Slayer dreams #8

Spoilers for everything ever, right up through last night's Angel. 'Cause me and heres_luck watched and we were a very happy pair of fangirls, thank you very much.

( So. Last night I dreamed ... )

Narnia: The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy

Ooh, look. Truepenny's got more Things to Say about Narnia. Shock. Amazement. Also, my opinions are, um, decided and often intemperately worded, especially in regards to The Horse and His Boy. Just so you know.

( The Silver Chair )

( The Horse and His Boy )

Actual work accomplished

Finished reading the Death section of Birth, Marriage, and Death and incorporated the bits I need into the chapter. Go me.

Also cemented my weird fangirl love for Eamon Duffy. Cressy doesn't get as much out of his material as Duffy did, he over-simplifies egregiously, and he has this habit of providing blindingly obvious platitudes which frankly don't belong in a scholarly work. Regard:

To grieve was to cope, to register one's loss, and to work through the rift of separation. Grief helped bereaved survivors to adjust to altered conditions through the emotional processes of distress and relief.
(Cressy 393)

No doubt there was much shallow and sentimental weeping, especially among shallow and cultivated people, but that did not offset the intensity of painful and authentic grief.
(Cressy 395)

and, my favorite:

Though personal identity was extinguished by death, an individual's name and achievements could long endure among the living. If they did not we would have no history.
(Cressy 469)

My marginalia are dripping with sarcasm. I also have snarls like:

Citation, you stupid fat hobbit?

Oversimplify much?

Might the lady be protesting too much, Cressy?

FILIAL, you moron! (where he's used the word "patriarchal" to describe the observances of sons for deceased fathers)

The significance of which is ... ? (this showed up frequently on my students' papers when I was teaching)

I haven't snarked at a book like this since I was an undergraduate.

But I'm done with Cressy. I can put this damn cultural history chapter aside for a while and start work on Hamlet, a prospect which is both daunting and welcome.

---
WORKS CITED
Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. 1997. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Narnia: The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle

I think I'm going to have to do a separate post on women, romance (thanks, papersky!), and adulthood in the Chronicles of Narnia. So this is just going to finish up with my remarks on the last two books.

( The Magician's Nephew )

( The Last Battle )

The Sexual Politics of Narnia

I used the phrase the sexual politics of Narnia in a reply to cija, and dude, it's too good and too mind-blowing to waste.

Many many thanks, btw, to papersky and cija who have been going back-and-forth with me and providing useful bits of information and analysis in the comments to these posts. None of what follows is their fault (*g*), although much of it resounds to their virtue.

[ETA, 3/7/03: Added a paragraph down at the end about Aslan.]

( women, romance, and adulthood in the Chronicles of Narnia )