1 D1B20 – INITIATION A LA LITTERATURE ANGLOPHONE Présentation du cours

Introduction générale : L’enseignement de D1B20 s’adresse à des étudiants d’anglais de première année de licence inscrits en régime Télé 3. Le cours est une étape d’initiation à l’étude de la littérature anglophone : il comprend une introduction générale à cette littérature, ainsi que l’étude suivie du roman de George Orwell, 1984. Outils de travail : Les documents de travail fournis par Télé 3 sont la brochure de textes se trouvant à la suite de cette page de présentation (fascicule 1), et une série de douze conférences (fascicule 2, qui vous sera envoyé mi-décembre). Les conférences, rédigées en anglais, comportent deux parties. La première est consacrée à la présentation d’un panorama de la littérature anglophone : on tracera une esquisse des grandes tendances de la production littéraire de langue anglaise en abordant certains aspects majeurs d’un auteur, d’une époque ou d’un genre, et en s’appuyant toujours sur les textes disponibles (dans le fascicule 1). La deuxième partie est consacrée à la mise en place de repères pour l’étude suivie de 1984. Ces conférences vous aideront à construire le cadre nécessaire dans lequel s’inscrira ensuite votre travail sur les textes. Ce fascicule, ainsi qu’une copie du roman d’Orwell, vous sont indispensables puisque vous en étudierez des extraits. Les textes rassemblés ici ont été choisis et préparés par Raphaël Costambeys, Isabelle Gadoin et Christine Lorre-Johnston, avec la participation de Dennis Tredy. Par ailleurs, vous pourrez vous référer aux ouvrages indiqués en bibliographie (voir page suivante). Ce sont des anthologies et des ouvrages généraux dont la consultation vous sera utile lors de vos préparations sur des extraits de textes, en complément des éléments apportés dans les conférences. Vous pouvez aussi lire, totalement ou en partie, les ouvrages dont sont tirés les extraits étudiés, la plupart se trouvant à la bibliothèque de Censier. Organisation du travail et du suivi pédagogique : Commencez dès maintenant par lire 1984 dans sa version originale, c’est-à-dire en anglais (édition Penguin de préférence). Il vous faut bien connaître le texte pour être capable de resituer un passage dans son contexte, et éventuellement de comparer le passage à commenter avec d’autres passages du roman. Le suivi pédagogique de cet enseignement sera assuré par [nom de l’enseignant à préciser] qui vous enverra prochainement un calendrier et des instructions de travail, avec des devoirs à remettre en janvier, février, et mars. Vous les enverrez à télé 3 pour la date indiquée, ils seront annotés et vous seront renvoyés avec un corrigé. Méthode et objectifs du cours : Les objectifs sont pluriels : par le travail sur les textes de la brochure, il s’agit de replacer des auteurs et leurs œuvres dans leur contexte historique et culturel ; de procéder à un travail de compréhension et d’analyse des textes proposés ; d’acquérir et mettre en pratique des outils d’analyse narratologique, stylistique et poétique ; de rendre compte de la lecture d’un texte lors d’une explication guidée par des questions (étape d’initiation au commentaire) ; de mettre en relation les textes entre eux et étudier les jeux d’intertextualité (par la lecture de textes complémentaires parallèlement au texte étudié). Quant au travail sur 1984, il vise à vous initier à l’étude suivie d’un roman. Autant d’approches pour se familiariser avec une variété de textes littéraires. Les travaux se font tous en anglais. Modalités de contrôle : Le travail fourni régulièrement au cours de l’année est noté mais ne compte pas. L’examen a lieu en mai. Il dure 2 heures, compte pour 100% de la note finale, et comporte une explication de texte guidée et une question de cours portant sur les conférences et les textes de la brochure. On compte environ 1h30 pour l’explication et 30mn pour la question, mais c’est vous qui gérez votre temps. L’examen de rattrapage (session de juin) est identique à l’examen final : un écrit de 2 heures comportant une explication de texte guidée et une question de cours.

2 TABLE DES MATIÈRES

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Table des matières……………………………………………………………………………………..2-3 Bibliographie…………………………………………………………………………………………..…4 Textes : Christopher MARLOWE, from The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1592 / pub. 1604)…………..5 William SHAKESPEARE, from Richard III (c. 1591-92)………………………………………………6 William SHAKESPEARE, from Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595)…………………………………………...7 William SHAKESPEARE, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595)………………………………...8 William SHAKESPEARE, from Julius Caesar (c. 1599 / pub. 1623)…………………………………..9 William SHAKESPEARE, from Macbeth (1606)…………………………………………………..10-11 William SHAKESPEARE, from The Tempest (1611)………………………………………………….12 William SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet (1595/1609)……………………………………………………….13 Ben JONSON, from Volpone, or the Fox (1606)………………………………………………………14 From the “Revelation,” King James Bible (1611)……………………………………………………...15 John MILTON, from Paradise Lost (1667)…………………………………………………………….16 Jonathan SWIFT, from A Modest Proposal (1729)…………………………………………………17-18 Henry FIELDING, from Joseph Andrews (1742)………………………………………………………19 William BLAKE, “The Tyger,” from The Songs of Experience (1794)………………………………..20 William WORDSWORTH, from the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800)…………………………..21 William WORDSWORTH, “The Last of the Flock” (1789)…………………………………...…..22-23 Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, “Kubla Khan” (1798)…………………………………………………..24 Jane AUSTEN, from Pride and Prejudice (1813)……………………………………………………...25 Mary SHELLEY, from Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818)…………………………….26 Ralph Waldo EMERSON, from “Self-Reliance” (1841)……………………………………………….27 Emily BRONTË, from Wuthering Heights (1847)……………………………………………………..28 Edgar Allan POE, “Annabel Lee” (1849, 1850)………………………………………..………………29 Nathaniel HAWTHORNE, from The Scarlet Letter (1850)……………………………………………30 Herman MELVILLE, from Moby Dick (1851)…………………………………………………………31 Charles DICKENS, from Hard Times (1854)…………………………………………………………..32 Walt WHITMAN, from “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass (1855, 1st ed°)………………………….33 Lewis CARROLL, from Alice in Wonderland (1862-1863)…………………………………………...34 Mark TWAIN, from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)…………………………………….35 Thomas HARDY, from Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891)…………………………………………..36-37 Joseph CONRAD, from Heart of Darkness (1902)…………………………………………………….38 Theodore DREISER, from The Financier (1912-1914)………………………………………………..39 James JOYCE, from “The Dead” (1914)……………………………………………………………….40 Edith WHARTON, from The Age of Innocence (1920)………………………………………………..41 T.S. ELIOT, “The Hollow Men” (1925)………………………………………………………………..42 Virginia WOOLF, from To the Lighthouse (1927)…………………………………………………43-44 Virginia WOOLF, from A Room of One’s Own (1929)………………………………………………...45 William FAULKNER, from The Sound and the Fury (1929)………………………………………….46 David Herbert LAWRENCE, “Bavarian Gentians” (comp. 1929)……………………………………..47 Raymond CHANDLER, from The Big Sleep (1939)………………………………………………….48 W. H. AUDEN, “As I Walked Out One Evening” (1940)……………………………………………..49

3 J.D. SALINGER, from The Catcher in the Rye (1951)……………………………………………….50 Flannery O’CONNOR, from “The Displaced Person” (1955)………………………………………..51 Allen GINSBERG, “A Supermarket in California” (1955)…………………………………………….52 Vladimir NABOKOV, from Lolita (1955)……………………………………………………………..53 Janet FRAME, from Owls Do Cry (1961)……………………………………………………………...54 Toni MORRISON, from The Bluest Eye (1970)……………………………………………………55-56 Toni MORRISON, from Playing in the Dark (1992)…………………………………………………..56 Fleur ADCOCK, “Against Coupling” (1971)…………………………………………………………..57 Angela CARTER, “The Werewolf” (1978)…………………………………………………………….58 J. M. COETZEE, from Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)…………………………………………59-60 L. K. JOHNSON, “Inglan Is a Bitch” (1980)…………………………………………………………..61 Salman RUSHDIE, from Midnight’s Children (1981)…………………………………………………62 Tony HARRISON, “Them & [uz]” (1981)……………………………………………………………..63 C.A. DUFFY, “Standing Female Nude” (1985)………………………………………………………..64 Margaret ATWOOD, from The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)……………………………………………...65 Kazuo ISHIGURO, from The Remains of the Day (1989)……………………………………………..66 Philip ROTH, from The Human Stain (2000)…………………………………………………………..67 Peter CAREY, from True History of the Kelly Gang (2001)…………………………………………...68

4 BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Indispensable : -la brochure de textes et les conférences (fournies par télé 3). -George ORWELL, 1984. Penguin [1949]. Ouvrages de référence essentiels : Françoise GRELLET, A Handbook of Literary Terms : Introduction au vocabulaire littéraire anglais, Hachette, 1996. Françoise GRELLET, Literature in English : Anthologie des littératures du monde anglophone, Hachette, 2002. Ouvrages et ressources complémentaires : Anthologies et histoires de la littérature en anglais GRELLET, Françoise et M.-H. VALENTIN. From Sydney to Sillitoe. An Introduction to English Literature. Hachette, 1984. GRELLET, Françoise. “Time Present and Time Past”. An Introduction to American Literature. Hachette, 1987. Ouvrages stylistiques et généraux CUDDONS, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin, 1991 (3rd ed.). DRABBLE, Margaret, ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1995. VERLEY, Claudine. A Guide to the Critical Reading of Fiction in English / Lectures critiques en anglais. Ophrys, 1998. Site internet Literature Online: a fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies and key criticism and reference resources. http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk/ [Site payant, mais accessible gratuitement des ordinateurs destinés aux étudiants à Censier.]

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The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (1592), Christopher MARLOWE Christopher Marlowe was one of the first professional playwrights. The themes of ambition and the rise to power appear in his plays and characterize Renaissance.drama as a whole. The story of Faust stages the struggle between good and evil. In this excerpt, in accordance with the terms of his compact with Satan, Faustus has had all he wanted for twenty-four years. The time has now come for him to surrender his soul to the Devil.

Act V, scene 2. The clock strikes eleven. FAUSTUS. Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn’d perpetually. Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come. Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but 140 A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul. O lente, lente, currite noctis equi! The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike. The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d. O I’ll leap up to my God; who pulls me down? See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the [firmament. One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my [Christ. Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ; Yet will I call on him. O spare me, Lucifer. 150 Where is it now? ’Tis gone: and see where God Stretcheth out his arm and bends his ireful brows. Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of God. No, no! Then will I headlong run into the earth. Earth, gape. O, no, it will not harbour me. You stars that reign’d at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist 160 Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds, That when you vomit forth into the air My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to heaven. The watch strikes. Ah, half the hour is past, ’twill all be past anon. O God, If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul, Yet for Christ’s sake whose blood hath ransom’d [me Impose some end to my incessant pain:

Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, 170 A hundred thousand, and at last be sav’d. No end is limited to damned souls. Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? Or why is this immortal that thou hast? Ah, Pythagoras’ metempsychosis, were that true, This soul should fly from me, and I be chang’d Into some brutish beast. All beasts are happy, For when they die Their souls are soon dissolv’d in elements, But mine must live still to be plagu’d in hell. 180 Curs’d be the parents that engender’d me! No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer, That hath depriv’d thee of the joys of heaven. The clock striketh twelve. It strikes, it strikes; now body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell. Thunder and lightning. O soul, be chang’d into little water drops And fall into the ocean, ne’er to be found. Thunder, and enter the devils. My God, my God, look not so fierce on me. Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while. Ugly hell, gape not; come not, Lucifer. I’ll burn my books. Ah, Mephistophilis! Exeunt with him.

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The Tragedie of Richard the Third (circa 1591-2), William SHAKESPEARE The play opens with this soliloquy where the misshapen figure of Richard III – a hunchback from his premature birth – informs us that the civil wars are over, with the House of York victorious over the House of Lancaster. However, though Richard’s side is triumphant, he is discontent with the advent of peaceful times and he is determined to prove himself, this ‘son’ of York, a villain. He has set his brother, the recently crowned King Edward, against his other brother Clarence: “Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, / By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, / To set my brother Clarence and the King / In deadly hate the one against the other.” This final instalment in Shakespeare’s historical tetralogy, however, concludes with Richard III’s downfall and death by Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

Act I, scene 1. Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester, alone RICHARD Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York, And all the clouds that loured upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front, And now, instead of mounting barbèd steeds 10 To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time 20 Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them – Why I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity. And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain 30 And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the King In deadly hate the one against the other; And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false, and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mewed up About a prophecy which says that G Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence [comes!

William Shakespeare, 1564-1616

Al Pacino as Richard III in Looking for Richard (1996)

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Romeo and Juliet (circa 1595), William SHAKESPEARE Romeo and Juliet is more than simply Shakespeare’s perennial romantic tragedy. One may consider this play to be dangerous and experimental, breaking away as it does from the conventions of its time, reinforcing the play’s themes: love and hate, light and dark, time (as theme and structure), and Fortune expressed through dreams and omens that point to the tragic ending. There are three sonnets hidden away in the play, and this extract includes the second one. Romeo first sees Juliet at a Capulet banquet, and instantly falls for her, forgetting his previous love, Rosaline. Their first exchange is framed by a shared sonnet full of religious imagery hiding quite a sexy conversation and, indeed, the concluding couplet is shared and culminates with a kiss.

Act I, scene 5 Romeo

Juliet

Romeo Juliet Romeo Juliet Romeo Juliet Romeo Juliet Nurse

If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do: They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake. Then move not while my prayer's effect I take. [He kisses her.] Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg’d. Then have my lips the sin that they have took. Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg’d. Give me my sin again. [He kisses her.]

95

100

105

You kiss by th’book. Madam, your mother craves a word with you.

110

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), William SHAKESPEARE The theme of love predominates in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, the plots of which are often complex. These plays mix courtly love and magic, realism and a fanciful atmosphere. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia and Lysander’s love is crossed by Egeus, Hermia’s father. The fairies, over whom Oberon and Titania rule, intervene and spread disorder by using a love juice extracted from a flower called “love-in-idleness”: “The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, / Will make or man or woman madly dote / Upon the next live creature that it sees.” (II, 1, 169-171) Puck, Oberon’s jester (or professional clown) lays some juice on Demetrius’s eyes, making him fall in love with Helena whom he used to flee. She thinks he is mocking her and becomes madly angry. But everything is set straight by the end of the play, when several marriages are celebrated as all watch a play-within-theplay, a masque retracing the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, which gives a distorted and comic version of the main plot. The three excerpts that follow illustrate Shakespeare’s playful use of the language of love at various points of the play. Crystal is muddy. O how ripe in show Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow! That pure congealed white, high Taurus’ snow, Fann’d with the eastern wind, turns to a crow When thou hold’st up thy hand. O let me kiss This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!

Excerpt 1: Act 1, scene 1, 128-155 “The crossed lovers” LYSANDER How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast? HERMIA Belike for want of rain, which I could well Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes. LYSANDER Ay me! For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth; But, either it was different in blood,—

130

135

HERMIA O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low. LYSANDER Or else misgraffed in respect of years— HERMIA O spite! too old to be engag’d to young. LYSANDER Or else it stood upon the choice of friends— HERMIA O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes.

HELENA O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent To set against me for your merriment. If you were civil, and knew courtesy, You would not do me thus much injury. Can you not hate me, as I know you do, But you must join in souls to mock me too? If you were men, as men you are in show, You would not use a gentle lady so: To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts, When I am sure you hate me with your hearts. You both are rivals, and love Hermia; And now both rivals to mock Helena. A trim exploit, a manly enterprise, To conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes With your derision! None of noble sort Would so offend a virgin, and extort A poor soul’s patience, all to make you sport.

140

145

150

155

160

Excerpt 3: Act V, scene 1, 311-334 “The masque: ‘A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe, very tragical mirth’” 140 Thisbe

LYSANDER Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And, ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’, The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion. HERMIA If then true lovers have been ever cross’d, It stands as an edict in destiny: Then let us teach our trial patience, Because it is a customary cross, As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs, Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers. Excerpt 2: Act III, scene 2, 137-161 “The magic of the love juice” DEMETRIUS (Waking) O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?

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Asleep, my love? What, dead, my dove? O Pyramus, arise! Speak, speak! Quite dumb? Dead, dead? A tomb 315 Must cover thy sweet eyes. These lily lips, This cherry nose, These yellow cowslip cheeks, Are gone, are gone! Lovers, make moan; His eyes were green as leeks. O Sisters Three, Come, come to me, With hands as pale as milk; Lay them in gore, Since you have shore With shears his thread of silk. Tongue, not a word: Come, trusty sword; Come, blade, my breast imbrue! [Stabs herself ] And, farewell, friends; Thus Thisbe ends: Adieu, adieu, adieu! [Dies ]

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Julius Caesar (circa 1599, published 1623), William SHAKESPEARE Was Caesar a ruthless usurper, universally hated in Rome, proud and vain? Or was he a Colossus, a supernatural conqueror, dedicated to the good of Rome? And was his assassination a way of saving the state from a potential tyrant, or was it just senseless butchery? In front of the plebeians, Antony, loyal to Caesar, is going to try and expose the conspirators led by Brutus and Cassius and turn round the opinion of the Roman citizens.

