Jo's Boys

I just finished reading Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys, and I was struck with how much Louisa May Alcott echoed Charlotte Mason's ideas. I think that Charlotte Mason probably didn't manufacture her ideas out of her own head, but these were ideas that were out and about in the minds of many thinkers at the time, and Charlotte Mason organized them into her own school/curriculum in the same way that Jo March Bhaer used them in her Plumfield school for boys.

Jo's Boys has a chapter that deviates from the boys at the school to focus on the girls who were there, and there's no missing the similarity with Charlotte Mason's own section just for girls. So, with no commentary, I'm going to present, side by side, sections of both books so you can compare for yourself.

The books:

Jo's Boys, by Louisa May Alcott, Chapter 17. Among the Maids

Volume 5: Formation Of Character by Charlotte Mason, 2. Concerning The Young Maidens At Home (I used my own paraphrased version for the comparison.)

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
Although this story is about Jo's boys, her girls cannot be neglected, because they held a high place in this little republic, and especial care was taken to fit them to play their parts worthily in the great republic which offered them wider opportunities and more serious duties.

CM:
It's not enough for them to learn to cook a little, sew a little, and do laundry. Every one of the girls should receive some definite, thorough training in some art or profession that will enable her to earn her own living doing something useful for the world, and something interesting and enjoyable to herself, as all skilled work of the mind or hands is. I think that parents owe this to their daughters as much as they do to their sons. There is valuable training available in many fields of work suitable for women, and at about the same cost as it takes to support a girl at home.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
To many the social influence was the better part of the training they received; for education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. Others cared only for the mental culture, and were in danger of over-studying, under the delusion which pervades New England that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better. A third class of ambitious girls hardly knew what they wanted, but were hungry for whatever could fit them to face the world and earn a living...

CM: [One kind of girl] imagines the great things she could do for some idealistic cause, but she's careless about details of kindness, things she says, and routine chores... a little friendly help and advice might save her from a lot of blundering and regret.
There's another kind of girl who has no interests beyond cute clothes. These girls ... view the world as a place for them to have and get, but never, unless forced, as a place to do, to endure, or to share. ... what can be done for the average graduate whose education is supposedly 'finished,' yet who's still rough and uninformed?

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
At Plumfield all found something to help them; for the growing institution had not yet made its rules as fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and believed so heartily in the right of all sexes, colours, creeds, and ranks to education, that there was room for everyone who knocked... the Faculty was composed of cheerful, hopeful men and women who had seen greater reforms spring from smaller roots, and after stormy seasons blossom beautifully, to add prosperity and honour to the nation. So they worked on steadily and bided their time, full of increasing faith in their attempt as year after year their numbers grew, their plans succeeded, and the sense of usefulness in this most vital of all professions blessed them with its sweet rewards.

CM:
School hasn't completed the girl's education, it's only provided a beginning. Now the girl is home to learn how to make the most of herself, and how to succeed in life. How to make the best life is the issue she faces.... A woman who has herself under control, thinks for herself, reserves her judgments, thinks before she speaks or acts, is a woman who will succeed in life. Her success is measured in how generous her heart is, how broad her mind is, and how large her soul is.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
They were busy women, yet on Saturdays they tried to meet in one of the three sewing-rooms; for even classic Parnassus had its nook where Mrs Amy often sat among her servants, teaching them to make and mend, thereby giving them a respect for economy, since the rich lady did not scorn to darn her hose, and sew on buttons. In these household retreats, with books and work, and their daughters by them, they read and sewed and talked in the sweet privacy that domestic women love, and can make so helpful by a wise mixture of cooks and chemistry, table linen and theology, prosaic duties and good poetry.

