it's one of THOSE days, isn't it?

[luninosity]

So far today I have: overslept by an impressive amount, spilled quite hot tea across my hand and the table, come downstairs to find that the cat had thrown up on the couch, and discovered that there is something wrong with our refrigerator, such that it is no longer cold inside. LIFE, WHY

Comments

[telperion_15]

Oh cripes, bad luck comes in fours, it seems! Still, that must be your quota for the year used up now!

And I have actually read another author on your slightly expanded list - Ursula Le Guin! (And not Ursula Le Quin, as the posters on our noticeboards at work proudly proclaim - seriously, you'd think the people responsible for a short story reading group would know how to spell!)

Oh, and I've read George R.R. Martin, obvs... *g* And you've reminded me that I've been meaning to check out some H. Rider Haggard! *trundles off to Project Gutenberg*

[luninosity]

Oh, I hope so. :-/ At least I don't have to go anywhere, today, just lurking in the office at home finishing off these essays and reading some Robert Holdstock (totally research, right?). And apparently researching refrigerators. (Though Awesome Husband thinks, from my description, that he might know what the problem is, so maybe he can deal with it when he gets home. Hooray for men doing manly things.)

Wow, typo. That's just kind of depressing. I mean, if you're reading her work, you know that names have power! You don't mess with someone's name. :-p

Haggard is...kind of hit or miss, for me. I love King Solomon's Mines, though not everyone does (and you have to get past the vaguely racist bits). And She is such a rich text. But the sequels get progressively less strong, I think. I'd love to do GRRM and show a clip from Game of Thrones, but those books are SO LONG and we only have ten weeks. Maybe one of the novellas, though.

[melissima]

Can I come study at your Uni just long enough to soak up this course? /drools/

[luninosity]

:-)

Come join us vicariously! That's pretty much the reading list, plus, probably some theory: Attebery's Strategies of Fantasy,, Farah Mendelsohn's Short History of Fantasy, Moorcock's "Epic Pooh" (which I violently disagree with but is worth a read anyway, just to hear the counterarguments). And Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories," because it's classic, and I love the line about how he "desired dragons with a profound desire..."

Actually, I'm really lucky to have a university that lets me teach these things. The support is fantastic. (Pun intended.)

[melissima]

THANK YOU for the theory books. Fantasy is "my" genre but I hadn't heard of most of these. /furiously types in library catalog./

...May I ask you a writing/lit pedagogy question? Feel free to say no if this feels exploitive, I know this is your journal & wouldn't want to be rude.

[luninosity]

Oh, I'd also add Mendelsohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy. I love that book; she treats the genre with real affection, even while doing some fascinating scholarly analysis, the kind we need more of--not just defining the genre, but looking at how and why it functions and how the author, the text, and the reader all interact. (You could also try Jackson's Literature of Subversion, which one of my grad-school professors loved; I have some issues with it--I think that claiming that all fantasy must have subversive intent is at once overstating the case and a little insulting to the genre, as if it can't actually mean what it says--but that's one of the earliest serious studies of the genre, so might be worth it just as a landmark.)

And, of course you can! I never mind having those conversations. Obviously, from all the excitement about literary theory. :-p

[blueteak]

Urk. Sorry you're researching fridges, but sounds like there's other good research going on too!
I loved my Arthurian class is undergrad, but we did run into trouble with an assignment that involved coming up with yet another version of the ending of Tristan and Iseult--a few people in the class used some of the class-written alternate versions on their exams.

[luninosity]

That sounds like a fun assignment, but, yeah, I can see the potential problem. (These days, I'd be worried about people using that terrible movie version, too, instead of doing the reading.) What did people come up with, though? Anything fun?

I might use "Sir Launfal" for this class--it's not really canonical Arthuriana, but it does use Camelot as a setting, and that way no one *should* have preconceived ideas. Or "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," because then we could use the Tolkien translation, which would tie things together neatly.

[blueteak]

Well, we did decide that the love potion was also a fertility potion and that Tristan and Iseult used an army of forest children to fight Mark. ;)

Oooh,,,,haven't looked at Tolkien translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight....that reminds me of yet another assignment (grad school this time) where we had to look at the original (argh--originally put Old English b/c have been thinking about it recently. Clearly I need to go read some porn!) and decide which translation to use if we were going to teach it (our choices were Merwin and....someone else. Not Tolkien, though.)

You're bringing back fun memories!

[luninosity]

Oh, I like that. I feel like there should be medievalist fanfic with this plot. (Actually, I feel like there's a Robert Holdstock novel with this plot...)

The Tolkien version is...kind of flowery and poetic, but lovely, in an old-fashioned way. He obviously loves language (well, of course he does), and is enjoying himself. There have been better and more easy-to-read translations since, but...you have to love the Tolkien, right? I might also give the students the Penguin Classics version; O'Donoghue is decent, if not perfectly literal, but he's often more readable than Tolkien.

(Did you also get the Burton Raffel translation? Because that one is classic, though slightly outdated by now.)

[avictoriangirl]

Ack! :( Sorry your day has been so crappy. *hugs*

Ooooh. I wish I could come take your class. It sounds AMAZING. *sigh*

[luninosity]

*hugs you back* Tonight should be better. Going to a birthday party for some grad school friends; they are total geeks, so we have, naturally, bought them a model catapult. And there will be cake.

I hope it's a fun class! It's basically all the things *I* like to read, so hopefully the students will enjoy them, too. If they don't like The King of Elfland's Daughter I might have to fail them all. (Not really, of course. But it'd be tempting.)

[marlina_a]

cat had thrown up on the couch

Hate it when this happens! And my cat would be looking at me innocently as though he'd done nothing wrong.

Hope your tomorrow will be better. ♥

[luninosity]

They have that who-me? expression down perfectly, don't they? They know we'll just clean up everything and love them anyway.

Thanks, sweetie! :-) Actually tonight should be fun; birthday party for friends. There will be cake. :-p