140 replies to this topic

[PrejudiceSucks]

I don't really like authors simply because they have a wide vocabulary, it's more that I dislike authors who are unimaginative and/or use vast amounts of clichés in their work.

Obviously, if this adds something to the story (for example The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) then I quite like it, but if it's just laziness (although J.K Rowling's books are written for children I feel that she could try harder) then it makes a book harder to enjoy.

[A. J. Raffles]

Sean, on Mar 31 2006, 05:38 PM, said:

You all seem to like old books, weird!

The closest I've ever gotten to an old book is Tom Sawyer And Huckleberry Fin! (Probably mispelt, haven't looked at it since I threw it down last year after a few chapters )

Shakespeare can be quite good, if it wern't for the old language I might actually read his works recreationally. There good but I don't like my reading being slowed due to momentary pauses to put things in context.

Well, that's what I do, basically: read old books and get desperate when I have to write essays about them. I don't only read the stuff I need to read for my course, but obviously doing a degree in English Lit would be a nightmare if I didn't actually enjoy reading those texts as well...

It's funny that you should mention old language in connection with Shakespeare, as he is usually modernised, actually. Oddly enough, most of his contemporaries aren't: the works of Spenser, for example, only exist in wacky early modern spelling (probably it's because of that "Shakespeare is for all times" thing; in order to convince ourselves that it includes our time as well, we need to make it look as if he's writing normal English - although he isn't). Texts of that period normally look like they've been written by a dyslexic, but you get used to it after a while.
Which play's your favourite so far?

[Sean]

Macbeth and Romeo & Juilet are the only ones I've studied in any detail.

Macbeth was better

[Blood-Pigggy]

Othello is my personal favorite.
Either that or King Lear.

[BeefontheBone]

Macbeth rocks - A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Tempest are my favourites, though.

[DeathDude]

Macbeth indeed rocks, Othello didn't find to be super stunning, but Hamlet also enjoyed reading.

[DannyMc252]

Aye, Macbeth is good.

Even if he does spend half the play monologging (how do you spell that word, anyway?)

Its also a good source of insults.

[A. J. Raffles]

Othello and Hamlet are great. Antony and Cleopatra is pretty good, too (among a bunch of other things it has a scene in which a character tries to commits suicide and fails ). I also quite like the crazy late plays: Cymbeline is completely ludicrous, and Pericles is actually more interesting than you'd expect, once you get over the garbled text...

@Piggy: About Beowulf, I mostly came across reading lists, but those won't be much use to you if the books are out of print and they don't happen to be at your local library. As far as online resources go, here seems to be a decent Beowulf site, but all the other stuff mostly deals with the language. But a brief summary of some of the main points that have been made in various books and journals etc are:
1. As with most Anglo-Saxon texts, people can't agree when it was written. There have been both very early and very late datings.
2. The one thing which is usually agreed on is that Beowulf is much older than the written text that we have and that it was originally performed by scops (what Anglo-Saxons had in the way of poets/entertainers, basically). One of the key terms here is "oral tradition". You could argue that the rambling style and the fact that some things are a bit repetitive etc. is a result of the text's not having been written to be read.
3. It's also a matter of debate whether the text is actually a unit or not. It has been suggested that the text accidentally conflated the stories of different Beowulfs (so the one who fights the dragon wouldn't be the same as the one who fights Grendel).
4. There's some debate as to how Christian Beowulf (or Beowulf, for that matter) is. It does have a rather heathen feel, so as with quite a lot of Anglo-Saxon texts, some claim that the Christian bits were written in later by busybody monks. But you could also argue that people's idea of Christianity was different then. They often use the lord-retainer relationship to describe people's relationship to God.
5. The lord-retainer relationship is another important element in Anglo-Saxon literature. It basically works like this: the lord takes care of his retainers as if they were his children and in return they owe him absolutely loyalty, no matter what. Not just in battle. They are extremely close. The result is a small but tightly-knit community that's more or less symbolised by the place where they usually meet, the mead-hall. That's why it's so shocking that Grendel can invade the mead-hall at the beginning: it should be a safe place, and closing down the mead-hall in order to avoid more people being killed is a desperate decision.
6. One thing you need to keep in mind about the lord-retainer thing, though, is that when those texts idealising that mead-hall culture were written, the mead-hall society itself no longer existed. If you look closely at the text, you'll find it's already achaising about a great past. Beowulf is a bit of a relic already, and that's basically what gets him killed in the end. If you have a look at what Wiglaf says about heroism, you'll notice he's quite a different sort of hero to "swords are for wimps"-Beowulf. And at Beowulf's funeral at the end, there's also the notion that more than just the king has died.