CM:
Every woman should understand and know how to do every task related to cooking, cleaning, mending or making in the home. A regular instruction time learning to do these things under her mother's guiding eye would be a good way to spend an hour or two every morning. One valuable and extremely useful project is a household book where the young girl writes down exactly how to do specific things, like how to strip a floor, or how to make an omelet. She should write down the exact steps she took herself to do it, or as she observed while watching someone else do it, noting any special circumstances specific to her own house. This kind of reference will be invaluable later because it contains personal experiences, and it will help her to speak authoritatively to her cook or servant who might say, 'I never heard of anyone doing it like that before, ma'am.' Planning meals, setting a proper table, every detail about managing a household for a week or a month, should all be taught and noted in her book.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
...Mrs Amy contributed taste, and decided the great question of colours and complexions; for few women, even the most learned, are without that desire to look well which makes many a plain face comely, as well as many a pretty one ugly for want of skill and knowledge of the fitness of things. She also took her turn to provide books for the readings, and as art was her forte she gave them selections from Ruskin, Hamerton, and Mrs Jameson, who is never old. Bess read these aloud as her contribution, and Josie took her turn at the romances, poetry, and plays her uncles recommended. Mrs Jo gave little lectures on health, religion, politics, and the various questions in which all should be interested, with copious extracts from Miss Cobbe's Duties of Women, Miss Brackett's Education of American Girls, Mrs Duffy's No obtund in Education, Mrs Woolson's Dress Reform, and many of the other excellent books wise women write for their sisters, now that they are waking up and asking: 'What shall we do?'

CM:
Her academic education has hardly gotten started in school, and it needs to progress. She needs to develop her own independent habits of intellectual effort. She should have one or two hours every morning for nothing but solid reading. English literature is still mostly unknown her, so she'll need some of that. She has a lot of history to read--ancient, medieval and modern--and that will relate better when she compares it to her own current history. She probably learned to read some French and German in school, and now is a good time to introduce her to some French and German literature. She'll probably only find time for the best of the novels, the ones that have become classics, except for those occasions when she has a cold or earache or has a spare half hour after dinner. It's very helpful to have a 'commonplace book' or reading journal at hand while reading so that she can jot down any notable thoughts about the author, or her own impression of the book, or a portion of it.
...Give them sincere intellectual work to think about. Let them feel how necessary it is to brace up every faculty of their minds to understand the width and depth of the truths they're called to believe in.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
It was curious to see the prejudices melt away as ignorance was enlightened, indifference change to interest, and intelligent minds set thinking, while quick wits and lively tongues added spice to the discussions which inevitably followed. So the feet that wore the neatly mended hose carried wiser heads than before, the pretty gowns covered hearts warmed with higher purposes, and the hands that dropped the thimbles for pens, lexicons, and celestial globes, were better fitted for life's work, whether to rock cradles, tend the sick, or help on the great work of the world...

CM:
Young ladies should receive some general training and special preparation to help them form fair, just opinions. For starters, a girl should be encouraged to use her common sense to weigh issues that come up...
Young women should also know something about the principles of political economy. ... Any girl who studies it with some thought and effort will be able to form sensible opinions about some of the current issues that are used these days, not just as matters of opinion, but as reasons to justify one social class's superiority over another. It would be good for England if educated women had fair and just ideas about these kinds of issues, not just so they can have something interesting and valuable to say to their husbands and brothers, but so that they can present a different perspective to the men in their lives, and influence them to see a different side of the issue.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
It was good for these girls to hear of the evening-schools supported and taught by women whom they knew and honoured; of Miss Cobbe's eloquent protest winning the protection of the law for abused wives; Mrs Butler saving the lost; Mrs Taylor, who devoted one room in her historic house to a library for the servants; Lord Shaftesbury, busy with his new tenement-houses in the slums of London; of prison reforms; and all the brave work being done in God's name by the rich and great for the humble and the poor. It impressed them more than many quiet home lectures would have done, and roused an ambition to help when their time should come, well knowing that even in glorious America there is still plenty to be done before she is what she should be--truly just, and free, and great.

