"If the history of Western thought has anything to teach us, it is the protean nature of all theories, including evolutionary theory. Scientific theories can be and are rejected, but this process is far from easy. Any criticism of the synthetic theory that turned out to have some substance was subsumed in a modified version of this theory. Instead of being a weakness, this ability to change is one of the chief strengths of the synthetic theory of evolution. As in the case of species, scientific theories evolve."
From "History of Evolutionary Thought" by David L. Hull: the first of ten Overview Essays in Encyclopedia of Evolution, Oxford University Press, Mark Pagel, ed., Vol. I (2002), pp. E15-16. See article "Neo-Darwinism" in Vol. II of this Encylopedia, to which Hull's essay refers the reader, for additional information on synthetic theory. See also overview essay "Macroevolution" by Stephen Jay Gould for detailed summary, in Vol. I.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Our Keystone
I've seen several recent articles online discussing why various writers believe modern poetry is missing something: "not as good as" ... "not for most people" ... "not what (fill in blank) likes ... " et cetera.
The "thank Lawdy" AB English degree I got in 1977 has left me with this: the answer lies in "posts." Allow me to explain what I mean (and remember, I got a C in Expository Writing, so ... .)
"Modernism" is usually cited as the creation of four men: Darwin, Marx, Einstein and Freud. The revolution in thinking contained in their best-known books swelled a sea-change in Western culture, something that dissipated after World War I -- a cultural period sometimes called "postmodernism." (OK, that's one "post.")
This cultural period produced much searching and questioning but not too many results, sort of like examining a nose from a piece of shattered sculpture and trying to decide what the rest of the statue may have looked like.
The decades that followed the Great War erupted in a massive economic boom/bust -- and its corresponding cultural inhale/exhale -- that set up the chaotic storm/struggle of World War II. The welcome Allied victory had its downside: an even more destroyed social, economic and political aftermath -- culturally known as "post-post-modernism." (That's two.)
But the spread of nuclear weapons invented during the war plunged the world into a Cold War -- resulting in a cultural hold-your-breath-and-wait-for-the-end attitude -- that lasted until the Berlin Wall fell. Another interim period began -- let's call it "Fin de Siecle Redux" (at least if your grasp of foreign languages is as crude as mine is).
The events of 9-11-01 prompted a cultural gasp, ending that last interim period and beginning yet another global conflict -- with the cultural damage spreading like the wake of a blasted deep-sea oil derrick. So, now we have "post-post-post modernism?" (That's three.) Come on! How many "post"mortems do you need to see that a cultural mindset has collapsed and vanished under the very waves of time and space it claimed to redefine?
Most of Western High Culture set sail a long time ago: biologists figured out that Darwin was right about evolution but fell short on how it works, psychologists (and fellow psychiatrists?) decided Freud was right about the existence of a subconscious mind but wrong about how to treat many of its problems, and social scientists realized economic inequity may more often result from international monetary policy than from Marx and Engels's dialectic prophecies.
Some philosophers also have gotten on board with physicists to study being itself in a new light (or a new/old light -- more on that someday: for now, let's not get tied up in some "string theory").
Most of these revisions to "modernism" apparently have passed without notice among the art traditionally seen as humanity's bellwether -- poetry. Modern poets published nowadays seem stuck in what's sometimes called a "cultural malaise" -- their own little island? Are they lost?
I'm not necessarily including the laureates of the latter 20th Century here: Heaney, Paz, Montale, et cetera (some people are just really good swimmers!). I'm more addressing The Club (discussed in a post last year I called "First Base").
I also realize what I've posted here is very generalized. It's largely summed from what I've snatched (OK -- "apprehended" if you want to get fancy about it) from lectures I've heard and books or articles I've read in college and since, so -- again -- I'm not a qualified authority on anything. At best, I chart my course measuring by the rule of my crooked thumb.
But that thumb-rule tells me a wavy crossroad lies before us, which I suppose prompts the perennial question: "Where do we go from here?" I think clues may lie in those buoyant signposts extending from the shore we left so long ago on this light-and-dark dappled (sometimes even nauseatingly wobbly) time-space checkerboard.
I believe we're looking for a tower -- one with a light in it. That's why I call this blog The Instauration. Because we may need to find new land and build a tower ourselves. Those other guys did it (see My Top Ten) in their day, and we may need to do the same.
Pomp? Probably. Or maybe moxie. Deciding which, my friends, is where you come in. I think I see something way, way over there.
Land?
