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Chapter 1 - part 1

PostPosted: September 8th, 2008, 11:03 pm
by Kanakaberaka

PostPosted: September 9th, 2008, 12:59 am
by rusmeister

PostPosted: September 9th, 2008, 8:52 pm
by a_hnau
I'd understood the French as "So - it [the plan i.e. to use Alcasan's head] goes forward"?

Re: Chapter 1 - part 1

PostPosted: September 9th, 2008, 9:19 pm
by a_hnau
The Donne is fascinating, I'd not read the whole before but it seems full of allusions in the context of Lewis's novel; you could potentially tie it to the themes of the novel phrase by phrase or significant word. Particularly the theme of the various heavens is of course explicit in the Trilogy. Some suggestions as to how the poem ties up to THS;

- 'centric' (l. 2); in the medieval model paradoxically God, who is on the 'outside' of the spheres, is their real centre - I think Lewis makes this reversal explicit in The Discarded Image. So God is at the centre of love, and Mark and Jane only achieve love as it's supposed to be when they are brought to a point of centring on him at the end of THS.

- the play (I think) on 'get' as [be]get; if one loves, one generally begets; the alchemist's pot is 'pregnant' but it does not beget, he does not get (obtain), the elixir of life (along with the philosopher's stone, the two main aims of alchemy). Of course Jane is not planning to 'beget', 'not for a very long time', and her marriage to Mark does not seem to 'beget' the life she was expecting.

- love is 'imposture' and (pessimistic this) what lovers dream, like what the alchemist dreams, is impossible and they settle for second best, some 'odoriferous thing'. Certainly Jane is considering lowering her expectations, but crucially at the end of the book rediscovers them - in Maleldil, the dreams are not vain.

- [the mind which] 'he in her angelic finds' - this certainly echoes Mark's reflections on Jane towards the end of the book.

- 'the spheres' of course, as experienced as St Anne's, contrasted with 'rude hoarse minstrelsy' - the coarse banter at Belbury.

Probably there's much more in there, I know little about Donne.

Well Donne

PostPosted: September 10th, 2008, 5:12 am
by Kanakaberaka

PostPosted: September 11th, 2008, 4:29 pm
by Stanley Anderson

He's a clown, that Charlie Brown

PostPosted: September 14th, 2008, 9:55 pm
by Kanakaberaka

Re: He's a clown, that Charlie Brown

PostPosted: September 15th, 2008, 6:02 pm
by a_hnau
Probably jumping the gun here, but I did a Web search on Distributivism (on which there is an excellent Wikipedia article) and found a link to this article;



which is a very entertaining debate, chaired by Hilaire Belloc, between G K Chesterton and [presume George] Bernard Shaw. Think the participants here will enjoy it.

On to part 2...

PostPosted: September 15th, 2008, 7:41 pm
by Kanakaberaka
Thanks for the link a_hnau. But I was going to include the subject of Distributism as a central theme for part 2 of chapter 1. No problem though. You can always repost this link when I post that part of the study later this evening. BTW : I was unable to view the link. Maybe it's just me.

Re: Chapter 1 - part 1

PostPosted: December 7th, 2009, 8:33 pm
by jo
I have actually just finished a reread of an autobiography from the 30s and 40s and the writer makes the point that amongst young people at that time, church going was not very prevelant. So yes, I don't think that it is unusual for Jane not to have attended a service for a long time until her wedding.

One thing that does contextualise the scene, however, is the fact that Jane had evidently given up work on her marriage, despite the fact that the was not expecting a child and did not intend to be. In the forties, this was the usual thing for middle class women to do and, indeed, in many professions a married woman was legally forced to give up her position, whether she wished to or not.

The first thing I see about Jane is her dis-satisfaction - her boredom. She can't settle to her thesis and she has no 'other' work to keep her occupied. Already, though a very new wife, criticisms of her husband are entering her mind... something which coloured my, at least, thoughts of her before I even 'met' him in the novel.