Act III, Scene 2, IL 75-159 ANTONY Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: 5 If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest (For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men) 10 Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral, He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome 15 Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; 20 And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did twice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; 25 And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? 30 O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me. FIRST CITIZEN Methinks there is much reason in his sayings. 35 SECOND CITIZEN If thou consider rightly of the matter, Caesar has had great wrong. THIRD CITIZEN Has he, masters? I fear there will a worse come in his place. FOURTH CITIZEN

Mark’d ye his words? He would not take the crown; Therefore ‘tis certain he was not ambitious. 40 FIRST CITIZEN If it be found so, some will dear abide it. SECOND CITIZEN Poor soul! his eyes are red as fire with weeping. THIRD CITIZEN There’s not a nobler man in Rome than Antony. FOURTH CITIZEN Now mark him, he begins again to speak. ANTONY But yesterday the word of Caesar might 45 Have stood against the world, now lies he there. And none so poor to do him reverence. O masters, if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, 50 Who, you all know, are honourable men: I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, Than I will wrong such honourable men. But here’s a parchment with the seal of Caesar; 55 I found it in his closet, ’tis his will: Let but the commons hear this testament— Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read— And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds And dip their napkins in his sacred blood, 60 Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, And, dying, mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it as a rich legacy unto their issue. FOURTH CITIZEN We’ll hear the will: read it, Mark Antony. ALL The will, the will! we will hear Caesar’s will. 65 ANTONY Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it; It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you. You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; And, being men, bearing the will of Caesar, It will inflame you, it will make you mad: 70 ’Tis good you know not that you are his heirs, For if you should, O, what would come of it! FOURTH CITIZEN Read the will; we’ll hear it, Antony, You shall read us the will, Caesar’s will!

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Macbeth (1606), William SHAKESPEARE Macbeth is a complex hero, torn by doubt and guilt. Unable to resist the promptings of his wife’s boundless ambition, he has violated the laws of the state and of hospitality, by murdering his guest, King Duncan, and usurping his power. This first act has generated an endless spiral of violence and murders, and trapped Macbeth and his wife into an almost hallucinatory world of remorse and nightmares. Here are three excerpts from the play. The first is the opening scene with the three witches who hover over the play (they appear four times altogether: I,1; I,3; III,5 and IV,1), and the second is their subsequent encounter with Macbeth and Banquo, and their prediction to Macbeth. The third excerpt is from the last act, in which Macbeth finally understands the meaning of the witches’ prophecy, as his castle is besieged by the enemy, and he is informed of his wife’s suicide. All. The Weïrd Sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go about, about: Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, And thrice again, to make up nine Peace!—the charm’s wound up.

The three witches Act I, scene 1 [An open place] Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches. 1 Witch. When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 2 Witch. When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won. 3 Witch. That will be ere the set of sun. 1 Witch. Where the place? 2 Witch Upon the heath. 3 Witch. There to meet with Macbeth. 1 Witch. I come, Graymalkin! 2 Witch. Paddock calls. 3 Witch. Anon! All. Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air. [Exeunt.

35

Enter Macbeth and Banquo. 5

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Act I, scene 3 [A heath.] Thunder. Enter the three Witches. 1 Witch. Where hast thou been, Sister? 2 Witch. Killing swine. 3 Witch. Sister, where thou? 1 Witch. A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, And mounch’d, and mounch’d, and mounch’d: ‘Give me,’ quoth I:— 5 ‘Aroynt thee, witch!’ the rump-fed ronyon cries. Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’th’Tiger: But in a sieve I’ll thither sail, And like a rat without a tail; I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do. 10 2 Witch. I’ll give thee a wind. 1 Witch. Th’art kind. 3 Witch. And I another. 1 Witch. I myself have all the other; And the very ports they blow, 15 All the quarters that they know I’th’shipman’s card. I’ll drain him dry as hay: Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his penthouse lid; 20 He shall live a man forbid. Weary sev’n-nights nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine: Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost. 25 Look what I have. 2 Witch.. Show me, show me. 1 Witch. Here I have a pilot’s thumb, Wrack’d, as homeward he did come. [Drum within. 3 Witch. A drum! A drum! 30 Macbeth doth come.

Macb. So foul and fair a day I have not seen. Ban. How far is’t call’d to Forres?—What are these, So wither’d and so wild in their attire, 40 That look not like th’inhabitants o’th’earth, And yet are on’t? Live you? or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her choppy finger laying Upon her skinny lips: you should be women, 45 And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so. Macb. Speak, if you can:—what are you? 1 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! 2 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! 3 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be King hereafter. Ban. Good Sir, why do you start, and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair?—I’th’name of truth, Are ye fantastical, or that indeed Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner You greet with present grace, and great prediction 55 Of noble having, and of royal hope, That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not. If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear, 60 Your favours nor your hate. 1 Witch. Hail! 2 Witch. Hail! 3 Witch. Hail! 1 Witch. Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. 65 2 Witch. Not so happy, yet much happier; 3 Witch. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none: So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo! 1 Witch. Banquo and Macbeth, all hail! Macb. Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more. 70 By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis; But how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman; and to be King Stands not within the prospect of belief, No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence 75 You owe this strange intelligence? or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting?—Speak, I charge you. [Witches vanish.

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The death of Lady Macbeth

Act V, scene 5 Dunsinane. Within the castle [Enter with drum and colours, Macbeth, Seyton and soldiers]

MESSENGER. Gracious my lord, I should report that which I say I saw, But know not how to do it. MACBETH. Well, say, sir.

MACBETH. Hang out our banners on the outward walls; The cry is still “They come!” our castle’s strength Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie Till famine and the ague eat them up: Were they not forc'd with those that should be ours, 5 We might have met them dareful, beard to beard, And beat them backward home.

MESSENGER.

[A cry of women within.] What is that noise?

MESSENGER. Let me endure your wrath, if’t be not so. Within this three mile may you see it coming; I say, a moving grove.

SEYTON. It is the cry of women, my good lord. [Exit.] MACBETH. 1 have almost forgot the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool’d To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaught’rous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

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[Re-enter Seyton.] Wherefore was that cry? SEYTON. The queen, my lord, is dead. MACBETH. She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word.— 20 To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 25 Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. 30 [Enter a Messenger.] Thou com’st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.

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As I did stand my watch upon the hill I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought, The wood began to move. MACBETH. Liar, and slave! [Striking him.] 40

MACBETH. If thou speak’st false, Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth, 45 I care not if thou dost for me as much.— I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt the equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth. “Fear not, till Birnam wood 50 Do come to Dunsinane,” and now a wood Comes toward Dunsinane.—Arm, arm, and out!— If this which he avouches does appear, There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here. I’gin to be a-weary of the sun, And wish the estate o’th’world were now undone.55 Ring the alarum bell!—Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back.

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The Tempest (1611), William SHAKESPEARE Shakespeare’s last plays are romances, or tragi-comedies. They rely on the use of the supernatural, of fantasy and masques, drawing on ancient mythology and English legends and folktales. Their tone is serene, featuring the reunion and reconciliation of parents and children. In The Tempest, Prospero is the Duke of Milan in exile—his throne has been usurped by his brother Antonio—and a magician. He orchestrates a tempest and the wrecking of Antonio’s ship, but by the end of the play all has been forgiven. In the following excerpt, Prospero comments on a prenuptial masque he has just given in honour of his daughter Miranda and her lover Ferdinand. But he is concerned as Caliban, a savage whom Prospero has taken under his protection as a slave, is plotting against him, along with two accomplices. With the help of Ariel, a spirit in his service, Prospero plans to defeat Caliban, thus setting up a symbolic opposition between spirituality (Ariel) and savageness (Caliban). Act IV, scene 1. ARIEL Ay, my commander. When I presented Ceres, I thought to have told thee of it, but I feared Lest I might anger thee.

FERDINAND This is strange. Your father’s in some passion That works him strongly.

PROSPERO Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?

MIRANDA Never till this day Saw I him touched with anger so distempered. PROSPERO You do look, my son, in a moved sort, As if you were dismayed. Be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vext. Bear with my weakness; my brain is troubled. Be not disturbed with my infirmity. If you be pleased, retire into my cell And there repose. A turn or two I’ll walk, To still my beating mind. FERDINAND and MIRANDA

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We wish your peace.

ARIEL I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking. So fun of valour that they smote the air For breathing in their faces, beat the ground For kissing of their feet; yet always bending Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor, At which, like unbacked colts, they pricked their ears, Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses As they smelt music. So I charmed their ears That calf-like they my lowing followed, through Toothed briars, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns, Which entered their frail shins. At last I left them I’th’filthy mantled pool beyond your cell, There dancing up to th’chins, that the foul lake O’erstunk their feet. PROSPERO This was well done, my bird! Thy shape invisible retain thou still. The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither, For stale to catch these thieves. ARIEL

I go, I go! Exit

Exeunt Ferdinand and Miranda PROSPERO Come with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel. Come! Enter Ariel ARIEL Thy thoughts I cleave to. What’s thy pleasure? PROSPERO We must prepare to meet with Caliban.

Spirit,

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PROSPERO A devil, a born devil, on whose nature Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains, Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost. And as with age his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers. I will plague them all, Even to roaring.

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13 Sonnet (written 1595, published 1609), William SHAKESPEARE As well as being a playwright, Shakespeare is also the author of some 154 sonnets. The first half of these is addressed to a young man, the others to a mysterious “dark lady”. Little is known about the two, and many theories were elaborated to try and turn the poems into an autobiographical confession.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d, Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight, And Time, that gave, doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow; Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow; And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand, Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

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Volpone, or The Fox (1606), Ben JONSON Volpone, a wealthy Venetian, pretends to be dying in order to receive expensive presents from those who come to visit him hoping to become his heirs. Mosca, his servant and parasite, persuades each visitor (here, Voltore, who is slightly deaf) that Volpone has made him his legatee.

End of Act I, scene 2 VOLPONE Loving Mosca! [Looking into a glass] ’Tis well! My pillow now, and let him enter. [Exit Mosca.] Now, my feigned cough, my phthisic, and my gout, 125 My apoplexy, palsy, and catarrhs, Help, with your forced functions, this my posture, Wherein, this three year, I have milked their hopes. He comes; I hear him—uh! uh! uh! uh! O— Act I, scene 3 [Enter Mosca, with Voltore bearing plate. Volpone in bed.] MOSCA You still are what you were, sir. Only you, Of all the rest, are he, commands his love: And you do wisely, to preserve it, thus, With early visitation, and kind notes Of your good meaning to him, which, I know, 5 Cannot but come most grateful. Patron, sir! Here’s Signior Voltore is come— VOLPONE What say you? MOSCA Sir, Signior Voltore is come, this morning, To visit you. VOLPONE I thank him. MOSCA And hath brought A piece of antique plate, bought of St Mark, 10 With which he here presents you. VOLPONE He is welcome. Pray him, to come more often. MOSCA Yes. VOLTORE What says he? MOSCA He thanks you, and desires you see him often. VOLPONE Mosca! MOSCA My patron? VOLPONE Bring him near, where is he? I long to feel his hand. MOSCA [Guiding Volpone’s hand] The plate is here, sir, 15 VOLTORE How fare you, sir? VOLPONE I thank you, Signior Voltore. Where is the plate? Mine eyes are bad. VOLTORE [Putting it into his hands.] I’m sorry To see you still thus weak. MOSCA [Aside.] That he is not weaker. VOLPONE You are too munificent. VOLTORE No, sir, would to heaven, I could as well give health to you, as that plate. 20 VOLPONE You give, sir, what you can. I thank you. Your love Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswered. I pray you see me often.

VOLTORE Yes, I shall, sir. VOLPONE Be not far from me. MOSCA [To Voltore] Do you observe that, sir? VOLPONE Hearken unto me still: it will concern you. MOSCA You are a happy man, sir, know your good. VOLPONE I cannot now last long— MOSCA You are his heir, sir. VOLTORE Am I? VOLPONE I feel me going, uh! uh! uh! uh! I am sailing to my port, uh! uh! uh! uh! And I am glad, I am so near my haven. MOSCA Alas, kind gentleman; well, we must all go— VOLTORE But, Mosca— MOSCA Age will conquer. VOLTORE Pray thee hear me. Am I inscribed his heir for certain? MOSCA Are you? I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe To write me, i’ your family. All my hopes Depend upon your worship. I am lost, Except the rising sun do shine on me. VOLTORE It shall both shine, and warm thee, Mosca.

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“Revelation,” from The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611)

It was King James himself, a keen theologian, who commissioned the new translation of the Bible. Though James was relatively tolerant towards issues of religious faith, the gunpowder plot in 1605 – Guy Fawkes and other Roman Catholic conspirators’ attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament – resulted in the return of strict penalties on Roman Catholics. The Authorised King James Version of the Bible soon became the standard for English-speaking Protestants and the style of its language and prose rhythm still has a profound influence on English-language literature to this day.

Chapter 17 AND there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: 2 With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. 3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: 5 And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. 7 And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. 8 The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. 9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. 10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. 11 And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. 12 And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. 13 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast. 14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. 15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. 16 And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. 17 For God hath put in their hearts to fulfill his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. 18 And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

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Paradise Lost (1667), John MILTON Milton’s Paradise Lost is an epic poem in twelve books, depicting the Fall of man and angels from Eden. The first three books evoke the rebellion of Satan and the fallen angels, who decide to invade the universe and take their revenge over men. Book IV describes Adam and Eve’s life in the Earthly Paradise, before Eve is tempted by Satan.

“O thou that with surpassing glory crowned, Look’st from thy sole dominion like the god Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call, 35 But with no friendly voice, and add thy name O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere; Till pride and worse ambition threw me down 40 Warring in heav’n against heav’ns matchless [King: Ah wherefore? He deserved no such return From me, whom he created what I was In that bright eminence, and with his good Upbraided none; nor was his service hard. 45 What could be less then to afford him praise, The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks, How due! Yet all his good proved ill in me, And wrought but malice; lifted up so high I sdained subjection, and thought one step higher Would set me highest, and in a moment quit The debt immense of endless gratitude, So burdensome, still paying, still to owe; Forgetful what from him I still received, And understood not that a grateful mind 55 By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and discharged; what burden then? O had his powerful destiny ordained Me some inferior angel, I had stood Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised 60 Ambition. [... ] Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; my self am hell; 75 And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heav’n. O then at last relent: is there no place

Left for repentance, none for pardon left? 80 None left but by submission; and that word Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced With other promises and other vaunts Than to submit, boasting I could subdue 85 Th’ Omnipotent. Ay me, they little know How dearly I abide that boast so vain, Under what torments inwardly I groan; While they adore me on the throne of hell, With diadem and scepter high advanced 90 The lower still I fall, only supreme In misery; such joy ambition finds. But say I could repent and could obtain By act of grace my former state; how soon Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon [unsay 95 What feigned submission swore: ease would [recant Vows made in pain, as violent and void. For never can true reconcilement grow Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so [deep; Which would but lead me to a worse relapse 100 And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear Short intermission bought with double smart. This knows my Punisher; therefore as far From granting he, as I from begging peace. All hope excluded thus, behold instead 105 Of us out-cast, exiled, his new delight, Mankind created, and for him this world. So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse! All Good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least 110 Divided empire with heav’n’s King I hold By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign; As man ere long, and this new world shall [know.”

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A Modest Proposal (1729), Jonathan SWIFT Swift is first and foremost known as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, both a children’s tale and a ferocious satire of humanity. In fact almost all his literary production is satirical. Here, in his “Modest Proposal” (the adjective is of course ironical), he offers a solution to the problem of poverty in Ireland (Swift was born in Dublin), by raising and fattening up children… in order to eat them! Study the mechanisms of irony in his presentation of appetising recipes…

A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children Of Poor People In Ireland From Being A Burden To Their Parents Or Country, And For Making Them Beneficial To The Public 5

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It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes. I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets. As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s., which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands. There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast. The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couples whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born- the question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time, they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the

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county of Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art. [... ] I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us. I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.

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Joseph Andrews (1742), Henry FIELDING After starting his career with burlesque comedies, Fielding was forced to turn to prosewriting when the Licensing act issued by the Puritans closed all the theatres in Great Britain. Still, he professed his intention to write “comic-epic poems in prose,” that is, to integrate burlesque elements within his prose. His novels thus combine picaresque adventures in the vein of Cervantes, and sentimental parodies in the fashion of Marivaux: here the grotesque Mrs Slipslop is courting the young and naïve Joseph, who is rather puzzled by the tortuous declarations of her “amorous inclinations”. Try and think of the way in which language is used for satirical purposes.