The "thank Lawdy" AB English degree I got in 1977 has left me with this: the answer lies in "posts." Allow me to explain what I mean (and remember, I got a C in Expository Writing, so ... .)
"Modernism" is usually cited as the creation of four men: Darwin, Marx, Einstein and Freud. The revolution in thinking contained in their best-known books swelled a sea-change in Western culture, something that dissipated after World War I -- a cultural period sometimes called "postmodernism." (OK, that's one "post.")
This cultural period produced much searching and questioning but not too many results, sort of like examining a nose from a piece of shattered sculpture and trying to decide what the rest of the statue may have looked like.
The decades that followed the Great War erupted in a massive economic boom/bust -- and its corresponding cultural inhale/exhale -- that set up the chaotic storm/struggle of World War II. The welcome Allied victory had its downside: an even more destroyed social, economic and political aftermath -- culturally known as "post-post-modernism." (That's two.)
But the spread of nuclear weapons invented during the war plunged the world into a Cold War -- resulting in a cultural hold-your-breath-and-wait-for-the-end attitude -- that lasted until the Berlin Wall fell. Another interim period began -- let's call it "Fin de Siecle Redux" (at least if your grasp of foreign languages is as crude as mine is).
The events of 9-11-01 prompted a cultural gasp, ending that last interim period and beginning yet another global conflict -- with the cultural damage spreading like the wake of a blasted deep-sea oil derrick. So, now we have "post-post-post modernism?" (That's three.) Come on! How many "post"mortems do you need to see that a cultural mindset has collapsed and vanished under the very waves of time and space it claimed to redefine?
Most of Western High Culture set sail a long time ago: biologists figured out that Darwin was right about evolution but fell short on how it works, psychologists (and fellow psychiatrists?) decided Freud was right about the existence of a subconscious mind but wrong about how to treat many of its problems, and social scientists realized economic inequity may more often result from international monetary policy than from Marx and Engels's dialectic prophecies.
Some philosophers also have gotten on board with physicists to study being itself in a new light (or a new/old light -- more on that someday: for now, let's not get tied up in some "string theory").
Most of these revisions to "modernism" apparently have passed without notice among the art traditionally seen as humanity's bellwether -- poetry. Modern poets published nowadays seem stuck in what's sometimes called a "cultural malaise" -- their own little island? Are they lost?
I'm not necessarily including the laureates of the latter 20th Century here: Heaney, Paz, Montale, et cetera (some people are just really good swimmers!). I'm more addressing The Club (discussed in a post last year I called "First Base").
I also realize what I've posted here is very generalized. It's largely summed from what I've snatched (OK -- "apprehended" if you want to get fancy about it) from lectures I've heard and books or articles I've read in college and since, so -- again -- I'm not a qualified authority on anything. At best, I chart my course measuring by the rule of my crooked thumb.
But that thumb-rule tells me a wavy crossroad lies before us, which I suppose prompts the perennial question: "Where do we go from here?" I think clues may lie in those buoyant signposts extending from the shore we left so long ago on this light-and-dark dappled (sometimes even nauseatingly wobbly) time-space checkerboard.
I believe we're looking for a tower -- one with a light in it. That's why I call this blog The Instauration. Because we may need to find new land and build a tower ourselves. Those other guys did it (see My Top Ten) in their day, and we may need to do the same.
Pomp? Probably. Or maybe moxie. Deciding which, my friends, is where you come in. I think I see something way, way over there.
Land?
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
More Notes on a Legend
Finally took a much closer look at my edition of Idylls. "To the Queen" is listed by the editor as an Epilogue with a capital "E" -- which I think means it's part of the poem. I've gone back and made the fix in my post.
It also dawned on me that some may be put off by the post-Chaucerian English of Morte D'Arthur. If so, or even if not, good old Bulfinch had a volume three: The Age of Chivalry. You may recall I recommended his better known The Age of Fable for the many classical references in Paradise Lost.
Thomas Bulfinch's English is much more accessible than Malory's, and his narrative summarizes things in a much more linear flow. (Malory is pretty linear, too -- but in very small bits. Overall, his story jumps around some.)
Old Bulfinch may be just the ticket for many seeking a handbook on Arthurian legend, or as prep for reading Idylls. I passed on the chance to buy a reprint of The Age of Chivalry some 15 years ago and kicked myself since, at least until recently. Scored all three volumes (The Age of Charlemagne is the third) in one book at a used-book sale for one dollar! \o/ The text also may be available online in several places.
Back when I was writing about Milton, I mentioned that Gustave Dore produced plates illustrating many scenes from Paradise Lost. The same is true of Idylls.