Gah, I'm waffling again. Sorry.

[PrejudiceSucks]

DannyMc252, on Mar 31 2006, 10:27 PM, said:

Aye, Macbeth is good.

Even if he does spend half the play monologging (how do you spell that word, anyway?)

Its also a good source of insults.

I believe you mean "doing soliloquies(?)". Although monologging is much easier to spell.

The best one that I've studied is Othello, I found it extremely enjoyable. The evil character is most excellently evil (or terribly evil, I suppose), Othello is a well thought-out character and I found the plot quite good as well (note: I studied this a couple of years ago, so I can't actually remember all of the characters' names, sorry).

Midsomer Night's Dream is alright, I'm sure that it would be far more amusing back in the day.

Macbeth is pretty spiffing, but some of it is just a bit too odd. Also, why on earth did Lady Macbeth kill herself?

Surely she could see what was coming if she put her super-ambitious husband right up at the top, no?

And Romeo and Juliet is quite good as well, but the "evening up" of the death toll by Paris being needlessly killed off and Lady Capulet(?) dying of sadness does slightly annoy me. Although then everyone's lost 2 people, I suppose. But it still didn't need to happen (in my humble, not as good a playwright as Shakespeare-based, opinion).

[A. J. Raffles]

PrejudiceSucks, on Apr 1 2006, 11:53 AM, said:

And Romeo and Juliet is quite good as well, but the "evening up" of the death toll by Paris being needlessly killed off and Lady Capulet(?) dying of sadness does slightly annoy me. Although then everyone's lost 2 people, I suppose. But it still didn't need to happen (in my humble, not as good a playwright as Shakespeare-based, opinion).

Any tragedy worth its salt must have the stage littered with bodies at the end, surely.

Romeo and Juliet is quite an interesting play in that the first half of it could easily pass for the beginning of a comedy. But then it all goes horribly wrong, of course...

[Havell]

Yeah, it's a romantic comedy in the vein of Midsummer Night's (only slightly more edgy) until the death of Mercutio; at which point it turn into a tragedy.

[DakaSha]

PrejudiceSucks, on Mar 31 2006, 06:48 PM, said:

I don't really like authors simply because they have a wide vocabulary, it's more that I dislike authors who are unimaginative and/or use vast amounts of clichés in their work.

Obviously, if this adds something to the story (for example The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) then I quite like it, but if it's just laziness (although J.K Rowling's books are written for children I feel that she could try harder) then it makes a book harder to enjoy.

thats exactly how i feel about harry potter.


Stephen King is the best writer ive ever read... i understand why hes so famous. mind hes not my faveroute auther by far (i guess that would have to be Terry Pratchett now )... i just think he describes his characters mental state very very good... and dark of course.

Piers Anthony is just a crazy old fart... thats why i like him

[BeefontheBone]

I can't stand crime fiction and thrillers, so I have to pass on Stephen King I'm afraid. Blech!

[DakaSha]

well thats what i mean... i dont like the storys he writes... but i think he writes them well

[A. J. Raffles]

BeefontheBone, on Apr 1 2006, 03:11 PM, said:

I can't stand crime fiction and thrillers, so I have to pass on Stephen King I'm afraid. Blech!

He also wrote a fantasy children's novel, though.