CM:
..Women have so many rights these days that they can no longer justifiably claim the kind of immunities that secluded harem wives can. We aren't free to say, 'Oh, these things are beyond me; I let the men worry about those kinds of issues.' It's possible that God's Providence has brought women to the forefront in this age so that they'll be ready to act as mediators in these days when there's a dangerous risk of alienation and enmity between social classes. Some thinking people are convinced that we're in the early stages of a revolution. Whether this revolution can happen peacefully without the bloodshed and horrors of other recent revolutions may depend, more than they realize, on the women of England.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Uncanny, isn't it? One would almost wonder if they were the same person! Jo's Boys was published in 1886, which is about the same year Charlotte Mason was delivering her "Lectures to Ladies" that ended up as her first book.

The 100 Favorite Novels of Librarians

This was posted on a message board.

THE 100 FAVORITE NOVELS OF LIBRARIANS Based on a survey conducted by Brodart Co., September, 1998 - March, 1999

Book Reference (note to myself)

In deciding which books to read, sometimes it's as valuable to know why people dislike specific books as to know which ones they love and why.

This blog post from Dominion Family is a year old, but I want to keep it bookmarked because the comments are helpful. One thing I already learned: I probably wouldn't like anything by Flannery O'Connor.

I'm enjoying Oliver Twist (I'm reading it my son for AO Year 5), and it makes me wonder if I might like Charles Dickens.

Sense and Sensibility

I had some catching up to do, so I listened to four chapters on Librivox.org and then read four chapters this afternoon to bring me up to chapter 34 (is that where you're at, Ginger?)

I've seen the movie with Kate Winslett and Emma Thompson a number of times, and I thought the movie exaggerated the coldheartedness of the oldest brother, John, who had been requested by his dying father to take care of his mother and sisters. But the book goes even further - in his guilt at neglecting them, he's misreading the signs and trying to marry off Elinor to rich Colonel Brandon, and persuading Elinor (and himself) that kind Mrs. Jennings intends to leave them some money when she dies! How he can think that she would do that when she has her own daughters, and when he himself won't give them anything, is beyond me. He's a strange piece of work.

Spanish Living/Classic Books?

I'm going to start trying to collecting some classic and living Spanish booklists for a friend. who has a really cute picture of Miss M playing with her little girl on her blog.

This is only the start (I hope - not only are these not so easy to find, but I'm less familiar with Spanish books to know whether a booklist is worthy or not!)

UPDATE: Javamom has posted some Spanish language helps, including Spanish songs, poems and etexts, on her blog here and here. You can view all of her posts on Spanish Lessons here.

http://educandoenfamilia.com/ General homeschool site
They also have a message board (although it's not very active)
and an active blog Educando en Familia

When I do a search for great Spanish writers, these are some names that come up. I have no idea whether their works are worthy of a CM education.
Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, Pio Baroja.

Wikipedia has an entry on Spanish literature. "In the Romanticism (principle of the 19th century) important topics are: the poetry of José de Espronceda and other poets; the prose, that can have several forms (the historical novel, the scientific prose, the description of regional customs, the journalism —where Mariano José de Larra can be mentioned—); the theater, with Ángel de Saavedra (Duke of Rivas), José Zorrilla, and other authors. In the latter romanticism (post-romanticism) some appear: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro. " Some names offered:
18th century:
Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, Jose Cadalso, Juan Meléndez Valdés, Félix María de Samaniego, Leandro Fernández de Moratín.
19th century:
Duque de Rivas, Mariano José de Larra, Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (Rhymes, Legends), José de Espronceda (El estudiante de Salamanca, La canción del pirata), José Zorrilla (Don Juan Tenorio)

They have a more extensive list of writers from the realist and modern periods, but I don't know how those would be at instilling the kind of character Charlotte Mason had in mind - so much of modern literature has a different goal, and hispanic literature might even have its own focus altogether.

Wikipedia has a list of Spanish authors divided by country. But, again, I don't know what the quality of their works is, and how usable they'd be in a Christian-based education. I'm suspecting that a person looking for a classic books education would have to rely heavily on world classics translated into Spanish. I know they're widely available. For starters, I'm sure Aesop's fables, Fairy Tales are available in Spanish translations - even the English versions are translated from a language other than English. The standard literary classics that seem to make it on everybody's booklists (Swiss Family Robinson, Jungle Book, Little Women) must surely be available in Spanish.

