So, I'm not entirely sure if I should be commenting on Joe's post (which I would really like to) or be writing a new post to bring us back to Sidney for our upcoming week's seminar (which I'm a bit more loathe to do, for while I love medieval literature and the origin of the lyric with the literature of that time period is a blissful topic to me, I recognize few would share that sentiment). So, I'm just going to try to comply with what I think Cathy's email was asking and post an itty-bitty question to take us a half-step back, and then it'll be over and done, and we can go back to Joe's arguably more interesting material.
Joe brings up a fascinating idea that I'd like to explore: the function of the bridge. I'm actually pretty excited about this after reading Boulton's brief introduction, because she discusses the lyric insertion (which we see in Arcadia) as a "disruption." Not only are we considering form and space and prose versus lyric here, but the actual movement of the story; the narrative is chronological and moves toward a conclusion while the song "concentrates on a single moment" (181 in our coursepack). This disruption is so obvious to us that it hardly need be pointed out; Mandy actually mentioned that she usually skips songs when they show up in the middle of stories. (Don't feel guilty. I used to do that too. Then in middle school I started reading Brian Jacques--please don't judge--,and I realized how much the song was often essential to the story, and I've forced myself to read them ever since.)
Is it possible though, (and I'm really excited about this, so I'm going to get a bit histrionic), is it just possible that it can act as a bridge in the narrative when nothing else would do? How and to what extent? Why? How might this be accomplished in the brief example Sidney gives us in Book 1? Do you think he successfully reconciles this disruption in his format of the Eclogues? Do the Eclogues themselves bridge the Books successfully?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment