To Hell Without the Dignity of a Handbasket, Even

A mere fragment of a sentence, yet I could criticize it for days. It's from a review of some contemporary poetry that, for all I know, may be very good. But this twelve-word clause is corrigible out of all proportion to its length! What is uncanny about the extruded fragment is that it contrives to be patronizing toward Pliny while, at the same time, overrating him. You couldn't have done this if you knew what you were doing -- to quote a great poet. 1. Patronizing. Why "wonderfully"? Is it matter for surprise that Pliny should be inquisitive and incisive? Is the implication that inquiry and incision are recent inventions? Or is it (rather) implied that they are traits seldom met with in classic literature? -- or seldom met with among the Romans specifically? I fear I'm being reassured that Pliny, Rome, and the ancient world aren't as boring as it is presumed I expect them to be. And hereby a man may learn that it's not only Pliny the Elder who is bein...

Narrative Drift in Oral Culture and Scripted Theatre * Copyright © 2007 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in NEW LITERARY HISTORY, Volume 37, Issue 4 (2006): 725–38. 1. Jack Students of British popular culture have often collected valuable evidence in North America. Broadly speaking, there are two attitudes that may be taken toward such a provenance. On the one hand, the American environment may be seen as a preservative: the Appalachian mountains, for example, are isolated enough that a transplanted folk-tale gathered there may be seen as more authentic than if it had been gathered in Britain: insulated from agents of change in its place of origin, the tale is as if sealed in a time capsule; it has not had to adapt to the altering circumstances of industrial society, mass culture, and so forth. Another line of thinking, however, would say that the American environment, be it never so “isolated,” is distant — in space and in culture — from the British Is...