I guess one solution for coming up with a Spanish version of a great books list would be for someone who knows both English and Spanish to convert a list of standard great books (perhaps starting with Ambleside Online's list) into Spanish by finding the titles in Spanish.

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I found this at the Online Books Page - book sites in foreign languages. These are Spanish etext sites:

• Biblioteca Electronica Cristiana (Christian electronic texts in Spanish)
• Biblioteca Virtual de CLACSO (social science books in Spanish)
• Biblioteca Virtual Miguel De Cervantes (Spanish texts; JavaScript-dependent)
• Comedia Library (Hispanic classical theater texts)
• Elaleph (Spanish-language PDF texts)
• Memoria Chilena (Chilean historical books and other materials in Spanish)
• Textos Lemir (medieval Spanish texts)

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Here's a beginning list, thanks to Mama Squirrel's comments.

Imitacion de Cristo por Tomás Hermerken de Kempis

Poesia por Fray Luis de Léon (not sure of the quality, but the text is listed on a Christian site)

Mujercitas por LouisaMay Alcott

Desiring God by John Piper pdf file

El Progreso del Peregrino por Juan Bunyan pdf

Vintage Books online in various translations at The Rosetta Project, including Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Bears, (click on the "Spanish" button for the translated text)
.

An Old Favorite

When I was young, there was a small town library that we used to go to, with a small but cozy children's section. I used to check out the same books a lot and re-read them. I don't remember what they all were, just snatches - I guess I was about 11, because we moved soon after that. Some of the books I've come across again as we've been homeschooling - Half Magic by Edward Eager, The Saturdays, The Railway Children. But my very favorite one, I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember much of anything about it (I guess I don't have a very good memory!) except that there were five kids, and the baby was called Honey. Mama Squirrel suggested that I ask at Stump the Bookseller, so I did - and within a couple of days someone had solved my mystery and provided me with the name and author of the book - The Children of the Old House by Ruth Bouchard (1963, Doubleday). So I ordered a copy - it's not an easy book to locate - and it's been sitting on my shelf for a long, long time. I'm finally getting around to reading it. J is away this week; he went to Biloxi with some guys at church to do some post-Katrina work, so I started reading this book to L because he's bored with his brother gone. And, as I'm reading, I'm remembering, and I'm sure this is the same book.

Here's what the inside book jacket says:

"What could be more exciting than to move from Grandfather's too-small house in town to a big house all one's own right near a river? That's what the children thought until they saw the house: it had no front door, only a big opening where a double door should have been. The sun poured through empty window holes and everything was dirty--but there was a garden, wild and beautiful, with plenty of room. Almost anything could happen in such a house and such a garden, and this the story of what did happen in the house in which Ruth, Michael, Peter, Inga and Honey grew up and had their funny, sad, and dangerous adventures. Moving to a new town meant the excitement of new friends and a new school--but it also meant lots of money needed for proper furnishings and house repairs. The brothers and sisters embarked on some hilarious projects to help make money, and through their loving and imaginative efforts, combined with several serious family crises, the family finally turned the old house into a real home."

What I liked about the book was that each child was allowed to choose a place in the house, any place they wanted, to be their very own, and after they had done something to earn the privilege, the father would fix it up for them as a private place.

The littlest one, Honey, was born at midnight on Midsummer Eve, and the mother is convinced that he's special. The rest of the family agree that he's a beautiful baby, with a honey-colored glow and honey brown eyes to match, but they don't see him as unusual. He's just a baby in the book and doesn't really come into the story too much.

The story feels like All-of-a-Kind Family, or The Moffats.

Anyway, here's how chapter 9 begins:

Almost An Accident

It was on Granny's birthday that something terrible very nearly happened. It was Ruth's fault. It was the greatest trouble she ever caused, but it came about through one of her usual faults--tormenting Michael.

