Liam Guilar > Recent Status Updates

Arguments are reminiscent of those late 19th early 20th century studies where X rides in a chariot, the sun god rode in a chariot, therefore x is a sun god. Someone with a Masters degree in Celtic Mythology should know better than to quote Robert Graves' 'Battle of the trees' as evidence. The author's enthusiasm makes reading enjoyable even if his 'quest' seems doomed from the start.

Shouldn't historians be able to answer the question: how do you know that?
Edward 2 is still alive, he meets his son in 1338, posing as William the Welshman. After the meeting:
'All we may say is that, wherever he [E2} was taken, he lived out the rest of his days in peace'. No footnotes, no references. No evidence.
How do you know that?

"With a pitiful heart, he knew what he had to do." Not only does it read like a novel but the author is mysteriously able to interpret actions and record thoughts. So much of the interpretation assumes the reader accepts Mortimer's theory that Edward 2 was not murdered and Edward 3 knew. Having read Phillips' 'Edward II' first, in which this idea was carefully refuted, doesn't help. Struggling.

Struggling with this. Ambler's pro De Monfort bias makes the book hard going. The more she tries to position the reader towards seeing him as put upon the more he sounds like a modern politician screaming fake news and witch hunt every time someone tries to hold him to account. Not sure I'm going to get through the rest of it.

In which the Pope writes a lot of letters, currently almost every other paragraph. Exactly why this is so important is never explained.

p 23: The lack of discrimination in the vocabulary is a problem for an Historian. 'He [John] managed to keep his forces united until he suffered a great defeat at Bouvines.' As sentences go this is either unnecessarily vague or just wrong. John's allies lost at Bouvines, he was nowhere near the battlefield. If you want to give him total command of the operation then his 'forces' were geographically divided.

Alarm bells ringing. page 9: 'it became clear that this king, so seldom mentioned in the history books'. page Page 12: while many historians have focussed on the events of Henry's reign'. P18: 'the young duke's appalling treatment of Eleanor...' no description of any treatment other than one sentence telling us she was captured. Who was appalled? Contemporaries? Modern readers? Why?

Repeatedly distracted by Crawford's use of 'Daft' and its variants as a critical term. How would you define or quantify 'daftness' in a poem? Is daftness good or bad?

I think I may have spent money on a book that is already so awful it might be entertaining. When an Archeologist starts talking source analysis of a medieval text you know he's way out of his field, but when he starts quoting his 'sources' without identifying the edition he's using and the translation probably isn't his, things are beginning to look unpromising. Already he seems far too fond of 'could it be'.

I have waded through numerous books on this subject and this is, so far, the best book I have read about translating poetry. It's also the most enjoyably readable.

http://ladygodivaandme.blogspot.com.a...
to save a thought for later

http://ladygodivaandme.blogspot.com.a...
to save a thought for later

http://ladygodivaandme.blogspot.com.a...
to save a thought for later

And it's hard going already.

This is a mildly irritating book. I'm not sure what the point of it was. It tells a well known story, but it's neither scholarly investigation nor detailed biography. I'm fifty pages from the end and will finish it. I WIll Finish IT.

This is a mildly irritating book. I'm not sure what the point of it was. It tells a well known story, but it's neither scholarly investigation nor detailed biography. I'm fifty pages from the end and will finish it. I WIll Finish IT.

This book is ghosted by 'The Pound Era' but so far it stands up well in the comparison. The approach is biographical, but Carr brings "the Imagists" to life, and that means all of them, not just Pound. This gives the 'movement' a much better context. It's also free of Kenner's (occasionally) overwrought textual analysis.

This book is ghosted by 'The Pound Era' but so far it stands up well in the comparison. The approach is biographical, but Carr brings "the Imagists" to life, and that means all of them, not just Pound. This gives the 'movement' a much better context. It's also free of Kenner's (occasionally) overwrought textual analysis.

I need a copy to highlight.....

The Pope's monologue is magnificent

I thought this was going to be an obligation, I half expected to be reading one book a month and feeling virtuous. I'm up to Book six already. It's compulsive. The Shearsman edition is excellent, a very short intro, a very useful but concise glossary, and then just text in a readable sized font with good margins for writing notes in.

It's hard to believe how irritating this book is. I should be cheering the author on from the side lines but the other reviewers who remarked on his style are right, sadly.

It's hard to believe how irritating this book is. I should be cheering the author on from the side lines but the other reviewer's who remarked on his style are right, sadly.

still resisting the urge to look up words or read the footnotes...picking up odd echoes; Pound in places, Joyce in others..

Twice through the preface, feeling thankful it wasn't an essay I had to mark, and then through the first section. Resisting the urge to look up all the unfamiliar words or read the footnotes. Need my own copy to scrawl notes in.

I was going to read the chapter on Expansionism and Xenophobia on the plane, but the two men in the row behind me ran the gamut of racism and xenophobia in a one hour flight so I will have to read the chapter later....it's very good so far. He's good on Old and Middle English, and he manages to not only trace the development of swearing but say some interesting things about Chaucer along the way....

Best put down of any biography? Describing the only other biography of Bunting: 'Almost every verifiable assertion in Alldritt's book , from Thomas' entry Bunting's birth certificate to the cause of death cited on his death certificate, is wrong'.
So far this one is very very good, Anyone who wants to make claims for the greatness of 'ViIlon" has my vote, and I like Burton's skepticism.