emily

english and linguistics majors || german and core texts minors

[local-deadpoet-deactivated20260]

drug of choice? english teachers complimenting my writing.

[shakespearetroupeofknaves]

To this day I still can’t tell my wife from her twin brother but other than that, our marriage is going fine.

Duke Orsino, Twelfth Night Epilogue (via shakespearetroupeofknaves)

[thelonelybrilliance]

One of my favorite things about Jane Austen is that she knew the real fear wasn’t running into some terrifying Frenchman or finding your lover’s wife in the attic…it was having to spend time with someone who is slighter cooler than you are, or playing piano in front of a critical audience, or thinking a picnic will be the perfect time for your jokes but then it isn’t

[cloudyoldlady]

✨ normalize asking people which brontë sister they identify with in order to figure out their personalities ✨

[the-most-sublime-fool]

Preraphaelites & Plath ~

•

Text: Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" (1965)

Images:

1. John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1851-52)

2. John Everett Millais, The Martyr of Solway

3. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Aurelia (Fazio's Mistress) (1863, reworked 1873)

[karrakazz]

t shirt that says “HENRY DAVID THOREAU’S MOM DID HIS LAUNDRY”

[qvotext]

There’s still a piece of me that can’t let go of you.

Skylar Grey; White Suburban (via qvotext)

[sjdsjkdlskdas-deactivated202012]

i don’t consume media to “have” “fun” i consume media in the same way catholic peasants lashed themselves in the streets in the 1300s

[nellygwyn]

God like….this project is the consequence of a really simplified understanding of women in the past and their experiences. 

[nellygwyn]

This is still pissing me off, especially as this nonsense was on our actual news here. I think it’s well intentioned but it misses the fact that most of the women who are going to be “re-branded” in this project chose their male pseudonyms for a specific reason that was unrelated to women authors not being taken seriously. We don’t use the Bronte sisters’ male pseudonyms anymore because we know that they only used those names to avoid sexist reception of their novels, and we rightfully want them to be fully embraced as women authors. But someone like George Eliot is still referred to as such, even though it wasn’t her real name. It wasn’t just something she put on her books so people would think she was a man and she’d be well received as a consequence, George Eliot literally became her authorial persona and identity. In fact, her birth name, Mary Ann Evan, seems to have made her cringe given the rough relationship she had with her family. George Sand, similarly, fought for her authorial and intellectual identity as George Sand to be recognised and respected. Vernon Lee’s male authorial persona as Vernon Lee was connected to her queer identity.

The problem with this project is that it presupposes that these women had little autonomy, that they were forced by societal pressure to pretend to be men….but they weren’t. They were making an active choice to construct these identities, for lots and lots of reasons (including reasons that were intimately connected to their writing). It’s honestly just kind of gross that most of these writers expressly had a preference for their male pseudonyms when they were writing and yet, this project wants to deny that choice completely for….what? Trying to remind people that they were women? Ffs, maybe if you put a few more of them on the damn curriculum, people would know.

[princesshamlet-deactivated20210]

the more i learn about william shakespeare the more i lose my mind

[princesshamlet-deactivated20210]

his tragedy coriolanus contains the first recorded use of the word lonely meaning bill shakespeare might have invented the word lonely

[princesshamlet-deactivated20210]

the phrase the word lonely first appeared in is “like to a lonely dragon”

[princesshamlet-deactivated20210]

also on an unrelated note two of his distant relatives were executed in 1583 for a plot to kill the queen. they were beheaded and their heads were placed on pikes on london bridge meaning as young aspiring thespian william shakespeare arrived in london for the very first time, he might have been greeted by his relatives’ rotting heads. i woulda turned around and gone the fuck back to stratford

[princesshamlet-deactivated20210]

in his time period life expectancy was 35. monks were expected to drink gallon of beer a day. the names “agnes” and “anne” were interchangeable because the g was silent so it’s entirely possible shakespeare was married to a woman named agnes instead. the words “trash” “fart” and “slut” existed, but not the word “science.” speaking of language by 1600 “thou” had fallen out of fashion meaning shakespeare might’ve only included it to be more fucking dramatic

[princesshamlet-deactivated20210]

he never once spelled his surname “shakespeare” (he preferred “shakspere” apparently) and he once signed a legal document as “willm shaksp”

[princesshamlet-deactivated20210]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLM SHAKSP

[macrolit]

Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1 of 15 vintage paperback classics that comprise our current giveaway)

[drkcdemia-deactivated20211211]

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

Voltaire, from “Candide, or, Optimism”, tr. Theo Cuffe, published n. 1947 (via wyrmgeard)

[thesaddestchorusgirlintheworld]

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019)

[thorndykes-deactivated20161204]

please stop reblogging sylvia plath poetry 

[thorndykes-deactivated20161204]

For ppl asking why she’s an anti black, anti Semite. She has used the n word and compared her depression to the holocaust

[transwolvie]

Even not counting her poetry her private journals are full of disgusting, overblown antisemitism. She didn’t just use Jewish people for her metaphors, she outright hated them irl and yet decided to use their suffering for her own gain

[foulserpent]

here’s a source with some quotes

[meta-hemeralism-blog]

okay, I’m Jewish and I appreciate this sentiment. and if someone wants to cut out Sylvia Plath, go for it, I get it.

But. by this logic we’d also need to stop reblogging TS Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare quotes. Virginia Woolf wrote anti-semetic things in her private journals, too. If you only want to read classic poets who liked Jews and black people, that’s fine, but like. good luck? Sylvia Plath isn’t an exception.

idk. Tumblr’s attitude of “consume nothing problematic” just doesn’t work if you’re part of a group that most culture-creators over the last few centuries have hated by default. For people actually in those groups, it’s not like the only two choices are 1) worship authors who hate you or 2) completely cut the majority of literature out of your life. You learn to read critically and acknowledge flaws where you find them.

anyway, as a Jewish woman, I would much rather see a version of this post that said “please read Sylvia Plath poetry critically because she’s anti black and antisemetic” than just “stop reblogging Sylvia Plath poetry.”

IMO, reblog Sylvia Plath all you want, just not unthinkingly.

[theroguefeminist]

I’m reblogging this now because I’m seeing anti-Virginia Woolf discourse lately due to the antisemitism in her journals and like… as a Jewish person who loves Virginia Woolf’s writing and an English teacher who knows that pretty much every writer of the classics is Problematic just…chill pls

[benevolent-atrophy]

The point isn’t to never consume media that isn’t ideologically pure. That’s never the point. Were that the goal, we would NEVER be able to consume any media. Nothing is ever ideologically pure, especially as time goes on and our social consciousness expands.

We should be telling people instead, “Be critical as you read this person’s work. They held bigoted views. Understand how that is reflected in their work, and be mindful of it. Be critical, be thoughtful”

Compelling others to not engage with something at ALL on ideological grounds is in the same vein as burning books. We should be compelling others to be critical and mindful, not narrow and willfully ignorant.

[antique-scarecrow]

“Understand how it is reflected in their work, and be mindful of it.”

[portableoctober]

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

[philosophybits]

The recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim.

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (via philosophybits)

[karijote]

[fixyourwritinghabits]

I reblogged one of these but this one is even better.

[fire-fira]

Here’s your reminder that the US doesn’t have an official language.