Of late Ruth had been even nastier to Michael than usual. She did not want to, but she could not stop herself. The truth was she was jealous of Michael. For one thing, Ruth was jealous because she had not yet earned her own place. But she minded even more about Daddy. He had become quite interested in Michael's doings in the attic, and he often visited him there. Nobody else was allowed in Michael's own place. He had put up a notice: 'Private.'

... All this made Ruth jealous. She ran Michael down more than ever. Again and again she had to be told to leave the table. Again and again Mummy told her she had a proper poison tongue. And still she crossed Michael whenever she could.

Then Granny's birthday came along, and on that day something happened that did change Ruth at last ...

-----------------------------------------

The back of the book jacket lists 'Books About Children in Other Lands': Mario by Marion Garthwaite (Mexican), Ten and a Kid by Sadie Rose Weilerstein (Lithuanian), Aloha Susan by Helen Hoyt (Hawaii), Su-Mei's Golden Year by Marguerite Harmon Bro (Chinese), Esmeralda Ahoy by Elisabeth Fairholme and Pamela Powell (British), Sword of the Winds by Nancy Faulkner (Cornish), Children of the Soil by Nora Burglon (Scandinavian). This one is apparently the German one, although when I was a kid, I never saw any others in the series and never even realized that this was a story about turn-of-the-century Germany. Listen to some of the illustrators of this series: Kurt Weise (Ping), Peter Spier, Edgar Parin D'Aulaire, C. Walter Hodges.

Fabre's Life of the Caterpillar

I finished this etext this afternoon. Who would ever have believed that a book about caterpillars could have you on the edge of your seat?

Fabre stops at nothing to learn the private habits of his subjects. What do they like to eat? Will they eat anything else? What if they're really hungry and deprived of their preferred food? How do they mate? Will the males find the female if she's inside the house? How about if she's locked in sealed glass where they can see her but can't smell her? Where do they get their silk from? What is it about caterpillars that irritates your skin if you handle them? Can you find out by concentrating a lot of caterpillars into a mash and wearing the mixture against your arm for a few days?

I wish I had discovered his books a long time ago - this is the kind of thing I craved as a child. I remember loving books about spiders and insects, but none of them really explored their daily habits and how they survived and raised their young, which is what I really wanted to know. Fabre's books are what I really wanted to read, but I didn't know they existed.

Here's one of the detours he sometimes takes; here he discusses man's attempts at controlling garden pests by introducing foes who eat those pests:

"The cherry of our orchards is excellent eating: a maggot contends with us for its possession. In vain do we weigh suns and planets: our supremacy, which fathoms the universe, cannot prevent a wretched worm from levying its toll on the delicious fruit. We make ourselves at home in a cabbage-bed: the sons of the Pieris make themselves at home there too. Preferring broccoli to wild radish, they profit where we have profited; and we have no remedy against their competition save caterpillar-raids and egg-crushing, a thankless, tedious and none too efficacious work.
Every creature has its claims on life. The Cabbage-caterpillar eagerly puts forth his own, so much so that the cultivation of the precious plant would be endangered if others concerned did not take part in its defence. These others are the auxiliaries, our helpers from necessity and not from sympathy. The words friend and foe, auxiliaries and ravagers are here the mere conventions of a language not always adapted to render the exact truth. He is our foe who eats or attacks our crops; our friend is he who feeds upon our foes. Everything is reduced to a frenzied contest of appetites."

Wait, one more quote, this is related to intelligent design.

"But let me tell you: we are called old-fashioned, you and I; with our conception of a world ruled by an Intelligence, we are quite out of the swim. Order, balance, harmony: that is all silly nonsense. The universe is a fortuitous arrangement in the chaos of the possible. What is white might as easily be black, what is round might be angular, what is regular might be shapeless and harmony might just as well be discord. Chance has decided all things.
Yes, we are a pair of prejudiced old fogeys when we linger with a certain fondness over the marvels of perfection. Who troubles about these futilities nowadays? So-called serious science, the science which spells honour, profit and renown, consists in slicing your animal with very costly instruments into tiny circular sections. My housekeeper does as much with a bunch of carrots, with no higher pretention than to concoct a modest dish, which is not an invariable success. In the problem of life are we more successful when we have split a fibre into four and cut a cell into shavings? It hardly seems so. The riddle is as dark as ever. Ah, how much better is your method, my dear master; above all, how much loftier your philosophy, how much more wholesome and invigorating!"

