tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post8755171203473026174..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: In the pits of stinking dust and mortal slime - John Ruskin and the horrors of fictionAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-10755481802325487792011-02-16T22:37:41.334-06:002011-02-16T22:37:41.334-06:00Ha! That's just - that's wonderful.Ha! That's just - that's wonderful.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-70183056567986196742011-02-16T22:14:00.666-06:002011-02-16T22:14:00.666-06:00I was grieved that Rohan cut Ruskin's footnote...I was grieved that Rohan cut Ruskin's footnote about why authors create characters with disabilitie (It's because the authors, sometimes temporarily, have contracted "brain disease").Joshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15914730499199048197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-7140990760092275912010-05-28T10:57:00.852-05:002010-05-28T10:57:00.852-05:00AD101 - I think you're right, that whatever El...AD101 - I think you're right, that whatever Eliot is doing is out of Ruskin's grasp at this point (he's 61). George Eliot was a keen student of Ruskin, at least of his aesthetic ideas, which is plainly visible in her early novels, at least. So that's another irony.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-85032015946730029922010-05-27T19:22:06.078-05:002010-05-27T19:22:06.078-05:00That's interesting. I just finished reading Th...That's interesting. I just finished reading The Mill on the Floss. I can see how someone would make that simplification. It's about character, psychology, how who we are creates the incidents in our life. Maggie was always 'forgetting' herself. It was also about passion. Its too bad Ruskin dismissed it. Often happens with things we don't understand.Unfocused Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17607033921530491078noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-81965376548856362612010-05-27T18:46:50.082-05:002010-05-27T18:46:50.082-05:00Autodidact101 scores a point! Ruskin is neither th...Autodidact101 scores a point! Ruskin is neither the first nor last great intellect to identify his childhood as Eden and everything after as The Fall.<br /><br />I just realized that the next essay is R. L. Stevenson's great defense of <a href="http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2010/04/if-he-has-never-been-on-quest-for.html" rel="nofollow">childhood experience</a>, which he thinks an adult writer can recreate, not embalm. Rohan, did you do that in purpose?<br /><br />Hardy, Blake - those are interesting questions. I don't know about Blake, but I have a guess that Hardy doesn't cut it, either. I omitted the best thing in Ruskin's essay: "Rashly inquiring the other day the plot of a modern tory from a female friend, I elicited, after some hesitation, that it hinged mainly on the young people's 'forgetting themselves in a boat...'" He's describing, and dismissing, <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>!<br /><br />Ruskin is in some sense arguing against the domestic novel. I think one thing he wants, that Scott supplied, is serious novels about heroes, borrowing from Carlyle. He can't see a George Eliot protagonist as heroic. <br /><br />Fundamentally, he's not arguing that fiction should be different, but that <i>reality</i> should be different. Which is some argument.<br /><br />Rebecca - a Victorian literature class with that much Ruskin! My poor (non-literature) students this semester, how they hated Ruskin.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-22648860671816270192010-05-27T08:55:59.570-05:002010-05-27T08:55:59.570-05:00You weren't kidding whne you said Ruskin is bo...You weren't kidding whne you said Ruskin is bonkers! Oh dear. I'm with Emily in wondering is Ruskin thinks that we should just pretend cities didn't exist and then maybe they will all go away and we can return to some pastoral Eden that never existed in the first place.Stefaniehttp://somanybooksblog.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-20343476621005924792010-05-27T08:16:41.122-05:002010-05-27T08:16:41.122-05:00I took a Victorian Lit class in college. All I rem...I took a Victorian Lit class in college. All I remember is lots and lots of Ruskin. I really didn't think I liked Victorian Lit.Rebecca Reidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06062252252301802298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-47578460965597895892010-05-27T02:07:47.372-05:002010-05-27T02:07:47.372-05:00Ah, but some things never change. There will alway...Ah, but some things never change. There will always be those John Ruskins as long as men grow old.Unfocused Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17607033921530491078noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-47555259910651551982010-05-26T21:34:53.138-05:002010-05-26T21:34:53.138-05:00Is it that he found modern fiction not....fictiona...Is it that he found modern fiction not....fictional enough? More cherubic cheeks and fewer rickets babies? I wonder what Ruskin thought of William Blake...<br /><br />This volume sounds like great good fun and I really should pick it up.Bookphiliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05155882653615842141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-41733392297908871212010-05-26T21:29:16.579-05:002010-05-26T21:29:16.579-05:00No existing terms of language known to me are enou...<em>No existing terms of language known to me are enough to describe the forms of filth, and modes of ruin that varied themselves along the course of Croxsted Lane.</em><br /><br />What a wonderful curmudgeon!nicolehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06816358571437309223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-23802544813966424752010-05-26T19:35:53.580-05:002010-05-26T19:35:53.580-05:00HAHAHA! Oh my, he doesn't disappoint, does he...HAHAHA! Oh my, he doesn't disappoint, does he? <br /><br />What seems especially batty about this is the muddle of cause and effect - given that urban growth is happening, that the deaths in Dickens are "properly representative of the statistics of civilian mortality in the centre of London," does Ruskin think Dickens should just ignore cities and continue to write about an idealized countryside? Does he feel that the State of Fiction would be better if we all just pretended London (disease, death, poverty) didn't exist? <br /><br />Also, it makes one wonder whether a writer like Hardy, for example, was yet on his radar - novels that address the disease/disaffection/hardship/ignorance of country life in a less idyllic, Croxsted Lane-ish way. <em>Far from the Madding Crowd</em> & <em>Return of the Native</em> would have been out by 1879, though not his really harsh stuff like Tess.Emilyhttp://www.eveningallafternoon.comnoreply@blogger.com