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As soon as Joseph had sealed and directed this Letter, he walked down Stairs, where he met Mrs. Slipslop, with whom we shall take this Opportunity to bring the Reader a little better acquainted. She was a Maiden Gentlewoman of about Forty-five Years of Age, who having made a small Slip in her Youth had continued a good Maid ever since. She was not at this time remarkably handsome; being very short, and rather too corpulent in Body, and somewhat red, with the Addition of Pimples in the Face. Her Nose was likewise rather too large, and her Eyes too little; nor did she resemble a Cow so much in her Breath, as in two brown Globes which she carried before her; one of her Legs was also a little shorter than the other, which occasioned her to limp as she walked. This fair Creature had long cast the Eyes of Affection on Joseph, in which she had not met with quite so good Success as she probably wished, tho’ besides the Allurements of her native Charms, she had given him Tea, Sweetmeats, Wine, and many other Delicacies, of which by keeping the Keys, she had the absolute Command. Joseph however, had not returned the least Gratitude to all these Favours, not even so much as a Kiss; tho’ I would not insinuate she was so easily to be satisfie: for surely then he would have been highly blameable. The truth is, she was arrived at an Age when she thought she might indulge herself in any Liberties with a Man, without the danger of bringing a third Person into the World to betray them. She imagined, that by so long a Self-denial she had not only made amends for the small Slip of her Youth above hinted at: but had likewise laid up a Quantity of Merit to excuse any future Failings. In a word, she resolved to give a loose to her amorous Inclinations, and pay off the Debt of Pleasure which she found she owed herself, as fast as possible. With these Charms of Person, and in this Disposition of Mind, she encountered poor Joseph at the Bottom of the Stairs, and asked him if he would drink a Glass of something good this Morning. Joseph, whose Spirits were not a little cast down, very readily and thankfully accepted the Offer; and together they went into a Closet, where having delivered him a full Glass of Ratifia, and desired him to sit down, Mrs. Slipslop thus began: ‘Sure nothing can be a more simple Contract in a Woman, than to place her Affections on a Boy. If I had ever thought it would have been my Fate, I should have wished to die a thousand Deaths rather than live to see that Day. If we like a Man, the lightest Hint sophisticates. Whereas a Boy proposes upon us to break through all the Regulations of Modesty, before we can make any Oppression upon him.’ Joseph, who did not understand a word she said, answered, ‘Yes Madam;—’ ‘Yes madam!’ reply’d Mrs. Slipslop with some warmth, ‘Do you intend to result my Passion? Is it not enough, ungrateful as you are, to make no return upon all the Favours I have done yo: but you must treat me with ironing? Barbarous monster! how have I deserved that my Passion should be resulted and treated with ironing?’ ‘Madam,’ answered Joseph, ‘I don’t understand your hard Words: but I am certain, you have no Occasion to call me ungrateful: for so far from intending you any Wrong, I have always loved you as well as if you had been my own Mother.’ ‘How, Sirrah!’ says Mrs. Slipslop in a Rag: ‘Your own mother! Do you assinuate that I am old enough to be your Mother? I don’t know what a Stripling may think: but I believe a Man would refer me to any Green-Sickness silly Girl whatsomedever: but I ought to despise you rather than be angry with you, for referring the Conversation of Girls to that of a Woman of Sense.’

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“The Tyger,” from The Songs of Experience (1794), William BLAKE

Blake claimed that he had his first vision when he was 15. His poems bear the stamp of this visionary imagination. His Songs of Innocence and Experience are divided into two parts, Innocence / Experience, the two being both opposed and deeply complementary in their style and their images, such as those of the Lamb (Innocence) and the Tiger (Experience).

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry ?

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Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (second edition, 1800), William WORDSWORTH

Wordsworth wrote the preface to the second (1800) edition of his and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. In this manifesto, Wordsworth presented their poetic principles, advocating a new kind of poetry, and breaking with the artificial character of earlier poetry.

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The principal object, then, proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and consequently may be more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. The language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent and a far more philosophical language than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honor upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation. I cannot, however, be insensible to the present outcry against the triviality and meanness, both of thought and language, which some of my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect, where it exists, is more dishonorable to the writer's own character than false refinement or arbitrary innovation, though I should contend at the same time that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences. From such verses the poems in these volumes will be found distinguished at least by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy purpose. Not that I always began to write with a distinct purpose formally conceived; but habits of meditation have, I trust, so prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such objects as strongly excite those feelings will be found to carry along with them a purpose. If this opinion be erroneous, I can have little right to the name of a poet. For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of those habits, we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature, and in such connection with each other, that the understanding of the reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.

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“The Last of the Flock,” in the Lyrical Ballads (1798), William WORDSWORTH The Lyrical Ballads were published as the joint work of Wordsworth and Coleridge – who actually contributed one poem only, his famous “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”. The Preface, written by Wordsworth, who was deeply impressed with the principles of the French Revolution, was often considered as the theoretical Manifesto of the Romantic movement in England, and defines the main goals of the two poets: the wish to deal with situations of common life, in a language accessible to all men, and to give priority to the spontaneous expression of genuine emotion.

I. In distant countries I have been, And yet I have not often seen A healthy man, a man full grown, Weep in the public roads alone. But such a one, on English ground, And in the broad high-way, I met; Along the broad high-way he came, His cheeks with tears were wet. Sturdy he seemed, though he was sad; And in his arms a lamb he had. II. He saw me, and he turned aside, As if he wished himself to hide: Then with his coat he made essay To wipe those briny tears away. I follow’d him, and said, “My friend, What ails you? Wherefore weep you so?” —“Shame on me, Sir! this lusty lamb, He makes my tears to flow. To-day I fetched him from the rock, He is the last of all my flock. III. “When I was young, a single man, And after youthful follies ran, Though little given to care and thought, Yet, so it was, a ewe I bought; And other sheep from her I raised, As healthy sheep as you might see, And then I married, and was rich As I could wish to be, Of sheep I number’d a full score, And every year increas’d my store. IV. “Year after year my stock it grew, And from this one, this single ewe, Full fifty comely sheep I raised, As sweet a flock as ever grazed! Upon the mountain they did feed;

They throve, and we at home did thrive —This lusty lamb of all my store Is all that is alive: And now I care not if we die, And perish all of poverty.

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V. “Six children, Sir! had I to feed, Hard labour in a time of need! My pride was tamed, and in our grief, I of the parish ask’d relief They said I was a wealthy man; My sheep upon the mountain fed, And it was fit that thence I took Whereof to buy us bread: ‘Do this; how can we give to you,’ They cried, ‘what to the poor is due?’”

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VI. “I sold a sheep as they had said, And bought my little children bread, And they were healthy with their food; For me it never did me good. A woeful time it was for me, To see the end of all my gains, The pretty flock which I had reared With all my care and pains, To see it melt like snow away! For me it was a woeful day. 60

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VII. “Another still! and still another! A little lamb, and then its mother! It was a vein that never stopp’d, Like blood-drops from my heart they dropp’d. Till thirty were not left alive 65 They dwindled, dwindled, one by one, And I may say that many a time I wished they all were gone: They dwindled one by one away; For me it was a woeful day. 70

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VIII. “To wicked deeds I was inclined, And wicked fancies cross’d my mind, And every man I chanc’d to see, I thought he knew some ill of me. No peace, no comfort could I find, 75 No ease, within doors or without, And crazily, and wearily, I went my work about. Oft-times I thought to run away, For me it was a woeful day. IX. “Sir! Twas a precious flock to me, As dear as my own children be; For daily with my growing store 1 loved my children more and more. Alas! it was an evil time; God cursed me in my sore distress, I prayed, yet every day I thought I loved my children less; And every week, and every day, My flock, it seemed to melt away.

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X. “They dwindled, Sir, sad sight to see! 90 From ten to five, from five to three, A lamb, a wether, and a ewe; And then at last, from three to two; And of my fifty, yesterday I had but only one, And here it lies upon my arm, 95 Alas! and I have none, To-day I fetched it from the rock; It is the last of all my flock.”

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“Kubla Khan” (1798), Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE Poet, critic, philosopher – Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, kicked off English Romanticism. This poem was written in 1797 on a farm-house between Porlock and Linton. It is said that Coleridge retired to bed after having taken anodyne and woke up three hours later with a clear vision of the poem. However, disturbed by a visitor, he lost the vision except for a few lines. Chances are, though, that this is in itself a romantic notion.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man 5..…Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree; 10…..And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted 15 As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: 20 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river.

A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, 40 And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me, Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’t would win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! 50 His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834

25 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reach’d the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 30 Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

Born in 1772 in Ottery St. Mary, Coleridge was the youngest of fourteen. Though his father was the vicar of the local church and master of the grammar school, the family was poor simply because of its size.

Pride and Prejudice (1813), Jane AUSTEN

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Austen’s gently satirical novels depict the gentry of small country villages. They often focus on the need for a young woman to find a husband. The following excerpt is the beginning of Pride and Prejudice.

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IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. ‘My dear Mr Bennet,’ said his lady to him one day, ‘have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?’ Mr Bennet replied that he had not. ‘But it is,’ returned she; ‘for Mrs Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.’ Mr Bennet made no answer. ‘Do not you want to know who has taken it?’ cried his wife impatiently. ‘You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.’ This was invitation enough. ‘Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.’ ‘What is his name?’ ‘Bingley.’ ‘Is he married or single?’ ‘Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!’ ‘How so? how can it affect them?’ ‘My dear Mr Bennet,’ replied his wife, ‘how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.’ ‘Is that his design in settling here?’ ‘Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.’ ‘I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr Bingley might like you the best of the party.’ ‘My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be any thing extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty. ‘In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.’ ‘But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.’ ‘It is more than I engage for, I assure you.’ ‘But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general you know they visit no new comers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him, if you do not. ‘You are over scrupulous surely. I dare say Mr Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying which ever he chuses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy. ‘I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.’ ‘They have none of them much to recommend them,’ replied he; ‘they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.’ ‘Mr Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.’ ‘You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.’ ‘Ah! you do not know what I suffer.’ ‘But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.’ ‘It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come since you will not visit them.’ ‘Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all.’ Mr Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

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Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) SHELLEY

This is probably the flag-bearer of Gothic literature. Mary Shelley spent the summer of 1816 with, amongst others, Shelley and Byron. On 16th June, during an incredible storm, the group read German ghost stories to each other, inspiring Byron to challenge the others to write a ghost story of their own. A few days later on 22nd, the group discussed a topic from de Staël’s De l’Allemagne: “whether the principle of life could be discovered and whether scientists could galvanize a corpse of manufactured humanoid”. That night Mary had a ‘waking’ nightmare and the following morning she began writing the lines that would become the opening to Chapter V.

Mary Shelley, 1797-1850

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It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! – Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured; and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain: I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of flannel. I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited; where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

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“Self-Reliance” (1841), Ralph Waldo EMERSON

Emerson was the founder of the quasi-religious transcendental philosophy (or Transcendentalism), which deeply influenced American literature and thought. He believed in individualism and non-conformism and developed the idea of “self-reliance”.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882

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I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, —that is genius. Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, —and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preëstablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events. Great men have always done so and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

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Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily BRONTË

Charlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48) and Anne (1820-49) Brontë grew up in Yorkshire. Their mother died when they were still young and they and their brother were left with their father, an Anglican clergyman, and an aunt. They were educated mostly at home where they had plenty of time to read, write, and walk on the moors. They would make up games and stories in which they invented imaginary worlds, and all three wrote. Wuthering Heights, Emily’s influencial work, is a novel of romantic passion and imagination. It relates the impassioned love of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, an orphan who was adopted by Catherine’s father. But after the latter’s death, Heathcliff was ill-treated by Catherine’s brother, and disappeared. Catherine then married Edgar Linton. When Heathcliff comes back years later to see her, their mutual love is as strong as ever, and Catherine is torn between her husband and Heathcliff. In the following excerpt, Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, is the narrator.

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‘Oh, you see, Nelly! he would not relent a moment to keep me out of the grave! That is how I’m loved! Well, never mind! That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me - he’s in my soul. And,’ added she, musingly, ‘the thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired, tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it. Nelly, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength - you are sorry for me - very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all. I wonder he won’t be near me!’ She went on to herself. ‘I thought he wished it. Heathcliff, dear! you should not be sullen now. Do come to me, Heathcliff.’ In her eagerness she rose, and supported herself on the arm of the chair. At that earnest appeal, he turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes wide, and wet, at last, flashed fiercely on her; his breast heaved convulsively. An instant they held asunder; and then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive. In fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest seat, and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species; it appeared that he would not understand, though I spoke to him; so, I stood off, and held my tongue, in great perplexity. A movement of Catherine’s relieved me a little presently: she put up her hand to clasp his neck, and bring her cheek to his, as he held her: while he, in return, covering her with frantic caresses, said wildly ‘You teach me now how cruel you’ve been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort - you deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears. They’ll blight you - they’ll damn you. You loved me - then what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it - and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?’

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“Annabel Lee” (1849, 1850), Edgar Allan POE

The rhythm and simple ballad form help retain the child-like perspective of the narrator, who tells us he was a child when he loved and was loved by his child-bride. To explain the feelings of loss, the narrator lays the blame on angel-murderers: a grotesque vision true to E.A. Poe.

E.A. Poe, 1809-1849

It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. She was a child and I was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love – I and my Annabel Lee – With a love that the wingéd seraphs of Heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud by night Chilling my Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up, in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me; Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud, chilling And killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we – Of many far wiser than we – And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea – In her tomb by the side of the sea.

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The Scarlet Letter (1850), Nathaniel HAWTHORNE

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The title of Hawthorne’s most famous novel refers to the red letter that Hester Prynne has to wear as a punishment for having committed adultery in the Puritan society of colonial America. In the following passage, as Hester comes out of prison, her feelings of guilt and sin and her moral conflicts are exposed.

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Hester Prynne’s term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that condemned her—a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm—had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison-door, began the daily custom, and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future, to help her through the present grief. To-morrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,—at her, the child of honorable parents,—at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman,—at her, who had once been innocent,—as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument. It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her,—kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure,—free to return to her birthplace, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being, and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her, it may seem marvellous, that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne’s wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth—even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother’s keeping, like garments put off long ago—were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but never could be broken. It might be, too,—doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole,—it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester’s contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized, and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe,—what, finally, she reasoned upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of New England,—was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.

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Moby Dick (1851), Herman MELVILLE Moby Dick is a sea story of whale hunting which relies on myth and symbolism to trace the protagonists’ quest for knowledge. It relates the voyage of a whaling ship sailed around the world by its captain, Ahab, who revengefully chases Moby Dick, the huge white whale which once snapped one of his legs.

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“Captain Ahab,” said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. “Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick—but it was not Moby Dick that took off thy leg?” “Who told thee that?” cried Ahab; then pausing, “Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,” he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose; “Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.” “Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the excited old man: “A sharp eye for the White Whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!” “God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob and half shout. “God bless ye, men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what’s this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for Moby Dick?” “I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my commander’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.” “Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layer. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here!” “He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb, “what’s that for? methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.” “Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.” “Hark ye yet again, —the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ‘tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.”

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Hard Times (1854), Charles DICKENS Hard Times works less on sentiment and pathos than the novels of Dickens’s first period. It was written mainly as satire of Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism, which tried to develop the theory of the “greatest possible happiness” as a calculable balance of pleasures and pains. Dickens debunks it by offering a strictly materialistic vision of Coketown (“the town of coal”), the archetype of the Victorian industrial town. But the satire goes further: even men are contaminated by the theory of “facts, facts, facts everywhere”. Charles Dickens, 1812-1870

Chapter 5 – The Keynote

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Coketown, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune. It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these. You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there – as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done – they made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the New Church, a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M’Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures, or show to be purchasable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.

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“Song of Myself” (1855), Walt WHITMAN “Song of Myself” is part of Leaves of Grass, a collection of poems that celebrate existence and are saturated with the “audacity of freedom necessary to loosen the mind of still-to-be-formed America,” to quote Whitman himself. He was a Romantic, influenced by the Transcendentalists, and believed in the possibility of democracy. The rhythm and voice in “Song of Myself” are particularly striking.

1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

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My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents [the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, 10 Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. Walt Whitman, 1819-189

2 Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me. The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

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Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, 35 You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

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Alice Through the Looking Glass (1862-1863), Lewis CARROLL

Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898

Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the 19th century Oxford mathematician whose wrote under the penname of Lewis Carroll, was very close to Alice Pleasance Liddell, the daughter of his Oxford dean. His books immortalize his ephemeral friendship with Alice and show his profound sympathy and compassion for the world of children. In this passage, Alice is confronted with Humpty Dumpty’s literal understanding of the English language.

“I said you looked like an egg, Sir,” Alice gently explained. “And some eggs are very pretty, you know,” she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of compliment. “Some people,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual, “have no more sense than a baby!” Alice didn’t know what to say to this: it wasn’t at all like conversation, she thought, as he never said anything to her; in fact, his last remark was evidently addressed to a tree – so she stood and softly repeated to herself: – “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.” “That last line is much too long for the poetry,” she added, almost out loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her. “Don’t stand chattering to yourself like that,” Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time, “but tell me your name and your business.” “My name is Alice, but –” “It’s a stupid name enough!” Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. “What does it mean?” “Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully. “Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am – and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.” “Why do you sit out here all alone?” said Alice, not wishing to begin an argument. “Why, because there’s nobody with me!” cried Humpty Dumpty. “Did you think I didn’t know the answer to that? Ask another.” “Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground?” Alice went on, not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxiety for the queer creature. “That wall is so very narrow!” “What tremendously easy riddles you ask!” Humpty Dumpty growled out. “Of course I don’t think so! Why, if ever I did fall off – which there’s no chance of – but if did –” Here he pursed up his lips, and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing. “If I did fall,” he went on, “the King has promised me – ah, you may turn pale, if you like! You didn’t think I was going to say that, did you? The king has promised me -- with his own mouth – to – to –” “To send all his horses and all his men,” Alice interrupted, rather unwisely. “Now I declare that’s too bad!” Humpty Dumpty cried, breaking into a sudden passion. “You’ve been listening at doors – and behind trees and down chimneys – or you couldn’t have known it!” “I haven’t, indeed!” Alice said very gently. “It’s in a book.” “Ah well! They may write such things in a book,” Humpty Dumpty said in a calmer tone. “That’s what you call a History of England, that is Now, take a good look at me! I’m one that has spoken to a King, I am: mayhap you’ll never see such another: and to show you I’m not proud, you may shake hands with me!” And he grinned almost from ear to ear, as he leant forwards (and as nearly as possible fell off the wall in doing so) and offered Alice his hand. She watched him a little anxiously as she took it. “If he smiled much more, the ends of his mouth might meet behind,” she thought: “and then I don’t know what would happen to his head! I’m afraid it would come off!” “Yes, all his horses and all his men,” Humpty Dumpty went on. “They’d pick me up again in a minute, they would! However, this conversation is going on a little too fast: let’s go back to the last remark but one.” “I’m afraid I can’t quite remember it,” Alice said very politely. “In that case we may start afresh,” said Humpty Dumpty, “and it’s my turn to choose a subject –” (“He talks about it just as if it was a game!” thought Alice.) “So here’s a question for you. How old did you say you were?” Alice made a short calculation, and said, “Seven years and six months.” “Wrong!” Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly. “You never said a word like it.” “I thought you meant “How old are you?” Alice explained. “If I’d meant that, I’d have said it,” said Humpty Dumpty.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Mark TWAIN The work of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, alias Mark Twain, is influenced by his Southern background: he was born in Missouri and worked as a pilot on the Mississippi for several years. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck and his black friend Jim go down the Mississippi on a raft. Through Huck, Twain relies on an “innocent narrator” to explore moral issues linked to slavery; the following passage shows Huck torn between his natural instinct to protect his friend and the principles he learnt as a white Southern boy. Notice how Twain uses Southern dialects.

