Laqueur's 2003 <I>Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation</I><BR/><BR/><I>The first two chapters of </I>Solitary Sex<I> cover </I>Onania<I> and its eighteenth-century cultural context, along with masturbation and its history. This involves the worlds of publishing and quack medicine in eighteenth-century London, the spread of attention to onanism from England through Europe, the range of anti-masturbation cures and treatments, and a flurry of literary and philosophical representations of masturbation and masturbators: Rousseau's Émile, Kant's pronouncement that masturbation is worse than suicide, the onanism of Keats's poetry (according to Byron), Dickens's "Charley Bates, Master Charles Bates, Master Bates" (</I>Oliver Twist<I>). </I><BR/><BR/>Professor Stuart Barnett teaches a course about "<A HREF="http://www.english.ccsu.edu/barnetts/courses/vices/" REL="nofollow">English Vices</A>" and <A HREF="http://www.english.ccsu.edu/barnetts/courses/vices/Bates.htm" REL="nofollow">he writes that</A><BR/><BR/><I>One of the odd minor characters in Oliver Twist is named Charley Bates. At certain points--usually when he is being especially boisterous--he is named Master Bates. Dickens thereby engages with the popular nineteenth-century discourse that claimed that masturbation led to physical deformity, depravity, and criminality. Dickens also elaborates here on a theme running throughout the novel, namely, that sex = death. Master Bates pantomimes hanging and the moment of death. In terms of the larger discourse of masturbation this makes sense in that masturbation is a form of non-procreative sexuality. It is simply a death of the self rather than a propagation of the self. It leads to the eventual decay of the self. In terms of the novel specifically, it is clear that any sexuality not sanctioned by society leads to death. This is confirmed in the deaths of Oliver's mother and Nancy. Thus Master Bates's pantomime becomes an emblem for the novel in general.</I>Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-51385654498335432702008-12-06T05:31:00.000+00:002008-12-06T05:31:00.000+00:00Okay, you scholars--"Dickens fits his characters w...Okay, you scholars--"Dickens fits his characters with appropriate names. . ." I finally read Oliver Twist last year by listening to it (all of it) on CD in the car. And I have to confess I smirked each time I heard the name "Master Bates." Dickens didn't really mean that, did he? Or is my mind just dirtier than the average? (as befits my profession, LOL)RevMelindahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09266250590472359357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-29201840781498216412008-12-04T03:07:00.000+00:002008-12-04T03:07:00.000+00:00Laura, that's all we need--a library in which the ...Laura, that's all we need--a library in which the books are classified by a secret code!<BR/><BR/>Don't scholars labor under sufficient difficulties already?<BR/><BR/>WV: upsac--Order you give to scramble the Strategic Air Command when the threat level reaches DEFCON One.talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-56434624647185883792008-12-03T12:19:00.000+00:002008-12-03T12:19:00.000+00:00Sorry, I should have written "phonetics" not "ling...Sorry, I should have written "phonetics" not "linguistics." It's probably worth bearing in mind that Shaw, unlike Dickens, states quite explicitly who his source of inspiration was in this area:<BR/><BR/><I>When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character</I> (from the <A HREF="http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=6390&pageno=8" REL="nofollow">Preface to <I>Pygmalion</I></A>)<BR/><BR/>and "Pygmalion Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza Doolittle would have been impossible; still, as will be seen, there are touches of Sweet in the play." (<A HREF="http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=6390&pageno=9" REL="nofollow">9</A>)Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-91071297565548842212008-12-03T11:42:00.000+00:002008-12-03T11:42:00.000+00:00librarians have to do all that cataloging with phy...<I>librarians have to do all that cataloging with physical books anyway</I><BR/><BR/>I see what you mean. I was thinking more about the physical shelving of the books being an issue if the librarians wanted to shelve by subject and author (e.g. the Library of Congress system) and also according to your classification system.<BR/><BR/>You'd probably also need to make the new classification system somewhat secret, or some people would complain about spoilers! ;-)<BR/><BR/>Willaful, your post sent me off to search out my copy of <I>The Proposition</I>. I see what you mean. To save other people having to rush off in search of <I>their</I> copies of the novel, here's the bit in question:<BR/><BR/><I>she came home from London, having gone to discuss and deliver a copy of her paper on Cockney speech to a playwright who was researching the concept for a play based on the myth of Pygmalion.