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trying to be happy :) English philology student

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@saturnlus-stuff
Follow me on Substack!
trying to be happy :) English philology student
"lady macbeth was manipulating macbeth because of her own ambition to be queen" "lady macbeth never really wanted to be queen she was only doing it because she loved her husband" no you don't understand she was doing it for them. at the beginning of the play the macbeths are a team, partners in greatness, one cannot exist without the other. she doesn't want power only for herself or only for him, she wants them to rule together, equally. that's why it's so devastating when she doesn't get that, when becoming king and queen only drives them apart, because she wanted them to be partners in greatness and she got the opposite.
The lyrical poetic formâs origins can be traced back earlier than Petrarch.
Of variable rhyme scheme and meter, sonnets are sometimes structured into stanzas of an octet and a sestet or of three quartets and a concluding couplet. They are normally fourteen lines long, though always with a concluding volta, the rhetorical turn that gives the sonnet its reputation for surprise, rigor, and elegance. In lyric intensity, in density of imagery and turn of phrase, a sonnet is instantly recognizable. The professor of comparative medieval literature Paul Oppenheimer, writing in Comparative Literature, explains that sonnets are highly dialectical, whereby an issue (often concerning romantic love) is posed, but the âform of the poem will solve the problem,â a form somewhere between a poem and a syllogism.
There are structural variations: the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet; the English or Shakespearean sonnet; Edmund Spenser and Alexander Pushkin both invented their own types, and there are any number of deviations, a flexibility that proves their enduring appeal. Oppenheimer argues that the âinvention of the sonnet was a momentous event,â as âno major poet⌠in Italian, German, French, Spanish, and English has failed to write sonnets.â And as Christopher Kleinhenz notes in the edited collection Francis Petrarch, Six Centuries Later: A Symposium: â750 years after its appearance, the sonnet still has the same basic form.â
Kleinhenz writes: âFor centuries the sonnet has remained the most popular and the most difficult poetic form in Western literature,â with few canonical poets since the Renaissance completely avoiding them. The endurance of the fourteen lines is startling, though a return to its complex origins almost a millennium ago provides a fuller understanding of its appeal. The sonnet, as it turns out, is many things; not least of which is a lesson in the complexity of societies and souls.
With good reason the fourteenth-century Tuscan poet Petrarch is the sonnetâs exemplar. In fact, heâs often erroneously understood as its creator. Petrarch penned Il Canzoniere, a sequence of 366 poemsâthe vast majority of which are sonnetsâdedicated to his idealized love Laura de Noves. Petrarchâs vision appeared bold, new, and uncompromising, whereby he would declare in Sonnet 105 of Il Canzoniere: âUnderstand me who can, for I understand myselfââa full-throated affirmation of radical individuality.
Though he was an inhabitant of the Middle Ages, Petrarchâs mind was of the Renaissance: the primogeniture of that era. âThe early humanists universally regarded Francesco Petrarch as their founder,â writes Robert E. Proctor in Renaissance Quarterly. In his enthusiasms for travel, classical writing, and individual expression, Petrarch was a vital advocate for the pedagogical reform movement known as humanism. The fusion of aesthetics and erudition known as Petrarchism was foundational, for, as Oppenheimer argues, the âinvention of the sonnet may possess an even greater importance: it may mark the beginnings of what we must mean by âmodernâ poetry.â Petrarch didnât invent the sonnet, however, for that honor is owed to an obscure (though brilliant) poet named Giacomo da Lentini, who was a notary for King Frederick II of Sicily, writing nearly a century before the celebrated Tuscan. If the sonnet was a mechanism for creating modernity, then da Lentini is the engineer whom we must credit. And yet even the most adept of engineers must draw from materials not of their own crafting.
Iâve seen it rain on sunny days And seen the darkness flash with light And even lightning turn to haze.
So writes da Lentini in a sonnet translated by Leo Zoutewelle. While da Lentini doesnât reach the heights that we associate with Petrarch and Shakespeare, the hallmarks are all there. Structured as an octet combined with a sestet, and already with the characteristic volta which mimics a mind in argument with itself, da Lentini engages a series of contradictions, of âsweet things [that] taste of bitternessâ and âenemies their love confess,â but by the volta, these paradoxes are set in perspective by the even âstranger things Iâve seen of love.â The paradoxes are never reconciledâif anything, each line is a tiny dialecticâsuch as when da Lentini writes of that which âhealed my wounds by wounding meâ and of being âsaved from love, [though] love now burns more.â
The Sicilian School of poets had several traditions to draw from. Because âsonnetâ roughly translates to âsong,â even though itâs believed that few lyrics were ever actually set to music, scholars have searched for the formâs origin beyond poetry. The most obvious candidate is the eight-line strambotto, a peasant song to which may have been added a sestet.
There are also non-Western candidates, with scholars having long suspected that da Lentini drew from Arabic poetry. This was unsurprising, for Sicily was at the confluence of the known world. By the thirteenth century, Sicily had had periods of rule by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs, and Normans, with strong cultural influence from all of them. Buffeted between the Latin West, the Byzantine East, and the Islamic world, the Kingdom of Sicily was ruled over by Frederick, a Swabian German, who established a Palermo court known for its efficiency, tolerance, and innovation. With a large population of Jews and Muslims, Arab influence remained vital, with the Emirate of Sicily having fallen to Norman invaders only a bit more than a century before.