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Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them. It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, ‘give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.’ Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children — children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm. I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, ‘Let up on me — it ain’t too late, yet — I’ll paddle ashore at the first light, and tell.’ I felt easy, and happy, and light as a feather, right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. By-and-by one showed. Jim sings out: ‘We’s safe, Huck, we’s safe! Jump up and crack yo’ heels, dat’s de good ole Cairo at las’, I jis knows it!’ I says: ‘I’ll take the canoe and go see, Jim. It mightn’t be, you know.’ He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says: ‘Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’ Huck; I’s a free mnan, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck; Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now.’ I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow then, and I warn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I warn’t. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says: ‘Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.’ Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I got to do it — I can’t get out of it. Right then, along comes a skiff with two men in it, with guns, and they stopped and I stopped. One of them says: ‘What’s that, yonder?’ ‘A piece of a raft,’ I says. ‘Do you belong on it?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Any men on it?’ ‘Only one, sir.’ ‘Well, there’s five niggers run off tonight, up yonder above the head of the bend. Is your man white or black?’ I didn’t answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn’t come. I tried, for a second ot two, to brace up and out with it, but I warn’t man enough — hadn’t the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just give up trying, and up and says – ‘He’s white.’

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Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), Thomas HARDY 1840-1928 Tess was immortalised by Nastasia Kinsky’s impersonation of the character, both innocent and provocatively sensuous, in Roman Polanski’s adaptation of the novel. In reality the novel is less a reflection on sensuality and sex than a meditation on the disintegration of the rural world, destroyed by corrupt aristocrats, like Alec D’Urberville, who first “seduced” Tess, or hypocritical and idealistic individuals, like Angel Clare. Tess finally liberates herself by stabbing Alec and fleeing to the New Forest with Angel. She will be arrested at Stonehenge, tried and hanged. Thomas Hardy,

Chapter 58

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To walk across country without much regard to roads was not new to Tess, and she showed her old agility in the performance. The intercepting city, ancient Melchester, they were obliged to pass through in order to take advantage of the town bridge for crossing a large river that obstructed them. It was about midnight when they went along the deserted streets, lighted fitfully by the few lamps, keeping off the pavement that it might not echo their footsteps. The graceful pile of cathedral architecture rose dimly on their left hand, but it was lost upon them now. Once out of the town they followed the turnpike-road, which after a few miles plunged across an open plain. Though the sky was dense with cloud a diffused light from some fragment of a moon had hitherto helped them a little. But the moon had now sunk, the clouds seemed to settle almost on their heads, and the night grew as dark as a cave. However, they found their way along, keeping as much on the turf as possible that their tread might not resound, which it was easy to do, there being no hedge or fence of any kind. All around was open loneliness and black solitude, over which a stiff breeze blew. They had proceeded thus gropingly two or three miles further when on a sudden Clare became conscious of some vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the grass. They had almost struck themselves against it. “What monstrous place is this?” said Angel. “ It hums,” said she. “Hearken!” He listened. The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it, and lifting his hand and advancing a step or two, Clare felt the vertical surface of the structure. It seemed to be of solid stone, without joint or moulding. Carrying his fingers onward he found that what he had come in contact with was a colossal rectangular pillar; by stretching out his left hand he could feel a similar one adjoining. At an indefinite height overhead something made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars horizontally. They carefully entered beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be still out of doors. The place was roofless. Tess drew her breath fearfully, and Angel, perplexed, said – “What can it be?” Feeling sideways they encountered another tower-like pillar, square and uncompromising as the first; beyond it another and another. The place was all doors and pillars, some connected above by continuous architraves. “A very Temple of the Winds,” he said. The next pillar was isolated; others composed a trilithon; others were prostrate, their flanks forming a causeway wide enough for a carriage and it was soon obvious that they made up a forest of monoliths grouped upon the grassy expanse of the plain. The couple advanced further into this pavilion of the night till they stood in its midst. “It is Stonehenge!” said Clare.

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“The heathen temple, you mean?” “Yes. Older than the centuries; older than the d’Urbervilles! Well, what shall we do, darling? We may find shelter further on.” But Tess, really tired by this time, flung herself upon an oblong slab that lay close at hand, and was sheltered from the wind by a pillar. Owing to the action of the sun during the preceding day the stone was warm and dry, in comforting contrast to the rough and chill grass around, which had damped her skirts and shoes. “I don’t want to go any further, Angel,” she said, stretching out her hand for his. “Can’t we bide here?” […] She ceased, and he fell into thought. In the far north-east sky he could see between the pillars a level streak of light. The uniform concavity of black cloud was lifting bodily like the lid of a pot, letting in at the earth’s edge the coming day, against which the towering monoliths and trilithons began to be blackly defined. “Did they sacrifice to God here?” asked she. “No,” said he. “Who to?” “I believe to the sun. That lofty stone set away by itself is in the direction of the sun, which will presently rise behind it.” “This reminds me, dear,” she said. “You remember you never would interfere with any belief of mine before we were married? But I knew your mind all the same, and I thought as you thought – not from any reasons of my own, but because you thought so. Tell me now, Angel do you think we shall meet again after we are dead? I want to know.” He kissed her to avoid a reply at such a time. “O, Angel – I fear that means no!” said she, with a suppressed sob. “And I wanted so to see you again – so much, so much! What – not even you and I, Angel, who love each other so well?”

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Heart of Darkness (1902), Joseph CONRAD Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924

Is Marlowe a racist; was Conrad a racist? Does the ‘heart of darkness’ equate Africa with moral decadence present in every man, or is it a critique of imperialism? What is the underlying relation that draws Marlowe to Kurtz; what is the real nature of both these men’s quest? Is Kurtz overcome by guilt or does he represent the dangers of ‘savagery’ of a man ‘gone native’? What is the “horror”?

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“His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. But I had not much time to give him, because I was helping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to straighten a bent connecting-rod, and in other such matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchetdrills—things I abominate, because I don’t get on with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap—unless I had the shakes too bad to stand. “One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, ‘I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.’ The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, ‘Oh, nonsense!’ and stood over him as if transfixed. “Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: “The horror! The horror!” “I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager’s boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt: “ ‘Mistah Kurtz—he dead.’

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The Financier (1912-1914), Theodore DREISER

Dreiser’s realism aimed at showing life as it was in his time. Influenced by his reading of Charles Darwin, he believed that men are not responsible for their actions, but are determined by the setting in which they grow up and by biological factors. The following scene is taken from The Financier, the first volume of Dreiser’s “Trilogy of Desire”.

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Theodore Dreiser, 1871-1947

He was forever pondering, pondering—one fact astonishing him quite as much as another—for he could not figure out how this thing he had come into—this life—was organized. How did all these people get into the world? What were they doing here? Who started things, anyhow? His mother told him the story of Adam and Eve, but he didn't believe it. There was a fish-market not so very far from his home, and there, on his way to see his father at the bank, or conducting his brothers on after-school expeditions, he liked to look at a certain tank in front of one store where were kept odd specimens of sea-life brought in by the Delaware Bay fishermen. He saw once there a sea-horse—just a queer little sea-animal that looked somewhat like a horse—and another time he saw an electric eel which Benjamin Franklin’s discovery had explained. One day he saw a squid and a lobster put in the tank, and in connection with them was witness to a tragedy which stayed with him all his life and cleared things up considerably intellectually. The lobster, it appeared from the talk of the idle bystanders, was offered no food, as the squid was considered his rightful prey. He lay at the bottom of the clear glass tank on the yellow sand, apparently seeing nothing—you could not tell in which way his beady, black buttons of eyes were looking—but apparently they were never off the body of the squid. The latter, pale and waxy in texture, looking very much like pork fat or jade, moved about in torpedo fashion; but his movements were apparently never out of the eyes of his enemy, for by degrees small portions of his body began to disappear, snapped off by the relentless claws of his pursuer. The lobster would leap like a catapult to where the squid was apparently idly dreaming, and the squid, very alert, would dart away, shooting out at the same time a cloud of ink, behind which it would disappear. It was not always completely successful, however. Small portions of its body or its tail were frequently left in the claws of the monster below. Fascinated by the drama, young Cowperwood came daily to watch. One morning he stood in front of the tank, his nose almost pressed to the glass. Only a portion of the squid remained, and his ink-bag was emptier than ever. In the corner of the tank sat the lobster, poised apparently for action. The boy stayed as long as he could, the bitter struggle fascinating him. Now, maybe, or in an hour or a day, the squid might die, slain by the lobster, and the lobster would eat him. He looked again at the greenish-copperish engine of destruction in the corner and wondered when this would be. To-night, maybe: He would come back to-night. He returned that night, and lo! the expected had happened. There was a little crowd around the tank. The lobster was in the corner. Before him was the squid cut in two and partially devoured. “He got him at last,” observed one bystander. “I was standing right here an hour ago, and up he leaped and grabbed him. The squid was too tired. He wasn’t quick enough. He did back up, but that lobster he calculated on his doing that. He’s been figuring on his movements for a long time now. He got him to-day.” Frank only stared. Too bad he had missed this. The least touch of sorrow for the squid came to him as he stared at it slain. Then he gazed at the victor. “That’s the way it has to be, I guess,” he commented to himself. “That squid wasn’t quick enough.” He figured it out. “The squid couldn’t kill the lobster—he had no weapon. The lobster could kill the squid—he was heavily armed. There was nothing for the squid to feed on; the lobster had the squid as prey. What was the result to be? What else could it be? He didn’t have a chance,” he concluded finally, as he trotted on homeward. The incident made a great impression on him. It answered in a rough way that riddle which had been annoying him so much in the past: “How is life organized?” Things lived on each other—that was it. Lobsters lived on squids and other things. What lived on lobsters? Men, of course! Sure, that was it! And what lived on men? he asked himself. Was it other men? Wild animals lived on men. And there were Indians and cannibals. And some men were killed by storms and accidents. He wasn’t so sure about men living on men; but men did kill each other. How about wars and street fights and mobs? He had seen a mob once. It attacked the Public Ledger building as he was coming home from school. His father had explained why. It was about the slaves. That was it! Sure, men lived on men. Look at the slaves. They were men. That’s what all this excitement was about these days. Men killing other men—negroes.

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“The Dead” (1914), James JOYCE

This is the closing scene of “The Dead,” with Gabriel Conroy and his wife back at home after the turmoil and chaos of the Twelfth Night party they were attending. Through Gabriel Conroy’s eyes, we witness his epiphany as the Epiphany is about to dawn. Just like the snow, Gabriel understands that we all in turn will become shades.

James Joyce, 1882-1941

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Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death. Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt’s supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon. The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live. Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling. A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

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The Age of Innocence (1920), Edith WHARTON

Edith Wharton, 1862-1937

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Edith Wharton was born in 1862 into a wealthy New York family, and most of her short stories and novels are set in the upper-class world of old New York. The Age of Innocence, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1920, deals with the conflict between the individual and a conservative society— Wharton’s favorite theme. Newland Archer is faced with a moral dilemma: his social status depends on maintaining his marriage to May Welland, but he is attracted to May’s cousin, Ellen Olenska, who left her husband in the midst of a scandal. This passage is from the end of the novel: May has organized a farewell dinner for Ellen who is about to go back to Europe. The scene shows the cohesive strength of the New York social elite in defending its rules of behaviour.

When he entered the drawing-room before dinner May was stooping over the fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed setting of immaculate tiles. The tall lamps were all lit, and Mr. van der Luyden’s orchids had been conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and knobby silver. Mrs. Newland Archer’s drawing-room was generally thought a great success. A gilt bamboo jardinière, in which the primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to the bay window (where the old- fashioned would have preferred a bronze reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames; and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the palms. “I don’t think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up,” said May, rising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of pardonable pride. The brass tongs which she had propped against the side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband’s answer; and before he could restore them Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden were announced. The other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der Luydens liked to dine punctually. The room was nearly full, and Archer was engaged in showing to Mrs. Selfridge Merry a small highly- varnished Verboeckhoven “Study of Sheep,” which Mr. Welland had given May for Christmas, when he found Madame Olenska at his side. She was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser and heavier than ever. Perhaps that, or the fact that she had wound several rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him suddenly of the little Ellen Mingott he had danced with at children’s parties, when Medora Manson had first brought her to New York. The amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps unbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had never loved it as he did at that minute. Their hands met, and he thought he heard her say: “Yes, we’re sailing tomorrow in the Russia—”; then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, and after an interval May’s voice: “Newland! Dinner’s been announced. Won’t you please take Ellen in?” Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing- room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve, and he said to himself: “If it were only to see her hand again I should have to follow her—.” It was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a “foreign visitor” that Mrs. van der Luyden could suffer the diminution of being placed on her host’s left. The fact of Madame Olenska’s “foreignness” could hardly have been more adroitly emphasised than by this farewell tribute; and Mrs. van der Luyden accepted her displacement with an affability which left no doubt as to her approval. There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. There was nothing on earth that the Wellands and Mingotts would not have done to proclaim their unalterable affection for the Countess Olenska now that her passage for Europe was engaged; and Archer, at the head of his table, sat marvelling at the silent untiring activity with which her popularity had been retrieved, grievances against her silenced, her past countenanced, and her present irradiated by the family approval. Mrs. van der Luyden shone on her with the dim benevolence which was her nearest approach to cordiality, and Mr. van der Luyden, from his seat at May’s right, cast down the table glances plainly intended to justify all the carnations he had sent from Skuytercliff. Archer, who seemed to be assisting at the scene in a state of odd imponderability, as if he floated somewhere between chandelier and ceiling, wondered at nothing so much as his own share in the proceedings. As his glance travelled from one placid well-fed face to another he saw all the harmless-looking people engaged upon May’s canvas-backs as a band of dumb conspirators, and himself and the pale woman on his right as the centre of their conspiracy. And then it came over him, in a vast flash made up of many broken gleams, that to all of them he and Madame Olenska were lovers, lovers in the extreme sense peculiar to “foreign” vocabularies. He guessed himself to have been, for months, the centre of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears, he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined anything, and that the occasion of the entertainment was simply May Archer’s natural desire to take an affectionate leave of her friend and cousin. It was the old New York way of taking life “without effusion of blood”: the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them. As these thoughts succeeded each other in his mind Archer felt like a prisoner in the centre of an armed camp. He looked about the table, and guessed at the inexorableness of his captors from the tone in which, over the asparagus from Florida, they were dealing with Beaufort and his wife. “It’s to show me,” he thought, “what would happen to me—” and a deathly sense of the superiority of implication and analogy over direct action, and of silence over rash words, closed in on him like the doors of the family vault.

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“The Hollow Men” (1925), T.S. ELIOT Mistah Kurtz-he dead. A penny for the Old Guy

Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.

I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar

IV The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.

Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. II Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star. Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer— Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom III This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. Is it like this In death’s other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are

In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

V Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

Thomas Stearns Eliot, 1888-1965 Best known for his erudite, innovative, difficult poetry, T.S. Eliot is, along with James Joyce, the defining author of Modernism. Awareness of one’s own literary and cultural inheritance was vital in the development of a historical sense, according to Eliot, and many of his poems combine both classical references as well as contemporary elements, framed by a fragmented surface and an underlying philosophical meaning. The poem quoted here is representative of this, ending as it does with a bang rather than a whimper.

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To the Lighthouse (1927), Virginia WOOLF

Fleeting sensations, confused thoughts, obscure impressions: Virginia Woolf tried to capture all the imperceptible elements of one’s inner life, thus bringing to a new - very feminine - perfection Henry James’ technique of the “stream of consciousness”. In the novel To the Lighthouse, Mrs Ramsay represents “Life”, in opposition to Lily Brisco, the painter, who represents “Art”. Yet Lily herself fails to express in paint the poignant ideal she has of her own work. Woolf analyses her dilemma in front of her white canvas here.

Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941

Part III, chapter 3

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She saw her canvas as if it had floated up and placed itself white and uncompromising directly before her. It seemed to rebuke her with its cold stare for all this hurry and agitation; this folly and waste of emotion; it drastically recalled her and spread through her mind first a peace, as her disorderly sensations (he had gone and she had been so sorry for him and she had said nothing) trooped off the field; and then, emptiness. She looked blankly at the canvas, with its uncompromising white stare; from the canvas to the garden. There was something (she stood screwing up her little Chinese eyes in her small puckered face), something she remembered in the relations of those lines cutting across, slicing down, and in the mass of the hedge with its green cave of blues and browns, which had stayed in her mind; which had tied a knot in her mind so that at odds and ends of time, involuntarily, as she walked along the Brompton Road, as she brushed her hair, she found herself painting that picture, passing her eye over it, and untying the knot in imagination. But there was all the difference in the world between this planning airily away from the canvas and actually taking her brush and making the first mark. She had taken the wrong brush in her agitation at Mr Ramsay’s presence, and her easel, rammed into the earth so nervously, was at the wrong angle. And now that she had put that right, and in so doing had subdued the impertinences and irrelevances that plucked her attention and made her remember how she was such and such a person, had such and such relations to people, she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstasy in the air. Where to begin?—that was the question; at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run; the mark made. With a curious physical sensation, as if she were urged forward and at the same time must hold herself back, she made her first quick decisive stroke. The brush descended. It flickered brown over the white canvas; it left a running mark. A second time she did it—a third time. And so pausing and so flickering, she attained a dancing rhythmical movement, as if the pauses were one part of the rhythm and the strokes another, and all were related; and so, lightly and swiftly

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pausing, striking, she scored her canvas with brown running nervous lines which had no sooner settled there than they enclosed (she felt it looming out at her) a space. Down in the hollow of one wave she saw the next wave towering higher and higher above her. For what could be more formidable than that space? Here she was again, she thought, stepping back to look at it, drawn out of gossip, out of living, out of community with people into the presence of this formidable ancient enemy of hers—this other thing, this truth, this reality, which suddenly laid hands on her, emerged stark at the back of appearances and commanded reluctant. Why always be drawn out and haled away? [... ] Why then did she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scored with running lines. It would be hung in the servants’ bedrooms. It would be rolled up and stuffed under a sofa. What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she couldn’t paint, saying she couldn’t create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents in which after a certain time experience forms in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer who originally spoke them. Can’t paint, can’t write, she murmured monotonously, anxiously considering what her plan of attack should be. For the mass loomed before her; it protruded, she felt it pressing on her eyeballs. Then, as if some juice necessary for the lubrication of her faculties were spontaneously squirted, she began precariously dipping among the blues and umbers, moving her brush hither and thither, but it was now heavier and went slower, as if it had fallen in with some rhythm which was dictated to her (she kept looking at the hedge, at the canvas) by what she saw, so that while her hand quivered with life, this rhythm was strong enough to bear her along with it on its current. Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality and her appearance, and whether Mr Carmichael was there or not, her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over that glaring, hideously difficult white space, while she modelled it with greens and blues.

A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia WOOLF

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In this feminist essay, Woolf argues that women need space (“a room of one’s own”) and financial support (“five hundred a year”) in order to be able to write well and freely.

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Be that as it may, I could not help thinking, as I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop was right at least in this; it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. Shakespeare himself went, very probably, — his mother was an heiress — to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin — Ovid, Virgil and Horace — and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighbourhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practising his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen. Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter — indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of her father’s eye. Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighbouring wool-stapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give hcr a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer’s night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother’s, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager — a fat, looselipped man — guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting — no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted — you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last — for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows — at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so — who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body? — killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.

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The Sound and the Fury (1929), William FAULKNER Faulkner’s novels deal with the loss of ideals after the South was ruined by slavery and money; they are full of violence, incest and madness. The Sound and the Fury tells the story of the Compsons, an old Southern aristocratic family whose four children include Benjy, who is mentally retarded, and his sister Caddy. The beginning of the novel is told from Benjy’s viewpoint, in a stream-ofconsciousness fashion: he goes from the present (when he is thirty-three) to the past when he used to wait for Caddy to return from school. Caddy has disappeared but Benjy is still waiting for her; hearing the players on the nearby golf course use the term “caddie” reminds him of her. APRIL SEVENTH, 1928 THROUGH THE FENCE, BETWEEN the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass. “Here, caddie.” He hit. They went away across the pasture. I held to the fence and watched them going away. “Listen at you, now.” Luster said. “Aint you something, thirty-three years old, going on that way. After I done went all the way to town to buy you that cake. Hush up that moaning. Aint you going to help me find that quarter so I can go to the show tonight.” They were hitting little, across the pasture. I went back along the fence to where the flag was. It flapped on the bright grass and the trees. “Come on.” Luster said. “We done looked there. They aint no more coming right now. Lets go down to the branch and find that quarter before them niggers finds it.” It was red, flapping on the pasture. Then there was a bird slanting and tilting on it. Luster threw. The flag flapped on the bright grass and the trees. I held to the fence. “Shut up that moaning.” Luster said. “I cant make them come if they aint coming, can I. If you dont hush up, mammy aint going to have no birthday for you. If you dont hush, you know what I going to do. I going to eat that cake all up. Eat them candles, too. Eat them thirty-three candles. Come on, let’s go down to the branch. I got to find my quarter. Maybe we can find one of they balls. Here. Here they is. Way over yonder. See.” He came to the fence and pointed his arm. “See them. They aint coming back here no more. Come on.” We went along the fence and came to the garden fence, where our shadows were. My shadow was higher than Luster’s on the fence. We came to the broken place and went through it. “Wait a minute.” Luster said. “You snagged on that nail again. Cant you never crawl through here without snagging on that nail.” Caddy uncaught me and we crawled through. Uncle Maury said to not let anybody see us, so we better stoop over, Caddy said. Stoop over, Benjy. Like this, see. We stooped over and crossed the garden, where the flowers rasped and rattled against us. The ground was hard. We climbed the fence, where the pigs were grunting and snuffing. I expect they’re sorry because one of them got killed today, Caddy said. The ground was hard, churned and knotted. Keep your hands in your pockets, Caddy said. Or they’ll get froze. You don’t want your hands froze on Christmas, do you. “It’s too cold out there.” Versh said. “You do want to go out doors.” “What is it now.” Mother said. “He want to go out doors.” Versh said. “Let him go.” Uncle Maury said. “It’s too cold.” Mother said. “He’d better stay in. Benjamin. Stop that, now.” “It wont hurt him.” Uncle Maury said. “You, Benjamin.” Mother said. “If you dont be good, you’ll have to go to the kitchen.” “Mammy say keep him out the kitchen today.” Versh said. “She say she got all that cooking to get done.” “Let him go, Caroline.” Uncle Maury said. “You’ll worry yourself sick over him.” “I know it.” Mother said. “It’s a judgment on me. I sometimes wonder.” “I know, I know.” Uncle Maury said. “You must keep your strength up. I’ll make you a toddy.” “It just upsets me that much more.” Mother said. “Dont you know it does.” “You’ll feel better.” Uncle Maury said. “Wrap him up good, boy, and take him out for a while.” Uncle Maury went away. Versh went away. “Please hush.” Mother said. “We’re trying to get you out as fast as we can. I dont want you to get sick.” Versh put my overshoes and overcoat on and we took my cap and went out. Uncle Maury was putting the bottle away in the sideboard in the dining-room. “Keep him out about half an hour, boy.” Uncle Maury said. “Keep him in the yard, now.” “Yes, sir.” Versh said. “We dont never let him get off the place.” We went out doors. The sun was cold and bright. “Where you heading for.” Versh said. “You dont think you going to town, does you.” We went through the rattling leaves. The gate was cold. “You better keep them hands in your pockets.” Versh said, “You get them froze onto that gate, then what you do. Whyn’t you wait for them in the house.” He put my hands into my pockets. I could hear him rattling in the leaves. I could smell the cold. The gate was cold.

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“Bavarian Gentians” (composed in 1929, published in 1932), D. H. LAWRENCE

David Herbert Lawrence, 1885-1903 D. H. Lawrence is known for his novels, but he was also a poet, a writer of travel-narratives, critical essays, etc. Like his novels, his poems celebrate nature, the senses, vital instinct and the subconscious (what he called “blood consciousness”). In these poems, even more than in his novels, he tried to free himself from the weight of formalism: see how repetitions and variations within these repetitions create an almost incantatory rhythm here.

Not every man has gentians in his house in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas. Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark darkening the daytime, torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto’s gloom, ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark-blue daze, black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue, giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s pale lamps give off light, lead me then, lead the way.

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Reach me a gentian, give me a torch! let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark 15 and Persephone herself is but a voice or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom, among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and her groom.

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The Big Sleep (1939), Raymond CHANDLER

Raymond Chandler, 1870-1959

Thanks largely to Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) and his novel The Maltese Falcon (1930), the hard-boiled detective story has become genre fiction. The ingredients for these stories seem set in stone: a lonely first person hard drinking, tough guy narrator, a metaphor or simile around every page turn, allegorical names, a rich victimised family, a bounty of femmes fatales, hostile police, and, of course, an elaborate case. Chandler’s detective, Philip Marlowe, is the typical knight in not quite shining armour – an image disjointedly reflected in the stain glass he looks up at just as he is about to enter the Sternwood mansion at the start of the novel.

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It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying. There were French doors at the back of the hall, beyond them a wide sweep of emerald grass to a white garage, in front of which a slim dark young chauffeur in shiny black leggings was dusting a maroon Packard convertible. Beyond the garage were some decorative trees trimmed as carefully as poodle dogs. Beyond them a large greenhouse with a domed roof. Then more trees and beyond everything the solid, uneven, comfortable line of the foothills. On the east side of the hall a free staircase, tile-paved, rose to a gallery with a wrought-iron railing and another piece of stained-glass romance. Large hard chairs with rounded red plush seats were backed into the vacant spaces of the wall round about. They didn’t look as if anybody had ever sat in them. In the middle of the west wall there was a big empty fireplace with a brass screen in four hinged panels, and over the fireplace a marble mantel with cupids at the corners. Above the mantel there was a large oil portrait, and above the portrait two bullet-torn or moth-eaten cavalry pennants crossed in a glass frame. The portrait was a stiffly posed job of an officer in full regimentals of about the time of the Mexican war. The officer had a neat black imperial, black mustachios, hot hard coal-black eyes, and the general look of a man it would pay to get along with. I thought this might be General Sternwood’s grandfather. It could hardly be the General himself, even though I had heard he was pretty far gone in years to have a couple of daughters still in the dangerous twenties. I was still staring at the hot black eyes when a door opened far back under the stairs. It wasn’t the butler coming back. It was a girl. She was twenty or so, small and delicately put together, but she looked durable. She wore pale blue slacks and they looked well on her. She walked as if she were floating. Her hair was a fine tawny wave cut much shorter than the current fashion of pageboy tresses curled in at the bottom. Her eyes were slate-gray, and had almost no expression when they looked at me. She came over near me and smiled with her mouth and she had little sharp predatory teeth, as white as fresh orange pith and as shiny as porcelain. They glistened between her thin too taut lips. Her face lacked color and didn’t look too healthy. ‘Tall, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be.’ Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled.

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“As I Walked Out One Evening” (1940), W. H. Auden As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead.

And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: ‘Love has no ending.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes And the Giant is enchanting to Jack, And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer, And Jill goes down on her back.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street,

‘O look, look in the mirror, O look in your distress: Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless.

‘I’ll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.

‘O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart.’

The years shall run like rabbits, For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages, And the first love of the world.’

It was late, late in the evening, The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming, And the deep river ran on.

But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: ‘O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time. ‘In the burrows of the Nightmare Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow And coughs when you would kiss. ‘In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day. ‘Into many a green valley Drifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances And the diver’s brilliant bow.

W.H. Auden, 1907-1973

‘O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you’ve missed.

Born in York, Auden moved to Birmingham as a child and was educated at Oxford. Possibly what strikes us first when reading Auden is the depth of his voice, drawing on both tradition and popular culture.

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The Catcher in the Rye (1951), J.D. SALINGER

The entire corpus of Jerome David Salinger's published works consists of only thirteen short stories and one novel, all originally written between 1948 and 1959. Yet, The Catcher in the Rye alone would make him a leading American literary figure of the twentieth century, the voice of an entire generation and an inspiration to those that would follow. Salinger grew up in New York City and, much like his character Holden Caulfield, attended public schools and a private military academy. After his return from the service in the U.S. Army, his name and writing style became increasingly associated with The New Yorker magazine, which published nearly all of his stories. After the publication of his novel, his extremely reclusive lifestyle only added to the public's infatuation with the mysterious man behind the words of Holden Caulfield. Below is the oft-cited opening passage to The Catcher in Rye, as Holden sets out to relate, with a good dose of humour and in authentic teen language of the period, his three-day flight from responsibility and from the “phony” world of adults.

Chapter 1

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If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told you anything pretty personal about them. They’re quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They’re nice and all—I’m not saying that—but they’re also touchy as hell. Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean that’s all I told D.B. about, and he’s my brother and all. He’s in Hollywood. That isn’t too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week-end. He’s going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He’s got a lot of dough now. He didn’t use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was ‘The Secret Goldfish’. It was about this little kid that wouldn’t let anybody look at his goldfish because he’d bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me. Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that’s in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You’ve probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey Prep was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse’s picture it always says : ‘Since 1888 we have been moulding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men.’ Strictly for the birds. They don’t do any damn more moulding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn’t know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.

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“The Displaced Person,” from A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), Flannery O’CONNOR Flannery O’Connor was born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, in a Catholic family. She died at 39 of a congenital disease but by that time she was an established writer known for about thirty short stories and two novels, as well as speeches and letters. Along

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with writers like Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty, she belonged to the Southern Gothic tradition which focused on the decaying south and its people. In “The Displaced Person,” a family of World War II refugees has arrived on a farm, causing Mrs. Shortley, the wife of the farm’s white hired worker, to be on the alert. The excerpt reveals the importance of religion and the Southern social order as underlying themes in O’Connor’s work.

Mrs. Shortley waited until the car was out of sight and then she made her way circuitously to the mulberry tree and stood about ten feet behing the two Negroes, one an old man holding a bucket half full of calf feed and the other a yellowish boy with a short woodchuck-like head pushed into a rounded felt hat. “Well,” she said slowly, “yawl have looked long enough. What you think about them?” The old man, Astor, raised himself. “We been watching,” he said as if this would be news to her. “Who they now?” “They come from over the water,” Mrs. Shortley said with a wave of her arm. “They’re what is called Displaced Persons.” “Displaced Persons,” he said. “Well now. I declare. What do that mean?” “It means they ain’t where they were born at and there’s nowhere for them to go—like if you was run out of here and wouldn’t nobody have you.” “It seem like they here, though,” the old man said in a reflective voice. “If they here, they somewhere.” “Sho is,” the other agreed. “They here.” The illogic of Negro-thinking always irked Mrs. Shortley. “They ain’t where they belong to be at,” she said. “They belong to be back yonder where everything is still like they been used to. Over here it’s more advanced than where they come from. But yawl better look out now,” she said and nodded her head. “There’s about ten million billion more just like them and I know what Mrs. McIntyre said.” “Say what?” the young one asked. “Places are not easy to get nowadays, for white or black, but I reckon I heard what she stated to me,” she said in a sing-song voice. “You liable to hear most anything,” the old man remarked, leaning forwards as if he were about to walk off but holding himself suspended. “I heard her say, ‘This is going to put the Fear of the Lord into those shiftless niggers!’” Mrs. Shortley said in a ringing voice. The old man started off. “She say something like that every now and then,” he said ; “Ha. Ha. Yes indeed.” “You better get on in that barn and help Mr. Shortley,” she said to the other one. “What you reckon she pays you for?” “He the one sont me out,” the Negro muttered. “He the one gimme something else to do.” “Well you better get to doing it then,” she said and stood there until he moved off. Then she stood a while longer, reflecting, her unseeing eyes directly in front of the peacock’s tail. He had jumped into the tree and his tail hung in front of her, full of fierce planets with eyes that were each ringed in green and set against a sun that was gold in one second’s light

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and salmon-colored in the next. She might have been looking at a map of the universe but she didn’t notice it any more than she did the spots of sky that cracked the dull green of the tree. She was having an inner vision instead. She was seeing the ten million billion of them pushing their way into new places over here and herself, a giant angel with wings as wide as a house, telling the Negroes that they would have to find another place. She turned herself in the direction of the barn, musing on this, her expression lofty and satisfied.

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“A Supermarket in California” (1955), Allen GINSBERG

Leading poet of the American Beat Generation, Ginsberg’s first published collection, Howl and Other Poems (1956), sparked the San Francisco Renaissance. Some believe Ginsberg to be the true successor of Walt Whitman (1819-1892), who believed himself to be a subversive and that the function of the poet is to express himself in verse.

Allen Ginsberg, 1926-1997

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! — and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

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Lolita (1955), Vladimir NABOKOV

Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977

Before reading this extract go back and re-read E.A. Poe’s poem ‘Annabel Lee’ – how do these two texts tie-in? There is no doubt that at first Lolita appears to be morally disturbing. But how much of Humbert Humbert’s narrative games can we believe? How far can we trust our narrator’s memory?