</I> (351)<BR/><BR/>This is a bit different from the Heath example, I think, because Ivory's character is only said to be inspiring Shaw's work in the specific area of linguistics (although the story told in Ivory's novel has a Pygmalion theme which clearly derives from Shaw's play). The reason I find it annoying is the massive difference between how Ivory deals with class and how Shaw does. I'd probably need another post to go into that. Hmm. Maybe I will write another post about that... sometime...Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-28660451749576767482008-12-02T06:54:00.000+00:002008-12-02T06:54:00.000+00:00Within her novel Heath thus toys with the concept ...<I>Within her novel Heath thus toys with the concept of reversing the direction of the source of inspiration.</I><BR/><BR/>Judith Ivory also did this in <I>The Proposition.</I> I confess, I found it very twee and annoying. -- willafulAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-53525703849466360742008-12-01T23:52:00.000+00:002008-12-01T23:52:00.000+00:00It totally cut me off! I didn't even notice that. ...It totally cut me off! I didn't even notice that. I really despise this computer sometimes.<BR/><BR/>In any case I intended to say: so I imagine that classification system would have to work for both.Angelahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10036078211777850499noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-74927638517618282082008-12-01T21:21:00.000+00:002008-12-01T21:21:00.000+00:00That sounds as though it could be quite ambitious....<I>That sounds as though it could be quite ambitious. Would you suggest a classification system based around plot types, such as secret babies, marriages of convenience etc? There don't seem to be quite as many missing heirs nowadays as there used to be but I suppose Oliver Twist's one, so this novel would probably fall into that category.</I><BR/><BR/>Oh I'm completely insane. This might become a lifelong obsession. When I die, my heirs will go through my multitude of books and wonder and the eccentric way I was storing them. <BR/><BR/>I was conceiving that the whole tale-type/allusion thing would have to extend out from romance, especially as there are so many books that are secret romances but they are old or literary so nobody suspects. But I would certainly start the project with secret babies and marriages of convenience. <BR/><BR/><I>It might be easier with ebooks, as it would be possible to attach different tags to each books (e.g. author, genre, sub-genre, motifs) and then each reader could just focus on the books with the tags they're interested in.</I><BR/><BR/>True, but librarians have to do all that cataloging with physical books anyway so I imagine that theAngelahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10036078211777850499noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-74208052989971331102008-12-01T21:11:00.000+00:002008-12-01T21:11:00.000+00:00I am attempting a brief proposal of a story-type c...<I>I am attempting a brief proposal of a story-type classification system for Romance, somewhat like the Aarne-Thompson one that is used for fairy tales.</I><BR/><BR/>That sounds as though it could be quite ambitious. Would you suggest a classification system based around plot types, such as secret babies, marriages of convenience etc? There don't seem to be quite as many missing heirs nowadays as there used to be but I suppose <I>Oliver Twist</I>'s one, so this novel would probably fall into that category.<BR/><BR/><I>wouldn't it be lovely to go the shelf or the catalog at the library and browse fiction knowing that all the similar sorts of stories were together? I think it would be very useful for inter-textual studies.</I><BR/><BR/>It might be easier with ebooks, as it would be possible to attach different tags to each books (e.g. author, genre, sub-genre, motifs) and then each reader could just focus on the books with the tags they're interested in.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-24782204217198076502008-12-01T19:00:00.000+00:002008-12-01T19:00:00.000+00:00I've been working on this post for my blog for abo...I've been working on this post for my blog for about two weeks. The reason it is taking me so long is because I am attempting a brief proposal of a story-type classification system for Romance, somewhat like the Aarne-Thompson one that is used for fairy tales. <BR/><BR/>My idea was that I wanted to start shelving my own books according to tale type and tale allusion. I found the connection between Heath's book and Dickens' very interesting and have decided that they would need to be next to each other on the bookshelf. <BR/><BR/>People wonder why I don't just try shelving the books by author like every other person in the universe, but wouldn't it be lovely to go the shelf or the catalog at the library and browse fiction knowing that all the similar sorts of stories were together? I think it would be very useful for inter-textual studies.Angelahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10036078211777850499noreply@blogger.com