it's been a long time...

[aletheis]

Since my last update, i've moved to the UK, voted absentee for the first time (& for the winner), and developed an even greater understanding of how much i don't know.  But the real updates are for another day.  i know some literary types have me friended & thought they might have some insight on finding examples for a current project.

i'm working

Comments

[ann_septimus]

The classic example (which I'm sure you've found already) is Coleridge's Kubla Khan.

"As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :"

Etc. Etc.

I know I've read others. I will continue to think on't.

[aletheis]

Thanks - i did think of Kubla Khan eventually, and while it is a classic (of course i wasted much time admiring the verse - it's such an amazing piece), it's not spurring my memory. If you think of more (even if they seem terribly obvious), please post them! i feel like i'm missing some large bits of evidence (or maybe i dreamed them up or - ha - wrote some myself? i did find a journal entry i wrote lamenting the burdened earth - crawling with offspring - and ceaseless noise of summer.

Ah well, i'll keep looking!

long time

[crookedfingers]

glad to know you are still around-going to school in the UK? I thought you were finished getting your Ph.D.?

Re: long time

[aletheis]

Sadly, my program is rather long. We have a separate master's program that must be done first (unless one comes in with a master's) - that takes at least 2 years and has its own sets of exams and course requirements. The Ph.D. then requires further coursework and 5 exams, followed by defense of the dissertation proposal; then you write the dissertation and defend it. At that point, you get the Ph.D. So far i've finished 2/5 exams for the Ph.D. It takes a long time!

i'm studying under a St. Augustine expert and doing research in UK this year - i can take exams here via a proctor.

How have you been? i have, i confess, peeked at your journal from time to time during my hiatus (which has only been because it's hard for me to manage time effectively, and i always have too much to do...).

Re: long time

[crookedfingers]

what are you studying about St. Augustine? Our son is on his fourth year of his Ph.D. program-getting ready to start his dissertation work-he has been going to school for years-spent five years at Michigan State and now he has been at Boston College going on four years-what school at you attending in the UK?

Re: long time

[aletheis]

i'm at the University of Bristol currently. My work on St. Augustine is ... diverse, for lack of a better word. My two lines of research don't really intersect, but i'm interested in both nonetheless:
1. Analysis of Augustine's use of satiric techniques in The City of God. This has come to center on looking at passages in which he describes the process of farming or sowing with what appears to be deliberately sexual language; generally these bits occur when he is talking about pagan gods or pagan practices. Not sure precisely where this is heading yet...but perhaps a look at how Augustine channels his repressed sexual energies (which his Confessions admits openly) into a form of theological/philosophical argument.
2. i'm also interested in The City of God as it was used in later chronicles and encyclopedias. What sections were excerpted and why? Did later chroniclers/compilers recognize the use of different genres in the work?

[blackletter]

First thing that comes to my mind is the fecund environment that the maenads create in the Bacchae. The description is in one of the messanger speeches (I can't remember the line numbers).

[aletheis]

Thanks - this was in my mind as well, since i just took a Greek course last year on the Bacchae. i'll never forget those lines: "the earth flows with milk; it flows with wine; it streams with the nectar of the bees."

Turns out the mystery work was Milton's Comus.

[ann_septimus]

I'm 90% sure that there're some weirdly sexual descriptions of the landscape in Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, but I have no access to that book, so I can't find any explicit examples. Zenobia's luscious sexuality is reflected in her environment.

[cbanek]

*grins* Sounds like you're living the good life.

landscapes

[ext_92370]

pre-lapsarian Eden in Paradise Lost can be quite lush.

Re: landscapes

[aletheis]

Yes! i realized a couple days after posting that i had been thinking of Milton's Comus, which has an overlush landscape and pretty obvious sexual undertones.

Thanks for commenting!