reading meme
From tree_and_leaf.
List some of your favorite words:
Do you mean words I use a lot, or just words I like? I know, I'll list a bunch of them and you can guess which is which!
snickersnee. craptacular. pith. persiflage. buggeration. quibble. eschatological. diagetic. whirlicote. thingummy. incarnadine. iniquity. foppery. palimpsest. ridonculous. liminal. narcissistic. houppelande. consuetude. pursuivant. squiffy. commonalty. fabulosity.
...this is probably enough for now. Also, I am really amused at the number of these that get underlined by Firefox's spellchecker.
What’s your favorite maxim or proverb?
I kind of like "The better part of valor is discretion," mostly on the grounds that it's actually a Falstaff quote, and Falstaff = awesome.
Though I probably get the most mileage out of "Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short," because I invariably say it to somebody whenever it rains. Yes, all of my proverbial wisdom does come in Shakespeare's phrasing, thank you for noticing.
What’s your favorite quotation?
Oh man, you do know I could do this all day, don't you? I will go with a representative one that really encapsulates What It Is Like To Be Me (and, perhaps astonishingly, is not from Richard II, although I get a truly remarkable amount of mileage out of "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me," and with good reason.) Anyway, this is the last stanza of Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls:
And with the shoutyng, whan the song was do
That foules maden at here flyght awey,
I wok, and othere bokes tok me to,
To reede upon, and yit I rede alwey.
I hope, ywis, to rede so som day
That I shal mete some thyng for to fare
The bet, and thus to rede I nyl nat spare.
Also, my Idealistic Academic Quote That's Slightly Less Wanky Than Making Reference to the Clerk of Oxenforde, But Not That Much Less:
For if hevene be on this erthe, and ese to any soule,
It is in cloister or in scole, by many skiles I fynde.
For in cloistre cometh no man to querele ne to fighte,
But al is buxomnesse there and bokes, to rede and to lerne.
In scole there is skile, and scorn but if he lerne,
And gret love and likyng, for ech of hem lereth oother.
It's from Piers Plowman, Passus 10. Also I should have one that's not in Middle English, so, along similar lines:
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn."
These, you will notice, are all over my lj anyway. You will also have noticed that none of them are from Shakespeare, but that's because if I try to pick a few favorite Shakespeare quotations, I will be here all day and you will probably be very annoyed, so if you want more quotations you can just go read my info page or my sidebar, because they're all over the place. A good friend of mine once told me that someday I would really have to learn to speak my own language.
What’s your favorite first line of a novel?
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
Give an example of a piece of description that’s really pleased you in your reading lately:
I am working on a dissertation, and thus most of my reading of late has involved literary criticism, renaissance drama (which is not very heavy on the descriptive passages), or, well, I love Samuel Daniel, but he is not a brilliant descriptive poet.
Which five writers do you particularly admire for their use of language?
Okay, I'm going to cheat on this one and split it up.
TEAM RENAISSANCE: Shakespeare, though I think that goes without saying; Milton, Spenser, Donne, Thomas More.
(Pinch hitters: Herrick and Herbert. Oh, and Jonson, for sure. And Elizabeth Cary -- I was rereading The History of Edward II recently and was reminded how cool her prose is.)
TEAM CONTEMPORARYISH: Tolkien, Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Philip Larkin.
(Pinch hitters: Auden and Yeats.)
TEAM MEDIEVAL is shorthanded but includes Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain Poet. Oh, and the Wakefield Master. Wait, that's four, so if we have one more they can be in the Language Tournament! You know, if it were only four people, it could be a literary bowling league. Which would be awesome. Especially because I can totally picture Chaucer in a bowling alley. Can't you? Also, I miss Chaucer's blog, but he is probably too busy being Clerk of the King's Works, anymore. Anyway. I think I will surprise everyone by picking someone outside of the fourteenth century and go with whoever wrote "The Wanderer," though to be honest anything in Old English just sort of makes me go "oooooh, shiny" and thus I am not a competent judge of the actual spiffiness of the language.
I realize this is not at all true to the spirit of the question, and also I am sort of pretending nothing happened between the Renaissance and the twentieth century (well, the 19th, because there's Hopkins). Also that nearly all of these are dead white guys (and the only one who isn't is a dead white woman). I fail at non-patriarchally-hegemonic literary squee. Though it just occurred to me that Robert Hayden totally can pinch-hit for Team Contemporaryish but now I feel like I'm engaging in tokenism. Although Hayden really is legitimately awesome. As is Ralph Ellison (there isn't a "favorite ending line" in this meme but if there were, Invisible Man would probably win). But it is pretty suck that I had to think a lot more before that occurred to me.
...this is me attempting very badly to own up to my Skanky Race Issues That Come With Being a White Person in 21st Century America. My Skanky Race Issues That Come With Being a White Person in 21st Century America, let me show you them.
And are there writers whose style you really dislike?
I am following tree_and_leaf's example and going with writers who are actually good, because that makes it more interesting, because anyone can say "Dan Brown sucks" and that's easy. and I sort of suspect I am going to make half of my flist disown me when I say that I don't actually love Marlowe all that much (except that I love Edward II, though that's Marlowe's least Marlovian play in many respects, and bits of Faustus), and the other half will do the same when I say that I've also never really dug the Brontës. And Dickens has always put me off. Oh, and you know what, I don't really like the Romantics very much either. Or all of those neoclassical poets who write in heroic couplets, cf. my oft-stated distaste for John Dryden, and I apologize to the_red_shoes now for dissing on pretty much all your favorites! :o
What’s the key to really fine writing, in your opinion?
What the hell? Don't you think I'd be engaging in it if I knew? As a literary critic and English teacher, I am, after all, a professional ruiner of great writing, not a producer of it. I just sort of point and go "it's like that."
