Spike ,'Sleeper'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Nope. Because king arthur would bore ME to tears.
Dear me, yes. I tried so hard to read it, then finally embraced the truth that it was boring beyond any reasonable measure. (Sorry Hil. But I'm also the girl who couldn't get through The Two Towers, so I may just be built wrong.)
Candide fits into a couple of those categories. Satire/political commentary/romance(ish).
Dunno. P&P might be a perfect choice to lend itself to the conversation. I mean, if the big question of each unit is "What is a _______? What are the characteristics and how does this book shape our understanding of the genre" then it works.
I might need another play that is not Shakespeare.
If you need help with that, Kat, let me know.
Someone argued that Siddharta was a romance in that medieval sense because it's got journey, hope, heroism. I was like, "Dude left his wife and kid alone for YEARS. Are you shitting me!?" That's like saying the BIBLE is a romance!
I couldn't get through The Two Towers, either. But I loved the language in King Arthur. At least, in the version I had.
I guess I think of romance as knights and dragons and long, episodic narratives, not Austen. I may be using a different definition of romance.
Jorge Amado, though he was lighter on the fantasy and heavier on the sex and romance than most magical realism.
Also very macho writer - very male chauvinist by todays standards, though considered somewhat feminist in his cultural context. Wonderful regional writer - marvelous picture of the society, great warmth, great humanity marvelous characters, marvelous poetic language.
I would compare him on women's issues to Mark Twain on racial prejudice. Genuinely horrified by the injustice of men's treatment of women, genuinely unable to see women as equals.
Like Mark Twain you have to decide if the virtues compensate for the vices - though poetic in a way Twain never was.
Very political. Anti-war, anti-censorship, anti-racism, pro-working class. A romantic in both the best and worst senses of the word.
To me, Austen is the most typically romance of what's been discussed--at least for the modern genre definition as opposed to the medieval sense.
I'd like a contemporary US playwright who wrote a comedy, juliana. And one that is thought of as semi-canonical. I mean, Sam Shepard is the right demographic but the wrong genre.