'Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme'

It's been quite a while since my last post, mainly because I've been back at university and it's been a particularly hectic semester! I've been doing mainly French language, but in English lit we've been studying the Restoration and 18th century, which I've actually found a lot more interesting than I was expecting. I've written an essay on Defoe's Robinson Crusoe - about whether it can best be described as a spiritual autobiography or as depicting 'naked materialism' - which is not really interesting enough to copy in here, and next week we're looking at Frances Burney's Evelina, which is an epistolary novel about a young girl's entry into society. I think I was expecting something Jane Austen-esque but it was too early for that really. We've also looked at 4 books of Milton's Paradise Lost, which is where my quote for the title comes from. I think the poetry is beautiful but it's very hard going, although I imagine once you make friends with it, this epic will just give more and more with each reading, so I'm determined to get through it all eventually!

I think what's frustrating about a university course is that you can't really study things in much detail - we're not looking at any Fielding, Sterne or Richardson, for example. There's been no mention of Samuel Johnson either, which I find strange as he was incredibly influential at the time and is largely responsible for the regularisation of spelling in the English language. In any case, I'm hoping to be able to read Sterne's Tristram Shandy as it's one I've wanted to look at for a while, and hopefully it should be quite amusing. Next semester is Romanticism and Renaissance literature, both of which could be hard going but interesting... to me anyway!!

I've also been sitting in on some lectures about literary theory and criticism, and while I've not understood everything, a lot of it's been very interesting. One thing that was said in the feminist lecture was that the university department tries really hard to include a fair amount of good literature by women because a lot of it's been ignored for such a long time, and while I agree with this I do think it must be difficult to get a good balance when writers like Burney appear to knock Fielding, for example, out of the core text list. I'm sure they've got other reasons for putting Evelina in but it does partly appear to be to redress the balance in favour of women writers.

Anyway... in my last post I said I was about to start reading Vikram Seth's An Equal Music, and I did indeed read and enjoy it. It seems that there's a great passion for music behind this writing, and a sensitivity to nuance as well as a commitment to be honest and precise about the music-making experience. It was really enjoyable and utterly heartbreaking. Fabulous, and as ever, masterful prose from Seth - so good that it makes me stop and go "wow".

I bought a big pile of books recently from an Oxfam nearby which was selling fiction for 99p, one of which was Kathleen Tessaro's Elegance. I've read this a few times and re-read it after buying it; it's such a light, bubbly read, skillfully written, and an entertaining story as its main character - Louise - uses an old-fashioned style guide to help her use clothes in her fight to sort her life out. I'm not usually massively into chick lit, but this for me verges on being quite thoughtful.

I've been starting to re-read C.S.Lewis' Mere Christianity recently and am enjoying again his clear writing and helpful analogies, although I find more and more things in his thinking that I wish I could question him on more, which I suppose can only be a good thing! So along with that, Tristram Shandy and some e.e.cummings poetry and a complete short stories of Katherine Mansfield that I have on my shelf, I have plenty of interesting reading material that I'll hopefully be able to come back to later!