The Library

In two days' time, I'll be sitting my written exam. I'm sick with nervousness. *glares at breakfast to stay put*

Originally, I'd planned for tofay to go through all of my notes again, but I can't. My poor head feels full to bursting. Trying to get more into it, I fear, will have messy results. So, no atttempts at studying today. And in order to stop myself from brooding, I'm playing with memes. ( Remember the first-lines meme? )

The drawback of playing with this particular meme: now I wanna read the books again. But I suppose I had better continue reading The Italian. Oh, well, at least it's better than The Mysteries of Udolpho, imho. And apart from the fact that Schedoni is Snape's great-etc-father, Vivaldi reminds me a bit of Harry. Very passionate, very rash, ready to blame events on Schedoni, which the good monk resents like hell. I'll read the bally novel for that alone!

*toddles off to be entertained by a Gothic villain*

If you've delved into scholarly work written on the Harry Potter series (or hung around my journal for long enough), you will have come across the argument that Severus Snape strongly resembles a Gothic villain(hero). And it's true.

( Allow me to introduce you: Schedoni, monk, villain )

The parallels are so very very obvious.

Anyone know Webster's play "The Duchess of Malfi"? No? Well, you haven't missed much.

Anyway, I need to be familiar with the play, for my written exam. So I'm going through my notes. And am vastly amused by myself:

Bosola - essential to the plot, but not important; not institutor but little wheel that keeps everything going; killed by accident, doesn't even get his death-scene; not a protagonist but important

Cira's note, pencilled in the margin: Severus Snape, anyone?

There are even more parallels, because Bosola has been hired by the Baddies as a spy, feels mistreated by those who have hired him, and, IIRC, always wears black.

^__^

Seriously.

Don Raymond's malady seemed to gain ground. Lorenzo was constantly at his bed-side, and treated him with a tenderness truly fraternal. Botht he cause and effects of the disorder were highly afflicting to the Brother of Agnes: yet Theodore's grief was scarcely less sincere. That amiable Boy quitted not his Master for a moment, and put every menas in practive to console and alleviate his sufferings.

from: Mathew Lewis, "The Monk"

My first reaction when I read that was, "You mean, like, blowing him? ... I think I read too much slash. But then, Lewis was gay..."

And then I read a book on Gothic Novel & Gender, and the author quoted "The Old English Baron" by Clara Reeve, where the hero Edmund says, when he asks for Emma's hand in marriage: "I never loved any woman but her; and, if I am so unfortunate as to be refused her, I will not marry at all... Give me your lovely daughter! Give me also your son, my beloved William!"

Err ... threesome?

*sniggers*

And then Donna Heiland, the author of "Gothic & Gender" goes on to say: He will have Emma or no one, perhaps because only with Emma he can have William. In wrapping up the stories of its various characters, the novel tells us that Edmund's "third son was called William; he inherited the fortune his uncle of that name, who adopted him, and he made the castle of Lovel his residence, and died a batchelor". William the uncle is figuratively identified with his nephew of the same name, and in that merged figure we see Edmund's beloved, his son, his heir, and in some sense a double for himself.

[...] Edmund's friendship with William creates a successor of another kind, for William junior is in a sense their child as well. Insofar as he represents both his father (biologically) and his uncle (in his name), he is their offspring, and a testimony to the productive power of male relationships"

Gothic writers knew their way around MPreg.

"Frankenstein", anyone? :)

Seriously, after reading so much literature on that novel I think it's the first slash fic written by a woman writer: there's Walton's fascination with Victor Frankenstein, Victor's friendship with Henry Clerval, whose description is so feminised, and let's not forget the Victor/Creature relationship. (Anyone who has seen the Branagh movie knows what I'm talking about.) How a 19-year-old girl could have written such a novel in the early 19th century? Well, she did live with Byron for some time ... and it's more or less official that Byron was bisexual, and then there were all the times when Byron and Percy B. Shelley went off and left the women alone ...

D'you think I might need new glasses? These here see slash everywhere ... *blinks*

As my book points out, these lines have become almost a cliché. But did you know they are from the poem In Memoriam A.H.H by Alfred Lord Tennyson? Well, I didn't. That's why I like reading books. I always learn something new. Even though the Victorians are a bit dull on occasion.

Although they're growing on me. Seriously. I mean, probably everyone knows how the Victorians are said to be all prude and repressed. Yep, some of them were. But not all. And sex played a bigger role in Victorian life than ever before. You don't have up to 80,000 prostitues in London for nothing. Or a flourishing trade in pornography.

And hey, the Victorian poets weren't exactly prudes, either. I don't think I have to make a case for Oscar Wilde. But he is definitely not the only one. Ever read Christina Rossetti?

She cried, "Laura," up the garden.
"Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;

That's from The Goblin Market (1862). The person speaking is Lizzie, Laura's sister. The poem was well received and actually considered fit for children.

I may have read too much porn, but 20th century criticism agrees with me that this hints at lesbianism. And incest. Prude? Not in my book!

And it gets better! (Oh, yes)

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Anactoria (1866). FYI, Anactoria was one of the lovers of Sappho of Lesbos:

I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,
Intense device, and superflux of pain;
Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake
Life at thy lips, and leave it there to ache;
Strain out thy soul with pangs too soft to kill
[...]
And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite
As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,
With almod-shaped and roseleaf coloured shells,
And blood like purple blossom at the tips
Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips
For my sake when I hurt thee
[...]
Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch
Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright,
Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light
Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note,
Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat,
Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these
A lyre of many faultless agonies?

As the teacher informed the class of Victorian Poetry and Poetics: "This, um, poem includes some, um, aspects of, uhhh, SM. Yeah."

Good old Algie. That lesson was one of the very few occasions when I was actually awake in class. :)