The scholar Samar Attar claims in Arab Studies Quarterly that the âformation of Italian literary texts between 1200 and 1400 cannot adequately be understood without reference to the various Arabic and Islamic sources that date back to the seventh century onwards.â Likewise, literary scholar Kamal Abu-Deeb writes in Critical Survey that the sonnet has âschemes, or structures, that are variations⌠on structures of the muwashshahat produced by Arab poets,â a genre which unlike the sonnet is traditionally set to music, while Oppenheimer notes that several scholars have argued that the form âderived from the Arab zajal, a rhyming stanza popular with the Arabs living in Sicily in Giacomoâs time.â Even more evocative than the morphological similarities are the thematic ones; with its volta, the sonnet mirrors the dialectic argumentation that marked Islamic and Jewish philosophy, and in its celebration of secular love there are antecedents in Sufism. âThe idea that a beloved woman can be the manifestation of divinity or the emanation of God was acceptable among the Arabs much earlier before the thirteenth centuryâ writes Attar. In short, Petrarchâs Laura has Islamic precedents.
There is the potential for other idiosyncratic influences on the sonnet. From 1209 to 1229 the town of Albi in Languedoc faced a bloody crusade waged by the Church against a group of Christian heretics known as Cathars (though sometimes referred to as Albigensians, after the seat of their movement). Much romanticized in the ensuing centuries, the neo-gnostic Cathars promulgated a gospel that saw the material world as evil, argued that the universe was dualistically split between good and evil, extolled the equivalence of the sexes, and celebrated Platonic spiritual union (including a belief in reincarnation).
The Cathars shared their Occitan tongue (closely related to both French and Catalan) with the troubadours, a movement of poet-performers who set their verse to music. There is academic disagreement about the relationship between the Cathars and the Languedoc troubadours, but some scholars argue that the latter were the artistic vanguard of the former, with Michael Bryson and Arpi Movesian in Love and its Critics: From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Miltonâs Eden arguing that âthe massacres that followed affected the poetry of the thirteenth century. No longer were poets free to flout the morality of the Church without trepidation.â The result was that later troubadour poetry encoded Cathar beliefs rather than explicitly expressing them.
From French Provence, many refugees from the destruction of Catharism made their way across the Mediterranean at the invitation of Frederick, and they may have influenced the nascent sonneteers. Writing in Speculum, the poetry scholar Elias L. Rivers declares that there is a âconsensus with regard to most poetry of the Sicilian School, namely that the concept of love on which these sonnets are based is in general the same as that of the Provencal troubadours: the poet âservesâ his lady as a vassal.â A tradition of idealized platonic love, so identified with Medieval poetry, finds its way into the early sonnets through Islamic and troubadour influence. Elias confidently declares that the ânewly invented sonnet form so shaped, and merged with, the subject-matter of the troubadours as to constitute a coherent poetic genre of great vitality.â
On the other hand, in Parrots and Nightingales: Troubadour Quotations and the Development of European Poetry, the French literature scholar Sarah Kay asserts that there was a âgradual take-up of troubadour inspired poetry among⌠writers of the Sicilian school.â While orthodox Catholics would have blanched at the association with heresy, the rich heritage of Occitan poetry âwas acknowledged by Dante and Petrarch, who extended their indirect influence throughout the Europe of the Renaissance,â as the editors of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics write. So integral is the influence of Occitan upon the foundations of the sonnet that the comparative literature scholar William D. Paden in Annali dâItalianistica quips that he considers âPetrarch as though he were the last troubadour.â
Oppenheimer claims that the Platonism that became foundational for Renaissance philosophy (also crucial to Catharism) is numerically structured into the sonnet. He sees a crucial relationship between the number of lines in the sestet, the octet, and the twelve lines of the poem before the concluding couplet. âThe proportions 6:8 and 6:8:12 did play exceedingly interesting roles in the history of ideas⌠where they describe⌠âharmonicâ proportions,â Oppenheimer writes, because the ânotion of the 6:8:12 relation as âharmonicâ⌠may be found much earlier, in the Pythagorean-Platonic theory of numbers.â The ratio between the sestet and octet may indicate a mystical understanding that would dominate Renaissance humanism, but arguably even more important is what the form accomplishesâa full-throated, lyrically compact, dialectically structured meditation on subjective consciousness. Oppenheimer claims that for this reason the sonnet is âin a real sense, a lyric sung by the soul to the soulâ with a âmysterious aesthetic perfection⌠like the profoundest of small mirrors, [which] still plumbs the depths of our best poetsâ richest gifts.â
There is an intrinsic mystery to the attractions of those fourteen lines. In the seventeenth-century Donne described sonnets as being like a series of âpretty rooms.â Two centuries later and Edith Wharton would call them a âpure form⌠like some chalice of old time,â and Dante Gabriel Rossetti said that sonnets were a âmomentâs monument,â while in our own century Terrance Hayes claimed that theyâre âpart prison, / Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.â
The sonnet is arguably something else as wellâan ancient vehicle for ideas from a millennium ago, an innovation of forgotten poets in the sun-dappled, lemon-tree-filled courts of King Frederick II, his notaries working at the crossroads of east and west, Islam and Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy, for whom the form would function as an incubator for individuality, the lyric a catalyst for a new way of observing. Rather than saying that the sonnet was an exemplar of the Renaissance, itâs more accurate to say that the Renaissance was born because of the sonnet, this perfect lyric gem of thought and experience.