Caterpillars, Science, Food

I'm actually previewing two books for Year 11. The other one is The Life of the caterpillar by Jean Henri Fabre. He's observing some pine processionary caterpillars and wants to experiment to see if they'll eat other species of pine, or just their native pine. But, however much all pine trees smell alike, the caterpillars only eat a couple species. Fabre makes this comment about science fabricating food on the assumption that one kind is pretty much the same as another:

"We must mistrust the chemist's retort when it pokes its nose into the kitchen. It may succeed in making butter out of tallow-candles and brandy out of potatoes; but, when it tells us that the products are identical, we shall do well to refuse these abominations. Science, astonishingly rich as it is in poison, will never provide us with anything fit to eat, because, though the raw substance falls to a large extent within its domain, that same substance escapes its methods the moment that it is wanted organized, divided and subdivided indefinitely by the process of life, as needed by the stomach, whose requirements are not be met by measured doses of our reagents. The raw material of cell and fibre may perhaps be artificially obtained, some day; cell and fibre themselves, never. There's the rub with your chemical feeding."

There's more. Muir observed that insects tend to be cooperative and communal when they eat plants, but insects that prey on other insects are too competitive for food/survival to work together - there's not enough food to go around for them to live together. They'd kill each other fighting over the food. And - communal insects only have one mother in any community: the queen. Maternal instinct makes mothers too fiercely protective to cooperate in a communal society. They'd never sacrifice their own eggs for the good of the hive or nest.

Here's his quote about what insects can teach us about forcing equality in order to have a communal society like the pine processionary caterpillars, who are as alike in appearance, ability and ambition as every other pine processionary caterpillar:

"If it suited us to go to school to the [caterpillars], we should soon see the inanity of our levelling and communistic theories. Equality is a magnificent political catchword, but little more. Where is it, this equality of ours? In our social groups, could we find as many as two persons exactly equal in strength, health, intelligence, capacity for work, foresight and all the other gifts which are the great factors of prosperity? Where should we find anything analogous to the exact parity prevailing among caterpillars? Nowhere. Inequality is our law. And a good thing, too.
A sound which is invariably the same, however often multiplied, does not constitute a harmony. We need dissimilarities, sounds loud and soft, deep and shrill; we need even discords which, by their harshness, throw into relief the sweetness of the chords. In the same way, human societies are harmonious only with the aid of contraries. If the dreams of our levellers could be realized, we should sink to the monotony of the caterpillar societies; art, science, progress and the lofty flights of the imagination would slumber indefinitely in the dead calm of mediocrity."

John Muir

I'm previewing an AO book for Year 11, Our National Parks, written by John Muir in 1901 as magazine articles to stir an interest in visiting the country's national parks. The book is online here.

His love for nature and desire to prevent human progress from ruining the land is very evident in his book. Here are a few quotes from the first two chapters; the first chapter is general comments about our national parks and the second chapter is about Yellowstone and the geysers.

"Give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven."

"As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers here brimming cups in endless variety, served in a grand hall, the sky its ceiling, the mountains its walls, decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music ever playing."

"Again and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, 'What are rattlesnakes good for?' As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God's ways."

"How still the woods seem from here, yet how lively a stir the hidden animals are making; digging, gnawing, biting, eyes shining, at work and play, getting food, rearing young, roving through the underbrush, climbing the rocks, wading solitary marshes, tracing the banks of the lakes and streams! Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming,--a cloud of witnesses telling Nature's joy. The plants are as busy as the animals, every cell in a swirl of enjoyment, humming like a hive, singing the old new song of creation."

