reason #412 why I am addicted to the ODNB
Hoooooooolbeeeeeeeeeein!
Apparently, that feature is related to this exhibition at the Tate Gallery which, OMG, I want to see. Because. SHINY.
On an unrelated note, the third-series Arden edition of As You Like It is now available, according to the Amazon mailing I found in my email just now. However, my squee at this was modified by the silly blurb in said mailing:
With its explorations of sexual ambivalence, As You Like It speaks directly to the twenty-first century.
Feh. I hate when advertisements for editions of Renaissance plays, or any premodern text really, do this sort of thing -- "oh, the play deals with issues that are current today and this makes it modern!" I realize the blurb does not actually say this (and it does go on to say it's "deeply rooted in Elizabethan issues"), but I am (possibly irrationally) irked.
I think this is because the "surprisingly modern" tag only gets applied when it has to do with how texts deal with sex, and the "all of human history prior to the 20th century viewed sex exactly as the Victorians did" fallacy really gets up my nose. I mean, on the Elizabethan stage, the topic that would get the censors on your ass wasn't sex at all, but politics. But people talking about a text that's frank about sex invariably get all "ooooh, it's so modern," and this is silly.
Apparently, that feature is related to this exhibition at the Tate Gallery which, OMG, I want to see. Because. SHINY.
On an unrelated note, the third-series Arden edition of As You Like It is now available, according to the Amazon mailing I found in my email just now. However, my squee at this was modified by the silly blurb in said mailing:
With its explorations of sexual ambivalence, As You Like It speaks directly to the twenty-first century.
Feh. I hate when advertisements for editions of Renaissance plays, or any premodern text really, do this sort of thing -- "oh, the play deals with issues that are current today and this makes it modern!" I realize the blurb does not actually say this (and it does go on to say it's "deeply rooted in Elizabethan issues"), but I am (possibly irrationally) irked.
I think this is because the "surprisingly modern" tag only gets applied when it has to do with how texts deal with sex, and the "all of human history prior to the 20th century viewed sex exactly as the Victorians did" fallacy really gets up my nose. I mean, on the Elizabethan stage, the topic that would get the censors on your ass wasn't sex at all, but politics. But people talking about a text that's frank about sex invariably get all "ooooh, it's so modern," and this is silly.