ellauri054.html on line 511: Robert Browning (7. toukokuuta 1812 – 12. joulukuuta 1889) oli brittiläinen runoilija, joka on erityisesti tunnettu dramaattisista monologeistaan kuten ”Porphyria’s Lover” ja ”My Last Duchess”. Browning on yksi tunnetuimmista viktoriaanisen ajan runoilijoista. Browning avioitui 1846 Elizabeth Barrettin kanssa, ja pari asui 1840-luvulta alkaen Firenzessä, Italiassa.
ellauri054.html on line 523: Browningin nykymaine on pääosin hänen ”dramaattisten monologiensa” ansiota: näissä sanavalinnat eivät ainoastaan välitä lukijalle tapahtumia ja tapahtumapaikkoja, vaan myös paljastavat kertojan luonteen. Toisin kuin yksinpuheluissa, dramaattisissa monologeissa tarkoituksena ei ole se, mitä puhuja suoraan ilmaisee, vaan ennemminkin mitä hän epäsuorasti paljastaa itsestään. Sen sijaan, että hän ajattelisi ääneen, henkilöhahmo rakentaa itselleen puolustuksen, jonka läpi hän haastaa lukijan näkemään. Browning valitsi hahmoikseen äärimmäisiä, jopa psykopaateiksi luokiteltavia hahmoja, kuten runossaan ”Porphyria’s Lover”. Olikohan se psykopaatti izekin? (Lähde.)
ellauri095.html on line 546: The phrase “And birds that call/Hoarse to the storm,” invites comparison with the son’s images of the windhover rebuffing the big wind in “The Windhover” (1877) and with the image of the great storm fowl at the conclusion of “Henry Purcell” (1879). The father’s prophecy, “thy sport is with the storm/To wrestle” is fulfilled in Gerard’s The Wreck of the Deutschland and “The Loss of the Eurydice” (1878). These two shipwreck poems, replete with spiritual instruction for those in doubt and danger were the son’s poetic and religious counterparts to his father’s 1873 volume, The Port of Refuge, or advice and instructions to the Master-Mariner in situations of doubt, difficulty, and danger.
ellauri107.html on line 400: Where does Roth pull it out of (the expression is apt)? Sabbath had decided to defy his own imminent demise by attempting to have as much sex as possible. As the book begins, Sabbath finds himself “six short years from seventy”, with “the game just about over”. What, 64? That is young! Phil was 62 in 1995. Is that when his pecker started to sag?
ellauri190.html on line 245: On Easter Sunday of the year 1168, a savage warlord from the Volga region, called Andrei (cynically nicknamed Bogolubsky, i.e. “God-lover”) and his horde of Finno-Ugric tribesmen (damn those Finns!) sacked and burned Kyiv to the ground. Most Kyivites were massacred. The barbarians robbed churches, even ripping off slices of gold from their domes (something that Genghiside Mongolians later never did, they were gentlemen). They stole, among others, one most precious and revered icon of the Most Holy Mother of God from a church in the Berestovo village just south of Kyiv, taking it to their land and pretending, for centuries to follow, that it was theirs. This icon to this day is known as Матерь Божья Владимирская, “the Mother of God of Vladimir-on-Klyazyma,” as if it was painted in that savage place. The 1168 massacre marked the beginning of the “brotherly” relationship between the Ukrainian people and what is now known as “Russians” (русские, not to be confused with Rusyns-Rusychi-Ukrainians). Kyiv was hit so hard that it did not fully recover for the next ~200 years. When the Mongols under Khan Batu came in 1240, Kyiv was still not fully repopulated or rebuilt, and fell a relatively easy prey to the Asian conquerors.
ellauri270.html on line 298: In The Daemon Lover, James (Jamie) Harris, a handsome author, deserts his dowdy 34-year old fiancée. The plot of this short story may be indebted to “The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen, whom Jackson ranked with Katherine Anne Porter as one of the best contemporary short story writers. When Jamie Harris disappears, he shatters his bride’s dreams of living in a “golden house in-the-country” (DL 12). Her shock of recognition that she will never trade her lonely city apartment for a loving home mirrors the final scenes of “The Lottery” and “The Pillar of Salt” as well as many other stories in which a besieged woman suffers a final and often fatal blow.
ellauri270.html on line 302: The irony in “The Daemon Lover” is that the female protagonist becomes suspect as she hunts for the mysterious young man “who promised to marry her” (DL 23). Everywhere she searches, she encounters couples who mock her with not-so-subtle insinuations that she is crazy. Indeed, at the end of the story she may well have become insane; the narrative is ambiguous on this point. Significantly, however, if the nameless woman has indeed lost her mind, it is James who is responsible. Although some critics speculate that the disruptive male figure—both in this story and in the others in the collection—is a hallucination of a sexually repressed character, the epilogue to The Lottery, a ballad entitled “James Harris, The Daemon Lover,” suggests otherwise: He is, in fact, the devil himself.
ellauri270.html on line 304: For Jackson, The Lottery is more than a ghost story; “The Daemon Lover” in particular and the collection in general critique a society that fails to protect women from becoming victims of strangers or neighbors. As in “The Lottery,” Jackson’s shocking account of a housewife’s ritualistic stoning, or in “The Pillar of Salt,” which traces a wife’s horror and growing hysteria when she has lost her way, the threatened characters are women. Although many of Jackson’s stories are modern versions of the folk tale of a young wife’s abduction by the devil, and although her characters are involved in terrifying circumstances, the point is that these tales seem true: They are rooted in reality. Thus, Jackson exposes the threat to women’s lives in a society that condones the daemon lover.
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