M & D Deep Duck continues.

[Monte Davis]

I remember an end-of-semester lecture by Chaucer honcho D.W. Robertson Jr.
He summarized all the conventional wisdom about the "flatness" of the
Canterbury characters -- their appearance, words, and actions dictated by
one dominant trait. He noted the implication of wondrous progress since:
that authors have learned to capture so much more of human complexity and
variety, those last assumed to be eternal.

Then he turned it all on its head (my paraphrase): "I'm not saying that it
is or that it isn't -- but just for exercise, consider the possibility that
Chaucer was very skilled at understanding and representing... that *that's
how people were in the 14th century*... that some or much of what we
usually think of as progress in literary technique since then might
actually be changes in us... and that literature may have been as much
cause as reflection of that change."

Credit it to Luther per Van Den Berg, to Shakespeare per Bloom, to Burton
as transition from pre-modern Melancholick and other humors to proto-modern
psychology... or go farther with Julian Jaynes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind

and say that  consciousness itself is only about 3000 years old. I don't
buy any of them (or Robertson) 100%, but they are *very* useful exercises.

Per my recent mini-rant on the WASTE FB group, I like and respect Forster,
and Aspects of the Novel, and the "flat vs. rounded characters" passage,
and the Great Tradition-ish context of them all. But that should never have
been degraded into the simple-minded Kakutani scale, by which Roundedness
is All, and poor Tom Pynchon -- previously limited to cartoons and
caricatures -- finally started to get it right with Mason and Dixon.

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 7:19 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I say there are, fer sure, or there is such a variety in the manifestation
> of
> all of its effects, Pynchon wants to make sure we understand that, get
> that in some
> mannered but still phenomenological detail.
> As remarked, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was published again and again
> in
> three volumes.
> If finding the prosaic nomenclature for our feelings is something that
> happened in human history---
> then Pynchon is modeling that in some way in M & D?
>
> a Dutch psychiatrist, J. H Van Den Berg, in his most famous book
> places the start of our 'inner self'
> at around 1520, with Luther's challenge to the Church. Harold Bloom
> has famously argued that
> Shakespeare created (our current understanding) of the human in the
> humanly insightful genius
> of how work.
>
> We can argue that---and I'm sure some will--but I am only throwing
> these out as a postscript
> to The Anatomy of Melancholy...i.e as a perspective on the
> developmental understanding of
> many of the qualities of being "human". Grief provides us--at
> least--some insight?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 12:32 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Can there be different forms of grief?
> >
> >
> > Www.innergroovemusic.com
> >
> >> On Jan 16, 2015, at 12:08 AM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> I agree (nicely said), but I disagree.
> >>
> >> Two sides of the same something, seems to me.
> >>
> >> Grief, like fear, makes one desperate to flee oneself.
> >> Pitch into the hour, so to speak...
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Jan 15, 2015, at 8:59 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Nicely said.
> >>>> On Jan 15, 2015, at 7:58 PM, alice malice wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> C.S Lewis may be right, but grief is not like fear to me.
> >>>>
> >>>> I have fear of grief. To me grief is not like fear. It is the end of
> >>>> fear; there is nothing left to fear because what was feared is. Maybe
> >>>> Mason, like Margaret, is not afraid, but is grieving not for what he
> >>>> fears, or even for what may or may not be, but for what is surely to
> >>>> be and not to be.
> >>>>
> >>>> http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173665
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 6:21 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>> p20. 'pitching into the hour, heedless"...why does Grief cause this?
> >>>>> "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."---C.S. Lewis.
> >>>>> TRP even has Dixon share, therefore understand by identifying with,
> >>>>> this feeling.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> a lot of anatomy of grief, melancholy, etc. going on from the get-go.
> >>>>> Dense web of feelings.
> >>>>> -
> >>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>>> -
> >>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>>
> >>> -
> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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