Part I Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

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Owls Do Cry (1961), Janet FRAME Owls Do Cry, Frame’s first novel, relates the story of an impoverished family, the Withers, during the Depression in New Zealand. Toby, one of the four Withers children, suffers from epilepsy, which has always marginalized him. When the young woman he saw as his fiancée, Fay Chaklin, chooses to marry another man, Albert Crudge, Toby receives by mail a small piece of Fay’s wedding cake which his mother encourages him to put under his pillow during his sleep for good luck. This passage retraces the dream Toby had that night, which mixes his anxieties, the narratives of his childhood, and his relationship to his family, especially his three sisters, Daphne, Teresa, nicknamed Chick, and Francie, who died a few years earlier, when she fell by accident into a fire that had been lit in the municipal dump, surrounded by toi-toi. Janet Frame, 1924-2004

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And he dreamed. And in his dream he sat in a cold apple orchard on a corner of the moon. He sat in a circle of toi-toi that hung with apples of ice. He would have picked one and eaten it, for he liked apples, but three witches danced about him, singing the same words that Daphne had told him they sang, three witches, on the heath with Hecate, in thunder and lightning. —He shall live a man forbid, they sang. Then they stopped singing and sat down, cross-legged, with their long skirts over their knees, and they rocked three cradles that were made, each one, of a corner of the moon; and Toby wondered where the fourth corner lay, and he felt afraid until he remembered he was sitting on it in an ice-cold apple orchard. But where is the world, he thought? I need a tiny telescope, even a toy one made of a stick of toffee that I could eat afterwards, only I need a telescope, a toy one cheap and plastic from Woolworths, yet stronger for my needs than the walking stick of Albert Crudge; and I will not spend much money on my telescope; only to look that I may know the world and see my life and my mother and father and three sisters on their island with the fire at the centre and the sea with its green web of forgetting; and across it, Fay Chalklin, the mill girl, and her Albert, the Social Security man, inhabiting where I shall never sail; and he has taken his wife, I know he has taken her, and sliced her in pale coloured slices like a seashell to be thrown back, day by day to the water; and pressed her like a flower between the pages of a large black book of judgment that has written on the ouside, in frilly silver writing like a wedding invitation, A New Map of the Terraceous Globe according to the Ancient Discoveries and First General Divisions of it into Continents and Oceans. Then in his dream Toby began to cry because he was alone and took fits and the middle witch left off rocking the cradle and came up to him, and said, —Don’t cry, Toby, have an apple. We are safe here. No one will know it has been stolen. She gave him an apple of ice that melted green and red in his warm hand, the green changing to sea, the red into blood, and both flowing in salt streams across the corner of the moon. He washed his face and hands in the two streams, trying to take the black away from under his fingernails, and the nicotine from his fingers; while the three witches that were called Francie, Daphne and Chicks, rocked the cradles that held themselves as children, dreaming, with sticky warm faces, like kittens set down to suckle furry mother sleep. —But where am I, thought Toby. There is no place for me. Where is my cradle? —Why don’t you rock me, he asked the three witches. And one or all of them answered, —We are afraid of you, Toby. You will take a fit. And then he wondered again, Where is the world? He thought, perhaps I should ask the witches where the world can be, for I need money nad food and clothing and some kind of social position. I shall be arrested here as a tramp and thrown in the sea or burned when morning comes and the old fires are relit in the circle of toi-toi.

The Bluest Eye (1970), Toni MORRISON

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Many of Morrison’s novels deal with the experiences of black Americans in the predominantly white social and cultural environment of Midwestern rural communities. The Bluest Eye, her first novel, focuses on eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, a black girl who longs for blue eyes in a society that equates beauty and love with light skin. The excerpt is a description of the Breedloves’ house.

HEREISTHEHOUSEITISGREENANDWHITEITHASAREDDOORITISVERYPRETTYITISVERYPRETTYPRE

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There is an abandoned store on the southeast of Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street in Lorain, Ohio. It does not recede into its background of leaden sky, nor harmonize with the gray frame houses and black telephone poles around it. Rather, it foists itself on the eye of the passerby in a manner that is both irritating and melancholy. Visitors who drive to this tiny town wonder why it has not been torn down, while pedestrians, who are residents of the neighborhood, simply look away when they pass it. At one time, when the building housed a pizza parlor, people saw only slow-footed teen-aged boys huddled about the corner. These young boys met there to feel their groins, smoke cigarettes, and plan mild outrages. The smoke from their cigarettes they inhaled deeply, forcing it to fill their lungs, their hearts, their thighs, and keep at bay the shiveriness, the energy of their youth. They moved slowly, laughed slowly, but flicked the ashes from their cigarettes too quickly, too often, and exposed themselves, to those who were interested, as novices to the habit. But long before the sound of their lowing and the sight of their preening, the building was leased to a Hungarian baker, modestly famous for his brioche and poppy-seed rolls. Earlier than that, there was a real-estate office there, and even before that, some gypsies used it as a base of operations. The gypsy family gave the large plate-glass window as much distinction and character as it ever had. The girls of the family took turns in sitting between yards of velvet draperies and Oriental rugs hanging at the windows. They looked out and occasionally smiled, or winked, or beckoned — only occasionally. Mostly they looked, their elaborate dresses, long-sleeved and long-skirted, hiding the nakedness that stood in their eyes. So fluid has the population in that area been, that probably no one remembers longer, longer ago, before the time of the gypsies and the time of the teen-agers when the Breedloves lived there, nestled together in the storefront. Festering together in the debris of a realtor’s whim. They slipped in and out of the box of peeling gray, making no stir in the neighborhood, no sound in the labor force, and no wave in the mayor’s office. Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality — collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other. The plan of the living quarters was as unimaginative as a first-generation Greek landlord could contrive it to be. The large “store” area was partitioned into two rooms by beaverboard planks that did not reach to the ceiling. There was a living room, which the family called the front room, and the bedroom, where all the living was done. In the front room were two sofas, an upright piano, and a tiny artificial Christmas tree which had been there, decorated and dust-laden, for two years. The bedroom had three beds: a narrow iron bed for Sammy, fourteen years old, another for Pecola, eleven years old, and a double bed for Cholly and Mrs Breedlove. In the center of the bedroom, for the even distribution of heat, stood a coal stove. Trunks, chairs, a small end table, and a cardboard “wardrobe” closet were placed around the walls. The kitchen was in the back of this apartment, a separate room. There were no bath facilities. Only a toilet bowl, inaccessible to the eye, if not the ear, of the tenants. There is nothing more to say about the furnishings. They were anything but describable, having been conceived, manufactured, shipped, and sold in various states of thoughtlessness, greed, and indifference. The furniture had aged without ever having become familiar. People had owned it, but never known it. No one had lost a penny or a brooch under the cushions of either sofa and remembered the place and time of the loss or the finding. No one had clucked and said, ‘But I had it just a minute ago. I was sitting right there talking to . . .’ or ‘Here it is. It must have slipped down while I was feeding the baby!’ No one had given birth in one of the beds — or remembered with fondness the peeled paint places, because that’s what the baby, when he learned to pull himself up, used to pick loose. No thrifty child had tucked a wad of gum under the table. No happy drunk — a friend of the family, with a fat neck, unmarried, you know, but God how he eats! — had sat at the piano and played ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ No young girl had stared at the tiny Christmas tree and remembered when she had decorated it, or wondered if that blue ball was going to hold, or if HE would ever come back to

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see it. There were no memories among those pieces. Certainly no memories to be cherished. Occasionally an item provoked a physical reaction: an increase of acid irritation in the upper intestinal tract, a light flush of perspiration at the back of the neck as circumstances surrounding the piece of furniture were recalled. The sofa, for example. It had been purchased new, but the fabric had split straight across the back by the time it was delivered. The store would not take the responsibility . . . ‘Looka here, buddy. It was O.K. when I put it on the truck. The store can’t do anything about it once it’s on the truck . . .’ Listerine and Lucky Strike breath. ‘But I don’t want no tore couch if’n it’s bought new.’ Pleading eyes and tightened testicles. ‘Tough shit, buddy. Your tough shit . . . You could hate a sofa, of course — that is, if you could hate a sofa. But it didn’t matter. You still had to get together $4.80 a month. If you had to pay $4.80 a month for a sofa that started off split, no good, and humiliating — you couldn’t take any joy in owning it. And the joylessness stank, pervading everything. The stink of it kept you from painting the beaverboard walls; from getting a matching piece of material for the chair; even from sewing up the split, which became a gash, which became a gaping chasm that exposed the cheap frame and cheaper upholstery. It withheld the refreshment in a sleep slept on it. It imposed a furtiveness on the loving done on it. Like a sore tooth that is not content to throb in isolation, but must diffuse its own pain to other parts of the body — making breathing difficult, vision limited, nerves unsettled, so a hated piece of furniture produces a fretful malaise that asserts itself throughout the house and limits the delight of things not related to it.

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The only living thing in the Breedloves’ house was the coal stove, which lived independently of everything and everyone, its fire being “out,” “banked,” or “up” at its own discretion, in spite of the fact that the family fed it and knew all the details of its regimen: sprinkle, do not dump, not too much . . . The fire seemed to live, go down, or die according to its own schemata. In the morning, however, it always saw fit to die.

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Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), Toni MORRISON

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For some time now I have been thinking about the validity or vulnerability of a certain set of assumptions conventionally accepted among literary historians and critics and circulated as “knowledge.” This knowledge holds that traditional, canonical American literature is free of, uninformed, and unshaped by the four-hundred-year-old presence of, first, Africans and then African-Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence—which shaped the body politic, the Constitution, and the entire history of the culture—has had no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture’s literature. Moreover, such knowledge assumes that the characteristics of our national literature emanate from a particular “Americanness” that is separate from and unaccountable to this presence. There seems to be a more or less tacit agreement among literary scholars that, because American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views, genius, and power are without relationship to and removed from the overwhelming presence of black people in the United States. This agreement is made about a population that preceded every American writer of renown and was, I have come to believe, one of the most furtively radical impinging forces on the country’s literature. The contemplation of this black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margins of the literary imagination. These speculations have led me to wonder whether the major and championed characteristics of our national literature—individualism, masculinity, social engagement versus historical isolation; acute and ambiguous moral problematics; the thematics of innocence coupled with an obsession with figurations of death and hell—are not in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence. It has occurred to me that the very manner by which American literature distinguishes itself as a coherent entity exists because of this unsettled and unsettling population. Just as the formation of the nation necessitated coded language and purposeful restriction to deal with the racial disingenuousness and moral frailty at its heart, so too did the literature, whose founding characteristics extend into the twentieth century, reproduce the necessity for codes and restriction. Through significant and underscored omissions, startling contradictions, heavily nuanced conflicts, through the way writers peopled their work with the signs and bodies of this presence—one can see that a real or fabricated Africanist presence was crucial to their sense of Americanness. And it shows.

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“Against Coupling” (1971), Fleur ADCOCK

Though born in New Zealand, much of Adcock’s childhood was spent in England, eventually moving to London in 1963. Her quietly authoritative voice spoke about men and women in a new way, debunking insincere rhetoric and sexual pieties through wit at times wry and at others sensitive.

Fleur Adcock, 1934—

I write in praise of the solitary act: of not feeling a trespassing tongue forced into one’s mouth, one’s breath smothered, nipples crushed against the ribcage, and that metallic tingling in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve: unpleasure. Just to avoid those eyes would help – such eyes as a young girl draws life from, listening to the vegetal rustle within her, as his gaze stirs polypal fronds in the obscure sea-bed of her body, and her own eyes blur. There is much to be said for abandoning this no longer novel exercise – for not ‘participating in a total experience’ – when one feels like the lady in Leeds who had seen The Sound of Music eighty-six-times; or more, perhaps, like the school drama mistress producing A Midsummer Night's Dream for the seventh year running, with yet another cast from 5B. Pyramus and Thisbe are dead, but the hole in the wall can still be troublesome. I advise you, then, to embrace it without encumbrance. No need to set the scene, dress up (or undress), make speeches. Five minutes of solitude are Enough – in the bath, or to fill that gap between the Sunday papers and lunch.

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“The Werewolf,” in The Bloody Chamber (1978), Angela CARTER Angela Carter was born Angela Olive Stalker in Sussex, England, on 8 May, 1940. She was raised in Yorkshire by her maternal grandmother, an ageing but indomitable feminist who told her stories by the fire. In the late 1970’s, after translating a series of Perrault’s fairy tales into English, Carter decided to give a feminist and politically incorrect twist to a number of traditional tales in her collection The Bloody Chamber, from which this story is taken. Notice especially Carter’s remarkable use of intertextuality in her retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood”.

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It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts. Cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forest. It is a hard life. Their houses are built of logs, dark and smoky within. There will be a crude icon of the virgin behind a guttering candle, the leg of a pig hung up to cure, a string of drying mushrooms. A bed, a stool, a table. Harsh, poor lives. To these upland woodsmen, the Devil is as real as you or I. More so; they have not seen us nor even know we exist, but the Devil they glimpse often in the graveyards, those bleak and touching townships of the dead where graves are marked with portraits of the deceased in the naïf style and there are no flowers to put in front of them, no flowers grow there, so they put out small, votive offerings, little loaves, sometimes a cake that bears come lumbering from the margins of the forest to snatch away. At midnight especially on Walpurgisnacht, the Devil holds picnics in the graveyards and invites witches; then they dig up fresh corpses and eat them. Anyone will tell you that. Wreaths of garlic on the doors keep out the vampires. A blue-eyed child born feet first on the night of St. John’s Eve will have second sight. When they discover a witch—some old woman whose cheeses ripen when her neighbour’s do not, another old woman whose black cat, oh sinister! Follows her about all the time, they strip the crone, search for her marks, for the supernumerary nipple her familiar sucks. They soon find it. They stone her to death. Winter and cold weather. Go and visit grandmother, who has been sick. Take her the oatcakes I’ve baked for her on the hearthstone and a little pot of butter. The good child does as her mother bids—five miles’ trudge through the forest; do not leave the path because of the bears, the wild boar, the starving wolves. Here, take your father’s hunting knife; you know how to use it. The child has a scabby coat of sheepskin to keep out the cold, she knew the forest too well to fear it but she must always be on her guard. When she heard the freezing howl of a wolf, she dropped her gifts, seized her knife and turned on the beast. It was a huge one, with red eyes and running, grizzled chops; any but a mountaineer’s child would have died of fright at the sight of it. It went for her throat as wolves do, but she made a great swipe at it with her father’s knife and slashed off its right paw. The wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob, when it saw what had happened to it; wolves are less brave than they seem. It went lolloping off disconsolately between the trees as well as it could on three legs, leaving a trail of blood behind it. The child wiped the blade of her knife clean on her apron, wrapped the wolf’s paw in the cloth in which her mother had packed the oatcakes and went on to her grandmother’s house. Soon it came on to snow so thick that the pat and any footsteps, tracks or spoor that might have been upon it were obscured. She found her grandmother was so sick she had taken to her bed and fallen into a fretful sleep, moaning and shaking so that the child guessed she had a fever. She felt the forehead, it burned. She shook out the cloth from her basket, to use it to make the old woman a cold compress, and the wolf’s paw fell to the ground. But it was no longer a wolf’s paw. It was a hand, chopped off at the wrist, a hand toughened with work and freckled with age. There was a wedding ring on the third finger and a wart on the indew finger. By the wart, she knew it for her grandmother’s hand. She pulled back the sheet but the old woman woke up, at that, and began to struggle, squawking, and shrieking like a thing possessed. But the child was strong, and armed with her father’s hunting knife, she managed to hold her grandmother down long enough to see the cause of her fever. There was a bloody stump where her right hand should have been, festering already. The child crossed herself and cried out so loud the neighbours heard her and came rushing in. They knew the wart on the hand at once for a witch’s nipple; they drove the old woman, in her shift as she was, out into the snow with sticks, beating her old carcass as far as the edge of the forest, and pelted her with stones until she fell down dead. Now the child lived on in her grandmother’s house; she prospered.

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Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), J.M. COETZEE Waiting for the Barbarians is an allegory of oppression: the officials of a frontier settlement want to control a group they identify as “barbarians”. In this scene, Colonel Joll is questioning the magistrate of the settlement about wooden slips that were found among the latter’s belongings.

