TRTR Back to the main chance, the unswerving punctuality of

[Mark Kohut]

I am often a lucky browser in books. Or, our list concerns are so all-embracing, my
kind of books inevitably connect. 
 
Browsing in a book called The True Story of the Novel, by Margaret Doody---a work much
like Gaddis expert Steven Moore's recent one, i.e. that wants to explore "novels", possible novel-like
works written long before Don Quixote or the established consensus of the first novels in history. (established
by such as Ian Watt, and Percy Lubbock and even Henry James and Wayne Booth.)---I find not
only references to the first Recognitions, but very interesting stuff on Mithraism.....
 
But first, the author offers other suggestions. (Her style is associative, with scholarly backing but not
purely deductive.)....In a chapter entitled The Freedoms of Chastity, she wants to associate the Greek goddess
Medusa with the Egyptian goddess Isis, a kind of archetype across cultures. She throws some Roman history at us
to show the Roman Senate wanted to bring down Isis...(this will be important when we get to Mithraism)....
But Isis triumphed and "it was a triumph of multi-culturalism" 
 
She quotes some scholars who say that there is a tradition of the sun being associated with goddesses not just
gods....
 
To Be Continued....
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