There's a very complicated game she's playing with the dating of the novel, the precise time it ends in particular, and in relation as well to the time of her writing; and it draws in the ironic tone of some of the narrator's commentary too, esp as it regards questions of moral improvement and reform. I'll wait and see what Mona says bef…
There's a very complicated game she's playing with the dating of the novel, the precise time it ends in particular, and in relation as well to the time of her writing; and it draws in the ironic tone of some of the narrator's commentary too, esp as it regards questions of moral improvement and reform. I'll wait and see what Mona says before going on about it, but a lot of major Victorian novels are set back a bit in time--Vanity Fair certainly, and most of Dickens depicts a time before the railroad.
Fascinating. Thanks, Michael. I also thought of Hardy’s sense of the past. As I recall, Tess is sort of time-marked by a certain education act that gave her access to a different world and way of speaking. He makes a point of that.
Oh wow this is a fascinating line of inquiry. I was also thinking about it with reference to the writers they talk about. It's a shock that Mr. Brooke almost met Wordsworth. Making writers and ideas that were well established in the future (her present) to be fresh and untried seems to create a kind of intellectual instability, or to raise the possibility of alternative outcomes in the shape of ideas.
Did later meet Wordsworth (dined with him) but I appreciate the “almost” inasmuch as he missed him at college and then took away little or nothing from the later encounter other than the chance to drop his name.
Or if that seems unduly harsh, there is irony anyhow in the summoning up of the master of rural simplicity and solitude in this hyper-social way at a posh dinner party.
“She acquired the six-volume collected edition of Wordsworth in 1839 and read him throughout her life, taking more epigraphs for her work from him…than from any author sAve Shakespeare.” Philip Davis 188
There's a very complicated game she's playing with the dating of the novel, the precise time it ends in particular, and in relation as well to the time of her writing; and it draws in the ironic tone of some of the narrator's commentary too, esp as it regards questions of moral improvement and reform. I'll wait and see what Mona says before going on about it, but a lot of major Victorian novels are set back a bit in time--Vanity Fair certainly, and most of Dickens depicts a time before the railroad.
Fascinating. Thanks, Michael. I also thought of Hardy’s sense of the past. As I recall, Tess is sort of time-marked by a certain education act that gave her access to a different world and way of speaking. He makes a point of that.
The English Education Act of 1870, though turning to the text I am less sure of the importance of this.
Oh wow this is a fascinating line of inquiry. I was also thinking about it with reference to the writers they talk about. It's a shock that Mr. Brooke almost met Wordsworth. Making writers and ideas that were well established in the future (her present) to be fresh and untried seems to create a kind of intellectual instability, or to raise the possibility of alternative outcomes in the shape of ideas.
Did later meet Wordsworth (dined with him) but I appreciate the “almost” inasmuch as he missed him at college and then took away little or nothing from the later encounter other than the chance to drop his name.
Or if that seems unduly harsh, there is irony anyhow in the summoning up of the master of rural simplicity and solitude in this hyper-social way at a posh dinner party.
“She acquired the six-volume collected edition of Wordsworth in 1839 and read him throughout her life, taking more epigraphs for her work from him…than from any author sAve Shakespeare.” Philip Davis 188
!
Exactly!