"For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language; there was no candidate, not English, not French, that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. A thousand worlds. No; within one. And translation a necessary endeavour, however futile, to move between them."
- Babel by R.F. Kuang
This may be a hot take but people who hated Babel because they think of it as anti-white have never thought critically about a single second of any History lesson they ever had
I literally just read a hate review that was like that and my head just went ??????
You're reading a book about colonialism in its peak and you think white people will be anything but racist?? IN EUROPE??? IN ENGLAND?? In the middle of colonialism at its peak????
Enlighten me about how your mind works, please
In his essay Aesthetic Evolution in Man, Charles Grant Allen introduces a curious term that captures a subtle but profound human tendency: a
I wrote a little something! Please visit and read my content if youâd like :)
hey donât cry. the Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite ok?
i donât even need to know the context of this drawing
pussy game so strong it scared the devil
no but literally that is what is happening, there have been long periods of western history where spirits were said t be frightened by the site of lady business. Sailorâs wives used to flash their husbands ships (mind you this was a time before underwear so you just lifted your petticoats and BAM) in order to scare away the spirits and devils that made storms. A woman could flash her crops to keep away spirits that might ruin them.This was also back when the vagoo was seen as something taboo and horrible so literally looking directly at some labia was thought to be so scary the devil would poop himself. Misogyny so intense it gave the pussy superpowers.Â
AnĂĄsyrma is the gesture of lifting the skirt or kilt and indeed has a whole history of supernatural effects both negative and positive. Hereâs the wiki on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasyrma
Official Pussy Post
â Susan Sontag, from âDeath Kit,â (1967) (via lunamonchtuna)
I just finished reading The Secret History for the first time, and let me tell you, my life has not only been changed, but also destroyed.
I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:
Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weaponâs region of origin.Â
Here is a page of medieval weapons.
Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.
Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.
Here are some gemstones.
Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on.Â
Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, donât worry) information about the black market.
Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised.Â
Here is every religion in the world.Â
Here is every language in the world.
Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.
Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.
Here are poisonous plants.
Here are plants in general.
Feel free to add more to this!
questions I think would be fun to be asked
what are 3 things youâd say shaped you into who you are?
show us a picture of your handwriting?
3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?
whatâs an inside joke you have with your family or friends?
what made you start your blog?
whatâs the best and worst part of being online/a creator?
what scares you the most and why?
any reacquiring dreams?
tell a story about your childhood
would you say youâre an emotional person?
what do you consider to be romance?
whatâs some good advice you want to share?
what are you doing right now?
whatâs something youâve always wanted to do but maybe been to scared to do?
what do you think of when you hear the word âhomeâ?
if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
name 3 things that make you happy
do you believe in ghosts and/or aliens?
favourite thing about the day?
favourite things about the night?
are you a spiritual person?
say 3 things about someone you love
say 3 things about someone you hate
whatâs one thing youâre proud of yourself for?
fave season and why?
fave colour and why?
any nicknames?
do you collect anything?
what do you do when youâre sad?
whatâs one thing that never fails to make you happy/happier?
are you messy or organised?
how many tabs do you have open right now?
any hobbies?
any pet peeves?
do you trust easily?
are you an open book or do you have walls up?
share a secret
fave song at the moment?
youtuber youâve been obsessed with and why?
any bad habits?
(this post was stolen from @teenage-mutant-ninja-freak, since it couldn't be reblogged anymore)
Sean makes me so sad, especially because he's really characterized by fans as being just silly and stupid, but if you just watch him for a bit you get so much more. The way he's treated by the gang really makes me think that they are not as much of a family as some believe. The gang is just as influenced by the time period as anyone else. The men are given noticably less care, they're expected to act a certain way and there is noticable pushback when they do not. Arthur and Sean are both kidnapped and tortured and the pain they experienced is never mentioned again. Sean is put right back to work and chastised when he tries to get a moments rest.
I think him and Karen as a couple are super underrated too, they've both cornered themselves into a stereotype/niche in the gang, and really can't find a way out of that. Karen is tough, Sean is supposed to be happy to lucky. They both have issues with drinking and neither receive much emotional support by the people around them.
Sean has been through so much. Note that he grew up barely forty years after the famine that killed millions of Irish people. He grew up poor, under the brutal systems of British colonialism. His father fought against that and when he tried to flee, he was murdered in his own bed (likely with his son either in the same room or adjacent room). I think we need more collective appreciation for the funky little guy, he's a lot more than a silly younger sibling figure.