List some of your favorite words:
Do you mean words I use a lot, or just words I like? I know, I'll list a bunch of them and you can guess which is which!
snickersnee. craptacular. pith. persiflage. buggeration. quibble. eschatological. diagetic. whirlicote. thingummy. incarnadine. iniquity. foppery. palimpsest. ridonculous. liminal. narcissistic. houppelande. consuetude. pursuivant. squiffy. commonalty. fabulosity.
...this is probably enough for now. Also, I am really amused at the number of these that get underlined by Firefox's spellchecker.
What’s your favorite maxim or proverb?
I kind of like "The better part of valor is discretion," mostly on the grounds that it's actually a Falstaff quote, and Falstaff = awesome.
Though I probably get the most mileage out of "Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short," because I invariably say it to somebody whenever it rains. Yes, all of my proverbial wisdom does come in Shakespeare's phrasing, thank you for noticing.
What’s your favorite quotation?
Oh man, you do know I could do this all day, don't you? I will go with a representative one that really encapsulates What It Is Like To Be Me (and, perhaps astonishingly, is not from Richard II, although I get a truly remarkable amount of mileage out of "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me," and with good reason.) Anyway, this is the last stanza of Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls:
And with the shoutyng, whan the song was do
That foules maden at here flyght awey,
I wok, and othere bokes tok me to,
To reede upon, and yit I rede alwey.
I hope, ywis, to rede so som day
That I shal mete some thyng for to fare
The bet, and thus to rede I nyl nat spare.
Also, my Idealistic Academic Quote That's Slightly Less Wanky Than Making Reference to the Clerk of Oxenforde, But Not That Much Less:
For if hevene be on this erthe, and ese to any soule,
It is in cloister or in scole, by many skiles I fynde.
For in cloistre cometh no man to querele ne to fighte,
But al is buxomnesse there and bokes, to rede and to lerne.
In scole there is skile, and scorn but if he lerne,
And gret love and likyng, for ech of hem lereth oother.
It's from Piers Plowman, Passus 10. Also I should have one that's not in Middle English, so, along similar lines:
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn."
These, you will notice, are all over my lj anyway. You will also have noticed that none of them are from Shakespeare, but that's because if I try to pick a few favorite Shakespeare quotations, I will be here all day and you will probably be very annoyed, so if you want more quotations you can just go read my info page or my sidebar, because they're all over the place. A good friend of mine once told me that someday I would really have to learn to speak my own language.
What’s your favorite first line of a novel?
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
Give an example of a piece of description that’s really pleased you in your reading lately:
I am working on a dissertation, and thus most of my reading of late has involved literary criticism, renaissance drama (which is not very heavy on the descriptive passages), or, well, I love Samuel Daniel, but he is not a brilliant descriptive poet.
Which five writers do you particularly admire for their use of language?
Okay, I'm going to cheat on this one and split it up.
TEAM RENAISSANCE: Shakespeare, though I think that goes without saying; Milton, Spenser, Donne, Thomas More.
(Pinch hitters: Herrick and Herbert. Oh, and Jonson, for sure. And Elizabeth Cary -- I was rereading The History of Edward II recently and was reminded how cool her prose is.)
TEAM CONTEMPORARYISH: Tolkien, Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Philip Larkin.
(Pinch hitters: Auden and Yeats.)
TEAM MEDIEVAL is shorthanded but includes Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain Poet. Oh, and the Wakefield Master. Wait, that's four, so if we have one more they can be in the Language Tournament! You know, if it were only four people, it could be a literary bowling league. Which would be awesome. Especially because I can totally picture Chaucer in a bowling alley. Can't you? Also, I miss Chaucer's blog, but he is probably too busy being Clerk of the King's Works, anymore. Anyway. I think I will surprise everyone by picking someone outside of the fourteenth century and go with whoever wrote "The Wanderer," though to be honest anything in Old English just sort of makes me go "oooooh, shiny" and thus I am not a competent judge of the actual spiffiness of the language.
I realize this is not at all true to the spirit of the question, and also I am sort of pretending nothing happened between the Renaissance and the twentieth century (well, the 19th, because there's Hopkins). Also that nearly all of these are dead white guys (and the only one who isn't is a dead white woman). I fail at non-patriarchally-hegemonic literary squee. Though it just occurred to me that Robert Hayden totally can pinch-hit for Team Contemporaryish but now I feel like I'm engaging in tokenism. Although Hayden really is legitimately awesome. As is Ralph Ellison (there isn't a "favorite ending line" in this meme but if there were, Invisible Man would probably win). But it is pretty suck that I had to think a lot more before that occurred to me.
...this is me attempting very badly to own up to my Skanky Race Issues That Come With Being a White Person in 21st Century America. My Skanky Race Issues That Come With Being a White Person in 21st Century America, let me show you them.
And are there writers whose style you really dislike?
I am following tree_and_leaf's example and going with writers who are actually good, because that makes it more interesting, because anyone can say "Dan Brown sucks" and that's easy. and I sort of suspect I am going to make half of my flist disown me when I say that I don't actually love Marlowe all that much (except that I love Edward II, though that's Marlowe's least Marlovian play in many respects, and bits of Faustus), and the other half will do the same when I say that I've also never really dug the Brontës. And Dickens has always put me off. Oh, and you know what, I don't really like the Romantics very much either. Or all of those neoclassical poets who write in heroic couplets, cf. my oft-stated distaste for John Dryden, and I apologize to the_red_shoes now for dissing on pretty much all your favorites! :o
What’s the key to really fine writing, in your opinion?
What the hell? Don't you think I'd be engaging in it if I knew? As a literary critic and English teacher, I am, after all, a professional ruiner of great writing, not a producer of it. I just sort of point and go "it's like that."