The Merchant of Venice is regarded as a tragic comedy.
The main
character is the merchant, Antonio who fails and becomes indebted to the
merciless moneylender, Shylock. Antonio’s
friend Bassanio has
borrowed money from Antonio in order to woo Portia, the beautiful
resident of Belmont and it is the reason why Antonio has fallen prey to
Shylock. The other main characters are Jessica, the daughter of Shylock, and
Lorenzo and Gratiano, associates and friends of Bassanio. Read here.
“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
Elie Wiesel
From Julius Caesar’s first landing on the shoreline of England in 55BC to the famous "Look to your own defences" letter of AD410, the Romans played an important part in British history for over 400 years. Read here.
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/romans/
https://www.history.org.uk/primary/resource/3851/roman-britain-a-brief-history
A visiting American scholar is paging through an old volume at the British Museum when he comes upon a letter stuffed between the pages, a love letter, it would appear, from Queen Victoria's poet laureate, addressed to a woman not his wife. The poet has been held up for more than a century as a model of marital fidelity. The letter is dynamite. The scholar slips the letter out of the book and into his portfolio, and is soon displaying it, with all the pride and uncertainly of a new father, to a British woman who knows (or thought she knew) everything about the poet. Read here.
https://www.silverpetticoatreview.com/possession-2002-a-love-story-with-multi-generational-pull/
https://fsharetv.io/watch/possession-episode-1-tt0256276
December 16th is a festive day for Janeites. On a very snowy day in 1775 our favorite author Jane Austen was born to Rev. George Austen and his wife Cassandra at Steventon rectory in Hampshire, England.
She was a revolutionary writer, who had very strong views about her society and found pleasure in expressing her thoughts through her writing. Born into a large family, she enjoyed sharing her writings and entertaining others. Read here.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
John Keats Here you can find an analysis of this handsome ballad which is considered an English classic. It is a narrative of an encounter that causes both pleasure and pain. It avoids simplicity of interpretation despite simplicity of structure. Composed of twelve stanzas, of only four lines each, with a simple ABCB rhyme scheme, the poem is full of enigmas, and has been the subject of numerous interpretations.Read here.
