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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jun 10, 2021 14:27:23 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Jun 10, 2021 14:34:26 GMT
Thank you so much. There is no point me pretending I'll read it - I just don't have the patience to read a novel from a screen - but the kind thought is much appreciated.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jun 10, 2021 14:45:43 GMT
Thank you so much. There is no point me pretending I'll read it - I just don't have the patience to read a novel from a screen - but the kind thought is much appreciated. I'm sure there are others on that list available for you not to read, but I will leave it to the Priestess to find them.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jun 17, 2021 12:33:18 GMT
(Put this here as this is where we mentioned the play first)
I looked in Coleridge's letters for any Monk Lewis references and there is a mention of The Castle Spectre. Here is that Mighty Mind giving his thoughts in a letter to the supreme egoist Wordsworth, it's fairly positive toward the end:
I have just read the āCastle Spectre,ā and shall bring it home with me. I will begin with its defects, in order that my āButā may have a charitable transition. 1. Language; 2. Character; 3. Passion; 4. Sentiment; 5. Conduct. (1.) Of styles, some are pleasing durably and on reflection, some only in transition, and some are not pleasing at all; and to this latter class belongs the āCastle Spectre.ā[177] There are no felicities in the humorous passages; and in the serious ones it is Schiller Lewis-ized, that is, a flat, flabby, unimaginative bombast oddly sprinkled with colloquialisms. (2.) No character at all. The author in a postscript lays claim to novelty in one of his characters, that of Hassan. Now Hassan is a negro, who had a warm and benevolent heart; but having been kidnapped from his country and barbarously used by the Christians, becomes a misanthrope. This is all!! (3.)[Pg 237] Passionāhorror! agonizing pangs of conscience! Dreams full of hell, serpents, and skeletons; starts and attempted murders, etc., but positively, not one line that marks even a superficial knowledge of human feelings could I discover. (4.) Sentiments are moral and humorous. There is a book called the āFrisky Songster,ā at the end of which are two chapters: the first containing frisky toasts and sentiments, the second, āMoral Toasts,ā and from these chapters I suspect Mr. Lewis has stolen all his sentimentality, moral and humorous. A very fat friar, renowned for gluttony and lubricity, furnishes abundance of jokes (all of them abdominal vel si quid infra), jokes that would have stunk, had they been fresh, and alas! they have the very sƦva mephitis of antiquity on them. But (5.) the Conduct of the Piece is, I think, good; except that the first act is wholly taken up with explanation and narration. This play proves how accurately you conjectured concerning theatric merit. The merit of the āCastle Spectreā consists wholly in its situations. These are all borrowed and all absolutely pantomimical; but they are admirably managed for stage effect. There is not much bustle, but situations for ever. The whole plot, machinery, and incident are borrowed. The play is a mere patchwork of plagiarisms; but they are very well worked up, and for stage effect make an excellent whole. There is a pretty little ballad-song introduced, and Lewis, I think has great and peculiar excellence in these compositions. The simplicity and naturalness is his own, and not imitated; for it is made to subsist in congruity with a language perfectly modern, the language of his own times, in the same way that the language of the writer of āSir Caulineā was the language of his times. This, I think, a rare merit: at least, I find, I cannot attain this innocent nakedness, except by assumption. I resemble the Duchess of Kingston, who masqueraded in the character of āEve before the Fall,ā in flesh-coloured Silk. This[Pg 238] play struck me with utter hopelessness. It would [be easy] to produce these situations, but not in a play so [constructed] as to admit the permanent and closest beauties of style, passion, and character. To admit pantomimic tricks, the plot itself must be pantomimic. Harlequin cannot be had unaccompanied by the Fool.
Note says: Coleridgeās copy of Monk Lewisā play is dated January 20, 1798.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jun 17, 2021 12:47:30 GMT
Coleridge would know all about plagiarism as he was an arch-plagiarist himself. Probably because his mind was a constant whirring jumble of ideas, his own and others from his prodigious reading, that he didn't know which was which. As you can see from the Keats letter above his brain was in constant motion.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jun 17, 2021 13:05:08 GMT
The opium fiend Thomas De Quincey was a great talker too. But he had one advantage over Coleridge: He could also listen!
He did an Essay entitle On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. And one On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth which takes an early psychological approach to the event in the play.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jun 17, 2021 15:02:16 GMT
I'm talking to the wind.
My own fault.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Jun 17, 2021 15:02:32 GMT
Pff
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