My writing on Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great plays has been hampered by an apparent post-France short circuit in my ability to write. So I will put up some easier posts to remind myself how to write.
I had two major projects this month, one ongoing, one returned
to its stable.
MARLOWE AND SO ON
Songes and Sonettes Written By the Ryght Honorable Lord
Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, Thomas Wyatt the Elder and others
(1557), various – Better known as Tottel’s Miscellany, an enormously
important poetry anthology that was much-looted by the great Elizabethan poets.
Thomas Wyatt brought the Petrarchan
sonnet into English, in a mix of translation, imitation, and original
poems. Henry Howard was also a superb
sonnet writer and basically invented English blank verse, although you will
have to go to another book, like the invaluable Five Courtier Poets of the
English Renaissance (1969), to see his blank verse Virgil translations.
Howard is a romantic, novelistic figure, who is presumably
more famous now than he has been for a while because of the interest in the
reign of Henry VIII as a subject for novels and television soap opera. I hope that has sent some people to his
poems. The bit in the title of the post
if from Howard’s epitaph for Wyatt, “Wyatt resteth here…”
Gorboduc (1561), Thomas Sackville & Thomas Norton
– We covered this one here.
Dido, Queen of Carthage (1587) &
Tamburlaine the Great, Pt. I (1587? / 1590),
Christopher Marlowe – A post on Dido is over here; something on Tamburlaine
is in slow progress.
The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1500-1600
(2000) – Always more to learn.
TRAVELS WITH THREE DONKEYS IN THE CÉVENNES
The three donkeys, enjoying having their packs off, as was I.
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), Robert
Louis Stevenson
Le Chemin de Stevenson (2023) &
Le Jura... à pied (2023), TopoGuides
Tomorrow I will put up more donkey photos. Some people may have seen them on Twitter or
Bluesky. It was a good trip. The Jura book was for the post-donkey
wind-down.
NOVELS
Guilt (1936), László Németh – This Hungarian novel
looks like some kind of social realism but then wanders into stranger visionary
territory at times. The protagonist is a
version of the naif character that László Krasznahorkai often uses. The prose style is utterly different but Krasznahorkai
readers will find many interesting things here.
The Ponder Heart (1953), Eudora Welty – Pure Welty
comedy in a short novel I had for some reason not read before.
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969), Ishmael Reed – Highly,
highly recommended to Percival Everett readers.
Well, not to most Everett readers, now that there are so many. Not as rich a book as Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
(1972) but how many are.
The Poacher's Son (2010), Paul Doiron – A Maine
detective novel, the first in what is now a long series, featuring a game
warden “detective.” For most of the
book, it is barely a detective novel at all, but rather a story about a
complicated father-son relationship that takes a turn when the difficult father
becomes a murder suspect. It is quite a
sad book, actually. To my limited knowledge,
it captures the landscape and ethos of its portion of Maine quite well.
POETRY
How the Stones Came to Venice (2021), Gary Lawless –
Lawless owns a bookstore, Gulf of Maine Books, in Brunswick, Maine that features
an astounding wall of poetry. He is also
devoted to rescue donkeys, although they do not feature in this curious hybrid
book.
Blood Wolf Moon (2025), Elise Paschen
IN PORTUGUESE
Zilda (1924), Alfredo Cortez – An important piece of
Portuguese theater, I am told.