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Colonel Joll sits behind the desk in my office. There are no books or files; the room is starkly empty save for a vase of fresh flowers. The handsome warrant officer whose name I do not know lifts the cedarwood chest on to the desk and steps back. Looking down to refer to his papers, the Colonel speaks. “Among the items found in your apartment was this wooden chest. I would like you to consider it. Its contents are unusual. It contains approximately three hundred slips of white poplar-wood, each about eight inches by two inches, many of them wound about with lengths of string. The wood is dry and brittle. Some of the string is new, some so old that it has perished. “If one loosens the string one finds that the slip splits open revealing two flat inner surfaces. These surfaces are written on in an unfamiliar script. “I think you will concur with this description.” I stare into the black lenses. He goes on. A reasonable inference is that the wooden slips contain messages passed between yourself and other parties, we do not know when. It remains for you to explain what the messages say and who the other parties were.” He takes a slip from the chest and flicks it across the polished surface of the desk towards me. I look at the lines of characters written by a stranger long since dead. I do not even know whether to read from right to left or from left to right. In the long evenings I spent poring over my collection I isolated over four hundred different characters in the script, perhaps as many as four hundred and fifty. I have no idea what they stand for. Does each stand for a single thing, a circle for the sun, a triangle for a woman, a wave for a lake or does a circle merely stand for “circle”, a triangle for “triangle”, a wave for “wave”? Does each sign represent a different state of the tongue, the lips, the throat, the lungs, as they combine in the uttering of some multifarious unimaginable extinct barbarian language? Or are my four hundred characters nothing but scribal embellishments of an underlying repertory of twenty or thirty whose primitive forms I am too stupid to see? “He sends greetings to his daughter,” I say. I hear with surprise the thick nasal voice that is now mine. My finger runs along the line of characters from right to left. “Whom he says he has not seen for a long time. He hopes she is happy and thriving. He hopes the lambing season has been good. He has a gift for her, he says, which he will keep till he sees her again. He sends his love. It is not easy to read his signature. It could be simply ‘Your father’ or it could be something else, a name.” I reach over into the chest and pick out a second slip. The warrant officer, who sits behind Joll with a little notebook open on his knee, stares hard at me, his pencil poised above the paper. “This one reads as follows,” I say: ‘I am sorry I must send bad news. The soldiers came and took your brother away. I have been to the fort every day to plead for his return. I sit in the dust with my head bare. Yesterday for the first time they sent a man to speak to me. He says your brother is no longer here. He says he has been sent away. “Where?” I asked, but he would not say. Do not tell your mother, but join me in praying for his safety.’ “And now let us see what this next one says.” The pencil is still poised, he has not written anything, he has not stirred. “‘We went to fetch your brother yesterday. They showed us into a room where he lay on a table sewn up in a sheet.’” Slowly Joll leans back in his chair. The warrant officer closes his notebook and half-rises; but with a

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gesture Joll restrains him. “‘They wanted me to take him away like that, but I insisted on looking first. “What if it is the wrong body you are giving me?” I said — “You have so many bodies here, bodies of brave young men.” So I opened the sheet and saw that it was indeed he. Through each eyelid, I saw, there was a stitch. “Why have you done that?” I said. “It is our custom,” he said. I tore the sheet wide open and saw bruises all over his body, and saw that his feet were swollen and broken. “What happened to him?” I said. “I do not know,” said the man, “it is not on the paper; if you have questions you must go to the sergeant, but he is very busy.” We have had to bury your brother here, outside their fort, because he was beginning to stink. Please tell your mother and try to console her.’ “Now let us see what the next one says. See, there is only a single character. It is the barbarian character war, but it has other senses too. It can stand for vengeance, and, if you turn it upside down like this, it can be made to read justice. There is no knowing which sense is intended. That is part of barbarian cunning. “It is the same with the rest of these slips.” I plunge my good hand into the chest and stir. “They form an allegory. They can be read in many orders. Further, each single slip can be read in many ways. Together they can be read as a domestic journal, or they can be read as a plan of war, or they can be turned on their sides and read as a history of the last years of the Empire — the old Empire, I mean. There is no agreement among scholars about how to interpret these relics of the ancient barbarians. Allegorical sets like this one can be found buried all over the desert. I found this one not three miles from here in the ruins of a public building. Graveyards are another good place to look in, though it is not always easy to tell where barbarian burial sites lie. It is recommended that you simply dig at random: perhaps at the very spot where you stand you will come upon scraps, shards, reminders of the dead. Also the air: the air is full of sighs and cries. These are never lost: if you listen carefully, with a sympathetic ear, you can hear them echoing forever within the second sphere. The night is best: sometimes when you have difficulty in falling asleep it is because your ears have been reached by the cries of the dead which, like their writings, are open to many interpretations. “Thank you. I have finished translating.” I have not failed to keep an eye on Joll through all this. He has not stirred again, save to lay a hand on his subordinate’s sleeve at the moment when I referred to the Empire and he rose, ready to strike me. If he comes near me 1 will hit him with all the strength in my body. I will not disappear into the earth without leaving my mark on them. The Colonel speaks. “You have no idea how tiresome your behaviour is. You are the one and only official we have had to work with on the frontier who has not given us his fullest co-operation. Candidly, I must tell you I am not interested in these sticks.” He waves a hand at the slips scattered on the desk. “They are very likely gambling-sticks. I know that other tribes on the border gamble with sticks.”

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“Inglan Is A Bitch” (1980), Linton Kwesi JOHNSON w’en mi jus’ come to Landan toun mi use to work pan di andahgroun but workin’ pan di andahgroun y’u don’t get fi know your way around Inglan is a bitch dere’s no escapin’ it Inglan is a bitch dere’s no runnin’ whey fram it mi get a lickle jab in a big ’otell an awftah a while, mi woz doin’ quite well dem staat mi aaf as a dish-washah but w’en mi tek a stack, mi noh tun clack-watchah! Inglan is a bitch dere’s no escapin’ it Inglan is a bitch noh baddah try fi hide fram it

fi di laas fifteen years dem get mi laybah now awftah fifteen years mi fall out a fayvah Inglan is a bitch dere’s no escapin’ it Inglan is a bitch dere’s no runnin’ whey fram it mi know dem have work, work in abundant yet still, dem mek mi redundant now, at fifty-five mi gettin’ quite ol’ yet still, dem sen’ mi fi goh draw dole Inglan is a bitch dere’s no escapin’ it Inglan is a bitch is whey wi a goh dhu ’bout it?

w’en dem gi’ you di lickle wage packit fus dem rab it wid dem big tax rackit y’u haffi struggle fi mek en’s meet an’ w’en y’u goh a y’u bed y’u jus’ cant sleep Inglan is a bitch dere’s no escapin’ it Inglan is a bitch a noh lie mi a tell, a true mi use to work dig ditch w’en it cowl noh bitch mi did strang like a mule, but bwoy, mi did fool den awftah a while mi jus’ stap dhu ovahtime den awftah a while mi jus’ phu dung mi tool Inglan is a bitch dere’s no escapin it Inglan is a bitch y’u haffi know how fi survive in it well mi dhu day wok an’ mi dhu nite wok mi dhu clean wok an’ mi dhu dutty wok dem seh dat black man is very lazy but if y’u si how mi wok y’u woulda sey mi crazy Inglan is a bitch dere’s no escapin’ it Inglan is a bitch y’u bettah face up to it dem a have a lickle facktri up inna Brackly inna disya facktri all dem dhu is pack crackry

Linton Kwesi Johnson, 1952Born in 1952 in Jamaica, Johnson went to London in 1963. After leaving school he studied sociology at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. Still at school he joined the Black Panthers, helping to develop their poetry workshop as well as working with Rasta Love, a group of poets and drummers. Johnson’s first collection of poems was published in 1974 by Race Today. Dread, Beat an’ Blood, published in 1975, was also the title of Johnson’s first record album released by Virgin in 1978. Inglan Is A Bitch was published in 1980.

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Midnight’s Children (1981), Salman RUSHDIE Salman Rushdie, 1947Salman Rushdie was born into an affluent Muslim family in Bombay in 1947. In his first novel, Midnight’s Children, the first-person narrator, Saleem Sinai, becomes a national hero because he happened to be born at the very hour India became independent, on August 15, 1947. He decides to tell the epic story of his country, as seen through his family. In this passage, the fate of Bombay Muslims is reflected in the misfortune of Saleem’s father, Ahmed Sinai.

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Our lives, at this period, were shaped by correspondence. The Prime Minister wrote to me when I was just seven days old - before I could even wipe my own nose I was receiving fan letters from Times of India readers; and one morning in January Ahmed Sinai, too, received a letter he would never forget. Red eyes at breakfast were followed by the shaven chin of the working day; footsteps down the stairs; alarmed giggles of Coca-Cola girl. The squeak of a chair drawn up to a desk topped with green leathercloth. Metallic noise of a metal paper-cutter being lifted, colliding momentarily with telephone. The brief rasp of metal slicing envelope; and one minute later, Ahmed was running back up the stairs, yelling for my mother, shouting: ‘Amina! Come here, wife! The bastards have shoved my balls in an ice-bucket!’ In the days after Ahmed received the formal letter informing him of the freezing of all his assets, the whole world was talking at once … ‘For pity’s sake, janum, such language!’ Amina is saying - and is it my imagination, or does a baby blush in a sky-blue crib? And Narlikar, arriving in a lather of perspiration, ‘I blame myself entirely; we made ourselves too public. These are bad times, Sinai bhai - freeze a Muslim’s assets, they say, and you make him run to Pakistan, leaving all his wealth behind him. Catch the lizard’s tail and he’ll snap it off! This so-called secular state gets some damn clever ideas.’ ‘Everything,’ Ahmed Sinai is saying, ‘bank account; savings bonds; the rents from the Kurla properties - all blocked, frozen. By order, the letter says. By order they will not let me have four annas, wife - not a chavanni to see the peepshow!’ ‘It’s those photos in the paper,’ Amina decides. ‘Otherwise how could those jumped-up clever dicks know whom to prosecute? My God, janum, it’s my fault ...’ ‘Not ten pice for a twist of channa,’ Ahmed Sinai adds, ‘not one anna to give alms to a beggar. Frozen - like in the fridge!’ ‘It’s my fault,’ Ismail Ibrahim is saying, ‘I should have warned you, Sinai bhai. I have heard about these freezings only well-off Muslims are selected, naturally. You must fight ...’ ‘… Tooth and nail!’ Homi Catrack insists, ‘Like a lion! Like Aurangzeb - your ancestor, isn’t it? - like the Rani of Jhansi! Then let’s see what kind of country we’ve ended up in!’ ‘There are law courts in this State,’ Ismail Ibrahim adds; Nussie-the-duck smiles a bovine smile as she suckles Sonny; her fingers move, absently stroking his hollows, up and around, down and about, in a steady, unchanging rhythm ... ‘You must accept my legal services,’ Ismail tells Ahmed, ‘Absolutely free, my good friend. No, no I won’t hear of it. How can it be? We are neighbours.’ ‘Broke,’ Ahmed is saying, ‘Frozen, like water.’ ‘Come on now,’ Amina interrupts him; her dedication rising to new heights, she leads him towards her bedroom... ‘Janum, you need to lie for some time.’ And Ahmed: ‘What’s this, wife? A time like this - cleaned out; finished; crushed like ice - and you think about ...’ But she has closed the door; slippers have been kicked off; arms are reaching towards him; and some moments later her hands are stretching down down down; and then, ‘Oh my goodness, janum, I thought you were just talking dirty but it’s true! So cold, Allah, so coooold, like little round cubes of ice!’ Such things happen; after the State froze my father’s assets, my mother began to feel them growing colder and colder. On the first day, the Brass Monkey was conceived - just in time, because after that, although Amina lay every night with her husband to warm him, although she snuggled up tightly when she felt him shiver as the icy fingers of rage and powerlessness spread upwards from his loins, she could no longer bear to stretch out her hand and touch because his little cubes of ice had become too frigid to hold. They - we - should have known something bad would happen. That January, Chowpatty Beach, and Juhu and Trombay, too, were littered with the ominous corpses of dead pomfret, which floated, without the ghost of an explanation, belly-side-up, like scaly fingers in to shore.

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“Them & [uz]” (1981), Tony HARRISON

Harrison passionately writes out of contradictions framed by his working class background, his grammar school education and his family relations. The two sonnets presented here show us how the fabrication of Received Pronunciation, of so-called Standard English, clashes with the reality of the narrator’s “barbarian” accent.

Tony Harrison, 1937—

for Professors Richard Hoggart & Leon Cortez I αíαî, ay, ay! ... stutterer Demosthenes gob full of pebbles outshouting seas – 4 words only of mi ’art aches and ... ‘Mine’s broken, you barbarian, T.W.!’ He was nicely spoken. ‘Can’t have our glorious heritage done to death!’

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I played the Drunken Porter in Macbeth. ‘Poetry’s the speech of kings. You’re one of those Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose! All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see ’s been dubbed by [ΛS] into RP, Received Pronunciation, please believe [ΛS] your speech is in the hands of the Receivers.’ ‘We say [ΛS] not [uz], T.W.!’ That shut my trap. I doffed my flat a’s (as in ‘flat cap’) my mouth all stuffed with glottals, great lumps to hawk up and spit out ... E-nun-ci-ate!

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II So right, yer buggers, then! We’ll occupy your lousy leasehold Poetry. I chewed up Littererchewer and spat the bones into the lap of dozing Daniel Jones, dropped the initials I’d been harried as and used my name and own voice: [uz] [uz] [uz], ended sentences with by, with, from, and spoke the language that I spoke at home. RIP RP, RIP T.W. I’m Tony Harrison no longer you!

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You can tell the Receivers where to go (and not aspirate it) once you know Wordsworth's matter/water are full rhymes, [uz] can be loving as well as funny. My first mention in the Times automatically made Tony Anthony!

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“Standing Female Nude” (1985), Carol Ann DUFFY

What are the apparent gender issues at work in this poem? Compare the lyrical exuberance to the reality of the situation; the reality of emotion to its representation.

Carol Ann Duffy, 1965—

Six hours like this for a few francs. Belly nipple arse in the window light, he drains the colour from me. Further to the right, Madame. And do try to be still. I shall be represented analytically and hung in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art. Maybe. He is concerned with volume, space. I with the next meal. You're getting thin, Madame, this is not good. My breasts hang Slightly low, the studio is cold. In the tea-leaves I can see the Queen of England gazing on my shape. Magnificent, she murmurs moving on. It makes me laugh. His name is Georges. They tell me he's a genius. There are times he does not concentrate and stiffens for my warmth. Men think of their mothers. he possesses me on canvas as he dips the brush repeatedly into the paint. Little man, you've not the money for the arts I sell. Both poor, we make our living how we can. I ask him. Why do you do this? Because I have to. There's no choice. Don't talk. My smile confuses him. These artists take themselves too seriously. At night I fill myself with wine and dance around the bars. When it's finished he shows me proudly, lights a cigarette. I say Twelve francs and get my shawl. It does not look like me.

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The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Margaret ATWOOD The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia in which Canadian writer Margaret Atwood imagines the futuristic republic of Gilead, an oppressive, hierarchized regime, in which procreation is the sole role of a certain group of women, the handmaids. In this scene, the Commander, who regularly sees secretly his handmaid Offred, teases her with a women’s magazine, a relic of the old days strictly forbidden by Gilead. Margaret 1939-

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Atwood,

I have a little present for you, he said. He smiled a little. Then he pulled open the top drawer of his desk and took something out. He held it a moment, casually enough, between thumb and finger, as if deciding whether or not to give it to me. Although it was upside-down from where I was sitting, I recognized it. They were once common enough. It was a magazine, a women’s magazine it looked like from the picture, a model on glossy paper, hair blown, neck scarfed, mouth lipsticked; the fall fashions. I thought such magazines had all been destroyed, but here was one, left over, in a Commander’s private study, where you’d least expect to find such a thing. He looked down at the model, who was right-side-up to him; he was still smiling, that wistful smile of his. It was a look you’d give to an almost extinct animal, at the zoo. Staring at the magazine, as he dangled it before me like fishbait, I wanted it. I wanted it with a force that made the ends of my fingers ache. At the same time I saw this longing of mine as trivial and absurd, because I’d taken such magazines lightly enough once. I’d read them in dentists’ offices, and sometimes on planes; I’d bought them to take to hotel rooms, a device to fill in empty time while I was waiting for Luke. After I’d leafed through them I would throw them away, for they were infinitely discardable, and a day or two later I wouldn’t be able to remember what had been in them. Though I remembered now. What was in them was promise. They dealt in transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities, extending like the reflections in two mirrors set facing one another, stretching on, replica after replica, to the vanishing point. They suggested one adventure after another, one wardrobe after another, one improvement after another, one man after another. They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome and transcended, endless love. The real promise in them was immortality. This was what he was holding, without knowing it. He riffled the pages. I felt myself leaning forward. It’s an old one, he said, a curio of sorts. From the seventies, I think. A Vogue. This like a wine connoisseur dropping a name. I thought you might like to look at it. I hung back. He might be testing me, to see how deep my indoctrination had really gone. It’s not permitted, I said. In here, it is, he said quietly. I saw the point. Having broken the main taboo, why should I hesitate over another one, something minor? Or another, or another; who could tell where it might stop? Behind this particular door, taboo dissolved. I took the magazine from him and turned it the right way round. There they were again, the images of my childhood: bold, striding, confident, their arms flung out as if to claim space, their legs apart, feet planted squarely on the earth. There was something Renaissance about the pose, but it was princes I thought of, not coiffed and ringleted maidens. Those candid eyes, shadowed with makeup, yes, but like the eyes of cats, fixed for the pounce. No quailing, no clinging there, not in those capes and rough tweeds, those boots that came to the knee. Pirates, these women, with their ladylike briefcases for the loot and their horsy, acquisitive teeth. I felt the Commander watching me as I turned the pages. I knew I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing, and that he found pleasure in seeing me do it. I should have felt evil; by Aunt Lydia’s lights, I was evil. But I didn’t feel evil. Instead I felt like an old Edwardian seaside postcard: naughty. What was he going to give me next? A girdle? Why do you have this? I asked him. Some of us, he said, retain an appreciation for the old things. But these were supposed to have been burned, I said. There were house-to-house searches, bonfires . . . What’s dangerous in the hands of the multitudes, he said, with what may or may not have been irony, is safe enough for those whose motives are . . . Beyond reproach, I said. He nodded gravely. Impossible to tell whether or not he meant it. But why show it to me? I said, and then felt stupid. What could he possibly say? That he was amusing himself, at my expense? For he must have known how painful it was to me, to be reminded of the former time. I wasn’t prepared for what he actually did say. Who else could I show it to? he said, and there it was again, that sadness. Should I go further? I thought. I didn’t want to push him, too far, too fast. I knew I was dispensable. Nevertheless I said, too softly, How about your Wife? He seemed to think about that. No, he said. She wouldn’t understand. Anyway, she won’t talk to me much any more. We don’t seem to have much in common, these days. So there it was, out in the open: his wife didn’t understand him. That’s what I was there for, then. The same old thing. It was too banal to be true.