"The shocks and out-bursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, storms, the pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in plants, each and all tell the orderly love-beats of Nature's heart."

Fanfiction and Originality

Merry K's great post on fanfiction over at Beth Spera in Domino got me to thinking about the modern view of fanfiction as opposed to original, published fiction. I've always seen fanfiction as inferior to "original" fiction, on principle, but the more I read the less I am inclined to think so. I confess, most of the fanfiction I find is of poor quality (am I just looking in the wrong places?), but I think this is due more to our culture's perception of fanfiction than something inherent in the genre. Nowadays we esteem originality so much that anything derivative is automatically considered poorer work: our copyright laws even prohibit the publishing of most derivative work. But this hasn't always been the case. In the Middle Ages, "originality" as we think of it was unheard of: the structure of their mythical universe was already in place, and all the great works--the Canterbury Tales, the Inferno, Paradise Lost, even Shakespeare's plays--were stories told within that universe. Classics such as the Iliad and the Aeneid were part of the accepted history of the universe, and historians like Geoffrey of Monmouth made it a point to show how their histories were connected with these earlier stories--to prove, in other words, that they were writing a sequel and not merely making up something new. The very fact that their work was "fanfiction", something derived from a great work rather than the invention of a single mind, gave it a higher status in the eyes of both author and reader. Of course it was still possible to write an awful book, but then the quality of a book doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether it's original or derivative.

And just to prove that I'm working from authority and not making up something original, I'll end with two quotes. First from Ezra Pound (whom I don't care for generally): "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."--But no poet makes something completely new. And then from C.S. Lewis, from his book The Discarded Image, which is all about the Medieval worldview. I've just read it, can you tell?

"I doubt if [the Medieval authors] would have understood our demand for originality or valued those works in their own age which were original any more on that account. If you had asked Layamon or Chaucer 'Why do you not make up a brand-new story of your own?' I think they might have replied (in effect) 'Surely we are not yet reduced to that?' Spin something out of one's own head when the world teems with so many noble deeds, wholesome examples, pitiful tragedies, strange adventures, and merry jests which have never yet been set forth quite so well as they deserve? The originality which we regard as a sign of wealth might have seemed to them a confession of poverty."

Book 7 (minor spoilers)

I've been thinking about the book for a few days now. Frankly, I miss Hogwarts; the seventh book spends very little time at the school and it has a different feel because of it. But it was a satisfying ending to the series; often unexpected (for me, at least), but very satisfying. All the subplots, even some themes and characters that had been dropped--and left, I thought--in previous books were picked up and concluded in this one. The main characters have matured a lot; I love how Neville in particular has grown. (His character arc reminds me of Eustace Scrubb's, but that's another story...) We do lose some characters, too; I won't say which; but between that and the many other manifestations of the love the characters have for one other, this a moving story to read. I have only ever cried once while reading a book, but this one had me watery-eyed in a couple spots. The climax was all that could be wished for, and yet (as in Lord of the Rings) the fate of the world hangs not on might nor power, but on the little things too small for the Dark Lord to notice. (MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: Highlight to read, but only if you've read the book!) Or rather on the one great thing, Love. Harry sacrifices himself, not for the cause, but for the sake of his friends; Hogwarts and the Order risk open war, not in an attempt to defeat Voldemort themselves, but simply because Harry needs their help; Snape, we finally learn, was redeemed because of his love for one person (or perhaps two, as I think we may include Dumbledore); Narcissa deceives her master and saves Harry at the crucial point because of her love for her son; Neville kills Nagini, not because he knows why it must be done, but because he trusts Harry; Dobby gives his life, not because he hates the Dark Lord's rule, but because he loves Harry.
(You can read now.)

So there are my thoughts upon first reading. It's not my favorite book in the series, but I think it was as near a perfect ending as could be. I still have some questions and some things I want to give more attention to, but that can only mean one thing.

Reread!

Listen to Poetry

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/

I found this other site http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/poets/toc.html which includes a reading of Wordsworth's Intimation of Immortality, but the reader doesn't have a British accent.