It also dawned on me that some may be put off by the post-Chaucerian English of Morte D'Arthur. If so, or even if not, good old Bulfinch had a volume three: The Age of Chivalry. You may recall I recommended his better known The Age of Fable for the many classical references in Paradise Lost.
Thomas Bulfinch's English is much more accessible than Malory's, and his narrative summarizes things in a much more linear flow. (Malory is pretty linear, too -- but in very small bits. Overall, his story jumps around some.)
Old Bulfinch may be just the ticket for many seeking a handbook on Arthurian legend, or as prep for reading Idylls. I passed on the chance to buy a reprint of The Age of Chivalry some 15 years ago and kicked myself since, at least until recently. Scored all three volumes (The Age of Charlemagne is the third) in one book at a used-book sale for one dollar! \o/ The text also may be available online in several places.
Back when I was writing about Milton, I mentioned that Gustave Dore produced plates illustrating many scenes from Paradise Lost. The same is true of Idylls.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Epi ... what?
An epigram is a brief statement, usually a very short poem. An epigraph is a statement that comes before a book starts. An epilogue is something at the end of a work that helps explain it, though it's usually part of the work itself.
I started to call "To the Queen" an epigram, then I changed it to epigraph and then I decided to look it up before I changed it again. I eventually saw my mistakes and then settled on the term "afterword" for "To the Queen." (Note: Since changed again: see next post.)
I'm sitting next to the Reference section of the library right now. You'd think I'd look some of these things up before I write them, but ... . (Note: I'll never worry again: www.oxforddictionaries.com for me from now on.)*
The other mistake I caught in the previous post I'm leaving intact there, but I'm correcting it here instead: part of Merlin's prophecy in Idylls is in Morte D'Arthur -- the most important part, in fact. But other parts apparently are not.
This leads me to another reason for my Top Ten -- many of them have something in them I'd written about here when I called this blog "The Art of Definition." Remember when I tried writing a poem in "songform"?
Merlin's prophecy is in a bardic triad (more like "chantform," I would think. Is "chantform" a word? I doubt it.). Several songform poems elsewhere in the Idylls are set in important places, as well. Tennyson's work here can be profitably studied by poets looking for tips on this subject.
I also erred in saying that "The Coming of Arthur" is largely a rewrite of the first book of Morte. It's actually a composite from lots of sources, including the author's rich imagination and careful character painting. In fact, I now remember thinking when I finished "The Coming ..." that I was glad I'd read the first book of Morte beforehand. I might have gotten really confused otherwise.
Me confused? Imagine that!
I started to call "To the Queen" an epigram, then I changed it to epigraph and then I decided to look it up before I changed it again. I eventually saw my mistakes and then settled on the term "afterword" for "To the Queen." (Note: Since changed again: see next post.)
I'm sitting next to the Reference section of the library right now. You'd think I'd look some of these things up before I write them, but ... . (Note: I'll never worry again: www.oxforddictionaries.com for me from now on.)*
The other mistake I caught in the previous post I'm leaving intact there, but I'm correcting it here instead: part of Merlin's prophecy in Idylls is in Morte D'Arthur -- the most important part, in fact. But other parts apparently are not.
This leads me to another reason for my Top Ten -- many of them have something in them I'd written about here when I called this blog "The Art of Definition." Remember when I tried writing a poem in "songform"?
Merlin's prophecy is in a bardic triad (more like "chantform," I would think. Is "chantform" a word? I doubt it.). Several songform poems elsewhere in the Idylls are set in important places, as well. Tennyson's work here can be profitably studied by poets looking for tips on this subject.
I also erred in saying that "The Coming of Arthur" is largely a rewrite of the first book of Morte. It's actually a composite from lots of sources, including the author's rich imagination and careful character painting. In fact, I now remember thinking when I finished "The Coming ..." that I was glad I'd read the first book of Morte beforehand. I might have gotten really confused otherwise.
Me confused? Imagine that!
Friday, June 11, 2010
Done and (nowhere nearly) done
I just finished Idylls of the King, after starting sometime in late March (I'm a slow reader).
Didn't place an asterisk on it when I posted The Top Ten because I had already started reading it by then, and I was confident at the time I would finish within a week or two.
Going from Milton to Tennyson (in poetry terms) feels at first a little like going from Henry James to Harry Potter, but, the further I read, the more complex the poem became and the longer I lingered over the text.
The first book, "The Coming of Arthur," is largely a blank verse rewrite of the first book in Malory's Morte D'Arthur. I say "largely" with some trepidation, because Tennyson's version of Merlin's prophecy, as I recall, is nowhere in the first book of Malory's story, at least as written. There are some other elements that also I recall being different, and all these together make all the difference as the book progresses.
This is one very nuanced and textured tale, and its demands on the reader are sly but persistent. You can glide over reading this book, but you'll likely be missing a lot if you do.
Lord Al comes off as a little stuffy to a modern reader like me, but once you understand where he's coming from (Victorian High Culture) and the audience he is writing to (ditto), it should not be a transition you can't manage.
The only thing I found annoying was Tennyson's constant use of the word "past" as a verb. Not "past" as in "the past," but as in "he went somewhere." The King and Lancelot and Company all "pass" instead of "come" or "go", so that when you get to the last book, this becomes less a nuisance and more of a Major Theme. His spelling of the word is what kept throwing me: I'd have to re-read the line every time until I finally figured out what was going on.
The first book I found (at the public library) was published by the old Macmillan & Co. The notes were appropriate for a girl's school of this edition's pre-WWI era, as were its pocket size and prim (but nice) illustrations. Also perhaps appropriate for its time, the editor left out three Idylls -- those presumably deemed too naughty or too violent for debs of the day ("Balin and Balan," "Merlin and Vivien" and "Pelleas and Ettarre").
I read two of the omitted ones in a smelly and stained double-column compedium I also found at the library, then held off on reading anything else in Idylls till I at last scored a paperback copy at a major bookseller. Mine had a long casecutter nick on the back, so I guess that's why it was still there.
The nicked ppb was a Penguin Classic edition, and its notes were excellent.
Don't miss out on the Dedication and the epilogue ("To the Queen"). I read them only after I'd finished the main text -- both are essential for author's context, but, like me, you'll probably need the Penguin editor's notes to both.
Post-modernist, existentialist, collectivist, individualist -- doesn't matter. Despite Tennyson's readership being the "moneyed middle-class" of the British Empire in his time, there is room in this tower for every sincere lover of literature. If Idylls of the King doesn't belong in The Top Ten, nothing does.
Didn't place an asterisk on it when I posted The Top Ten because I had already started reading it by then, and I was confident at the time I would finish within a week or two.
Going from Milton to Tennyson (in poetry terms) feels at first a little like going from Henry James to Harry Potter, but, the further I read, the more complex the poem became and the longer I lingered over the text.
The first book, "The Coming of Arthur," is largely a blank verse rewrite of the first book in Malory's Morte D'Arthur. I say "largely" with some trepidation, because Tennyson's version of Merlin's prophecy, as I recall, is nowhere in the first book of Malory's story, at least as written. There are some other elements that also I recall being different, and all these together make all the difference as the book progresses.
This is one very nuanced and textured tale, and its demands on the reader are sly but persistent. You can glide over reading this book, but you'll likely be missing a lot if you do.
Lord Al comes off as a little stuffy to a modern reader like me, but once you understand where he's coming from (Victorian High Culture) and the audience he is writing to (ditto), it should not be a transition you can't manage.
The only thing I found annoying was Tennyson's constant use of the word "past" as a verb. Not "past" as in "the past," but as in "he went somewhere." The King and Lancelot and Company all "pass" instead of "come" or "go", so that when you get to the last book, this becomes less a nuisance and more of a Major Theme. His spelling of the word is what kept throwing me: I'd have to re-read the line every time until I finally figured out what was going on.
The first book I found (at the public library) was published by the old Macmillan & Co. The notes were appropriate for a girl's school of this edition's pre-WWI era, as were its pocket size and prim (but nice) illustrations. Also perhaps appropriate for its time, the editor left out three Idylls -- those presumably deemed too naughty or too violent for debs of the day ("Balin and Balan," "Merlin and Vivien" and "Pelleas and Ettarre").
I read two of the omitted ones in a smelly and stained double-column compedium I also found at the library, then held off on reading anything else in Idylls till I at last scored a paperback copy at a major bookseller. Mine had a long casecutter nick on the back, so I guess that's why it was still there.
The nicked ppb was a Penguin Classic edition, and its notes were excellent.
Don't miss out on the Dedication and the epilogue ("To the Queen"). I read them only after I'd finished the main text -- both are essential for author's context, but, like me, you'll probably need the Penguin editor's notes to both.
Post-modernist, existentialist, collectivist, individualist -- doesn't matter. Despite Tennyson's readership being the "moneyed middle-class" of the British Empire in his time, there is room in this tower for every sincere lover of literature. If Idylls of the King doesn't belong in The Top Ten, nothing does.