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The Remains of the Day (1989), Kazuo ISHIGURO In The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro, a writer of Japanese origin living in England, wrote a narrative told from the view point of a traditional English butler. As he embarks on a nostalgic trip through the Home Counties, the protagonist remembers the “good old days,” before the second world war, when some people still knew what true butlers were about.

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One such instance was related to me by Mr David Charles, of the Charles and Redding Company, who visited Darlington Hall from time to time during Lord Darlington’s days. It was one evening when I happened to be valeting him, Mr Charles told me he had come across my father some years earlier while a guest at Loughborough House - the home of Mr John Silvers, the industrialist, where my father served for fifteen years at the height of his career. He had never been quite able to forget my father, Mr Charles told me, owing to an incident that occurred during that visit. One afternoon, Mr Charles to his shame and regret had allowed himself to become inebriated in the company of two fellow guests - gentlemen I shall merely call Mr Smith and Mr Jones since they are likely to be still remembered in certain circles. After an hour or so of drinking, these two gentlemen decided they wished to go for an afternoon drive around the local villages - a motor car around this time still being something of a novelty. They persuaded Mr Charles to accompany them, and since the chauffeur was on leave at that point, enlisted my father to drive the car. Once they had set off, Mr Smith and Mr Jones, for all their being well into their middle years, proceeded to behave like schoolboys, singing coarse songs and making even coarser comments on all they saw from the window. Furthermore, these gentlemen had noticed on the local map three villages in the vicinity called Morphy, Saltash and Brigoon. Now I am not entirely sure these were the exact names, but the point was they reminded Mr Smith and Mr Jones of the music hall act, Murphy, Saltman and Brigid the Cat, of which you may have heard. Upon noticing this curious coincidence, the gentlemen then gained an ambition to visit the three villages in question in honour, as it were, of the music hall artistes. According to Mr Charles, my father had duly driven to one village and was on the point of entering a second when either Mr Smith or Mr Jones noticed the village was Brigoon - that is to say the third, not the second, name of the sequence. They demanded angrily that my father turn the car immediately so that the villages could be visited ‘in the correct order’. It so happened that this entailed doubling back a considerable way of the route, but, so Mr Charles assures me, my father accepted the request as though it were a perfectly reasonable one, and in general, continued to behave with immaculate courtesy. But Mr Smith’s and Mr Jones’s attention had now been drawn to my father and no doubt rather bored with what the view outside had to offer, they proceeded to amuse themselves by shouting out unflattering remarks concerning my father’s ‘mistake’. Mr Charles remembered marvelling at how my father showed not one hint of discomfort or anger, but continued to drive with an expression balanced perfectly between personal dignity and readiness to oblige. My father’s equanimity was not, however, allowed to last. For when they had wearied of hurling insults at my father’s back, the two gentlemen began to discuss their host - that is to say, my father’s employer, Mr John Silvers. The remarks grew ever more debased and treacherous so that Mr Charles - at least so he claimed - was obliged to intervene with the suggestion that such talk was bad form. This view was contradicted with such energy that Mr Charles, quite aside from worrying he would become the next focus of the gentlemen’s attention, actually thought himself in danger of physical assault. But then suddenly, following a particularly heinous insinuation against his employer, my father brought the car to an abrupt halt. It was what happened next that had made such an indelible impression upon Mr Charles. The rear door of the car opened and my father was observed to be standing there, a few steps back from the vehicle, gazing steadily into the interior. As Mr Charles described it, all three passengers seemed to be overcome as one by the realization of what an imposing physical force my father was. Indeed, he was a man of some six feet three inches, and his countenance, though reassuring while one knew he was intent on obliging, could seem extremely forbidding viewed in certain other contexts. According to Mr Charles, my father did not display any obvious anger. He had, it seemed, merely opened the door. And yet there was something so powerfully rebuking, and at the same time so unassailable about his figure looming over them that Mr Charles’s two drunken companions seemed to cower back like small boys caught by the farmer in the act of stealing apples. My father had proceeded to stand there for some moments, saying nothing, merely holding open the door. Eventually, either Mr Smith or Mr Jones had remarked: ‘Are we not going on with the journey?’ My father did not reply, but continued to stand there silently, neither demanding disembarkation nor offering any clue as to his desires or intentions. I can well imagine how he must have looked that day, framed by the doorway of the vehicle, his dark, severe presence quite blotting out the effect of the gentle Hertfordshire scenery behind him. Those were, Mr Charles recalls, strangely unnerving moments during which he too, despite not having participated in the preceding behaviour, felt engulfed with guilt. The silence seemed to go on interminably, before either Mr Smith or Mr Jones found it in him to mutter: ‘I suppose we were talking a little out of turn there. It won’t happen again.’ A moment to consider this, then my father had closed the door gently, returned to the wheel and had proceeded to continue the tour of the three villages - a tour, Mr Charles assured me, that was completed thereafter in near silence.

69

The Human Stain (2000), Philip ROTH

Philip Roth is an American of second-generation Jewish parentage whose depiction of contemporary Jewish life has caused much controversy. The Human Stain concludes his trilogy on post-war America, following American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998). It is set in the 1990s, when race, class and gender moralities and ideologies are in conflict. The plot revolves around Coleman Silk’s secret: no one knows that the Jewish Athena College professor is a black man who passes as white.

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Coleman was one of a handful of Jews on the Athena faculty when he was hired and perhaps among the first of the Jews permitted to teach in a classics department anywhere in America; a few years earlier, Athena’s solitary Jew had been E. I. Lonoff, the all-but-forgotten short story writer whom, back when I was myself a newly published apprentice in trouble and eagerly seeking the validation of a master, I had once paid a memorable visit to here. Through the eighties and into the nineties, Coleman was also the first and only Jew ever to serve at Athena as dean of faculty; then, in 1995 after retiring as dean in order to round out his career back in the classroom, he resumed teaching two of his courses under the aegis of the combined languages and literature program that had absorbed the Classics Department and that was run by Professor Delphine Roux. As dean, and with the full support of an ambitious new president, Coleman had taken an antiquated, backwater, Sleepy Hollowish college and, not without steamrolling, put an end to the place as a gentlemen’s farm by aggressively encouraging the deadwood among the faculty’s old guard to seek early retirement, recruiting ambitious young assistant professors, and revolutionizing the curriculum. It’s almost a certainty that had he retired, without incident, in his own good time, there would have been the festschrift, there would have been the institution of the Coleman Silk Lecture Series, there would have been a classical studies chair established in his name, and perhaps—given his importance to the twentieth-century revitalization of the place—the humanities building or even North Hall, the college’s landmark, would have been renamed in his honor after his death. In the small academic world where he had lived the bulk of his life, he would have long ceased to be resented or controversial or even feared, and, instead, officially glorified forever. It was about midway into his second semester back as a full-time professor that Coleman spoke the selfincriminating word that would cause him voluntarily to sever all ties to the college—the single self-incriminating word of the many millions spoken aloud in his years of teaching and administering at Athena, and the word that, as Coleman understood things, directly led to his wife’s death. The class consisted of fourteen students. Coleman had taken attendance at the beginning of the first several lectures so as to learn their names. As there were still two names that failed to elicit a response by the fifth week into the semester, Coleman, in the sixth week, opened the session by asking, “Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?” Later that day he was astonished to be called in by his successor, the new dean of faculty, to address the charge of racism brought against him by the two missing students, who turned out to be black, and who, though absent, had quickly learned of the locution in which he’d publicly raised the question of their absence. Coleman told the dean, “I was referring to their possibly ectoplasmic character. Isn’t that obvious? These two students had not attended a single class. That’s all I knew about them. I was using the word in its customary and primary meaning: ‘spook’ as a specter or a ghost. I had no idea what color these two students might be. I had known perhaps fifty years ago but had wholly forgotten that ‘spooks’ is an invidious term sometimes applied to blacks. Otherwise, since I am totally meticulous regarding student sensibilities, I would never have used that word. Consider the context: Do they exist or are they spooks? The charge of racism is spurious. It is preposterous. My colleagues know it is preposterous and my students know it is preposterous. The issue, the only issue, is the nonattendance of these two students and their flagrant and inexcusable neglect of work. What’s galling is that the charge is not just false it is spectacularly false.” Having said altogether enough in his defense, considering the matter closed, he left for home.

70

True History of the Kelly Gang (2001), Peter CAREY In True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey plays on history and fiction, having written the fictitious memoirs of a real national hero, Ned Kelly the bushranger. Kelly’s writings are addressed to his daughter, to whom he wants to explain posthumously that he always acted out of loyalty, and became a bushranger only because his circumstances forced him to. In this excerpt, young Ned is manipulated by Harry Power, a famous bushranger, into falling back into crime. Peter Carey, 1943-

On the back veranda Harry were holding out my elastic sided boots. When last I saw them boots they was muddied and sodden but the old wombat had been to work on them and that surprised me mightily for he had a great aversion to menial labour. If this were meant to be apology or payment he did not say but he had scraped and oiled and dubbined them until they was soft as a lady's purse. Here said he tossing them to me I reckon you forget these when you run away. I looked into his hard old face but did not see the slightest flicker. There was nothing for me to do but sit down to pull the boots on. My feet must of grown for now they pinched my toes. Comfy? Yes Harry. You can try them out with bringing round my horse. I were pledged not to take his orders no more but fair is fair I did require his assistance in the matter of Bill Frost so I went to the paddock hunting down his poor old switchtailed mare then I found his saddle abandoned on a stile and did the duty he required of me. Where's your own nag he said when I come back. Jesus lad the light is wasting. I didnt say goodbye yet. Eff goodbye said he you go and get your effing horse. I walked back down through the thick green pasture and found and saddled my own horse but still did not mount though I could feel Harry's growing fury at my dawdling. I suppose it were the girl that done it to me for I walked slowly up towards the house admiring all the neat fencing and the fat black cattle making their way from the river to the bails. Of course Harry were already mounted his gleaming pistols stuck plainly in his thick brown belt. His pipe were clenched in that long strong jaw he had previously hid beneath his beard. Get on the horse said he. He did not understand I were now too old to be talked to in this manner I made no move until I saw he was about to welt me then I spoke. My ma needs your help. Ah said he and everything about him changed. Bill Frost is bolted to Melbourne. My ma is awful upset. He almost smiled. You reckon do you? Yes I reckon. Harry pulled his pipe in 1/2 then blew a long stream of thick black spit out the stem. He seemed v. pleased as he always were when about to prove another man a fool. Well said he now here is the latest. Bill Frost never went to adjectival Melbourne. He's there I know it.

By the 5 crosses he aint. By the 5 crosses he is. By the powers of death he aint. He is at Peter Martin's Star Hotel in Wangaratta and he has been there all this week not 10 mi. away. You seen the b– – – – r? Maguire had the pleasure. I don't know Maguire. Well you tried to murder him at Oxley the night you lost your boots but apart from that its true you don't know a tinker's fart about him. Maguire has seen our Bill and reports the man is having a great old rort him and his new sheila Brigit Cotter. I never heard of her. Well when the man aint shagging her he's in the public bar entertaining all the punters with how Ned Kelly threatened to shoot him. O I see you blush. He is making an adjectival fool of you with that story by now it is knowed by everyone in Wangaratta. It were a sweet spring evening now but I had reason to recall Bill Frost's lizard eyes in the moonlight it had been a dull malicious way he stared at me. That is why I sent for you said Harry. Its exactly why I come said I we was both thinking the same thought. O I doubt it son I really do. He's a dreadful mongrel but she's very bad without him. I need to bring him back. No said Harry his voice were almost gentle that is the scheme you wanted when you was ignorant but now you know that Frost has been unfaithful to your ma. He has a new donah and you know what he is saying about your own self. He's a b– – – – –d but my mother has a baby coming. We can look after your ma said Harry but 1st you have to attend to Frost you aint got a da to tell you this so let me do the honour you cannot let him make a jackass of you. There aint nothing I can do. 0 aint there? What he says is right I did say I would shoot him if he bolted. He makes out you are a coward is that right too? Are you a coward? Don't say that Harry. You know I aint. Then you know what you must do. I looked into them hard old eyes and saw the deed that lay ahead of me it were a horror no one could wish but now I knew there were no choice. Yes I know what must be done.

(Chap. X)

71 Edition de référence des pages reproduites : Bloodaxe, Fleur ADCOCK, “Against Coupling”, Poems 1960-2000, p. 49-50. Virago, Margaret ATWOOD, The Handmaid’s Tale, p. 164-166. Faber and Faber, W. H. AUDEN, “As I Walked Out One Evening”, Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957, p. 85-86. Penguin, Jane AUSTEN,chapter 1, Pride and Prejudice, p. 51-53. Eyre and Spottiswoode, King James Bible, p. 1147-1148. Norton, William BLAKE, “The Tyger,” The Songs of Experience, The Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th ed.), p. 680-681. Penguin, Emily BRONTË, Wuthering Heights, p. 196-198. Faber and Faber, Peter CAREY, True History of the Kelly Gang, p. 109-111. Penguin, Raymond CHANDLER, chapter 1, The Big Sleep, p. 9-10. Penguin, J. M. COETZEE, Waiting for the Barbarians, p. 110-111. Aubier Flammarion, Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, “Kubla Khan”, Poèmes. Poems, p. 274, 276. Bantam Classic, Joseph CONRAD, Heart of Darkness, p. 117-118. Penguin, Charles DICKENS, “chapter 5 : The Key-note”, Hard Times, p. 65-66. Meridian Classic, Theodore DREISER, chapter 1, The Financier, p. 7-9. Faber and Faber, T.S. ELIOT, “The Hollow Men”, Collected Poems 1909-1962, p. 89-92. Norton, Ralph Waldo EMERSON, “Self-Reliance”, Emerson’s Prose and Poetry, p. 120-121. Vintage, William FAULKNER, “April Seventh, 1928”, The Sound and the Fury, p. 1-3. Oxford, Henry FIELDING, Book I, chapter VI, Joseph Andrews, p. 27-29. The Women’s Press, Janet FRAME, 22, Owls Do Cry, p. 79-81. Grove, Allen GINSBERG, “A Supermarket in California”, The New American Poetry, p. 181-182. Penguin, Thomas HARDY, “Fulfilment – 58”, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, p. 483-484. Penguin, Tony HARRISON, “Them & [uz]”, Selected Poems, p. 122-123. Norton, Nathaniel HAWTHORNE, “V. Hester at her Needle”, The Scarlet Letter, p. 55-57. Faber and Faber, Kazuo ISHIGURO, “Day One – Evening. Salisbury”, The Remains of the Day, p. 37-40. New Mermaids, Ben JONSON, I.2-3, Volpone, or the Fox, p. 23-26. Penguin, James JOYCE, “The Dead”, Dubliners, p. 223-225. Norton, David Herbert LAWRENCE, “Bavarian Gentians”, The Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th ed.), p. 1182-1183. Everyman, Christopher MARLOWE, V.2, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, p. 324-326. Norton, Herman MELVILLE, chapter 36: “The Quarter-deck”, Moby Dick, p. 143-144. Oxford, John MILTON, Paradise Lost, book IV, Poetical Works, p. 275-277. Triad Granada, Toni MORRISON, “Autumn”, The Bluest Eye, p. 34-37. Vintage, Toni MORRISON, Playing in the Dark, p. 4-6. Penguin, Vladimir NABOKOV, Part One, I, Lolita, p. 9. Faber and Faber, Flannery O’CONNOR, “The Displaced Person”, The Complete Stories, p. 198-200. Norton, Edgar Allan POE, “Annabel Lee”, The Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th ed.), p. 884-885. Houghton Mifflin, Philip ROTH, The Human Stain, p. 5-7. Penguin, Salman RUSHDIE, “The Fisherman’s Pointing Finger”, Midnight’s Children, p. 157-159. Penguin, J.D. SALINGER, chapter 1, The Catcher in the Rye, p. 5-6. Routledge, Arden Shakespeare, William SHAKESPEARE, I.1, I.3, V.5, Macbeth, p. 3-4, 11-17, 151-155 (partiellement). Penguin, William SHAKESPEARE, I.1, Richard III, p. 55-56. Routledge, Arden Shakespeare, William SHAKESPEARE, I.5, Romeo and Juliet, p. 118-119. Routledge, Arden Shakespeare, William SHAKESPEARE, I.1, III.2, V.1, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, p. 13-14, 69-70, 121-122 (partiellement). Routledge, Arden Shakespeare, William SHAKESPEARE, III.2, Julius Caesar, p. 81-83. Penguin, William SHAKESPEARE, IV.1, The Tempest, p. 120-122. Chancellor Press, The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare, Sonnet LX, p. 1014. Penguin, Mary SHELLEY, chapter 5, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, p. 56-57. Penguin, Mark TWAIN, chapter 16, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, p. 145-147. Penguin, Edith WHARTON, 33, The Age of Innocence, p. 274-277. Norton, Walt WHITMAN, “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass, p. 28-30. Grafton, Virginia WOOLF, “III. The lighthouse – 3”, To the Lighthouse, p. 147-149. Grafton, Virginia WOOLF, part 3, A Room of One’s Own, p. 46-47. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, William WORDSWORTH, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, p. 3-6.