“Farewell Miss Julie Logan: A Wintry Tale”, by J.M. Barrie
Written in diary form & telling of an uncanny romance in a remote winter glen, “Farewell Miss Julie Logan” evokes J.M. Barrie’s fascination with longing, death & loss in one of the most unnerving & tenacious examples of #Gothic fiction ever to come from #Scotland
Listen to the story online, courtesy of Romancing the Gothic:
“In story after story, epicene young men, difficult children, or wild beasts set out to shake up the stifling complacency around them.”
Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916) – Saki – was born #OTD, 18 Dec, in Akyab (now Sittwe), in Myanmar. Although born in the Raj & raised in England, his parents were Scots & he considered himself to be Scottish, too. Fatema Ahmed looks at his fierce, funny, & wicked fiction
“Children in Saki are often victors in the battle against authority; his stories salute their boldness but have no truck with sentiment. The children are usually nasty, brutish and short, and loved for it.”
—Katherine Rundell on #Saki, for the London Review of Books
Saki’s “Tobermory”, “The Boar-Pig”, “The Lumber Room”, & many others are hilarious (as is “Esmé”, if you don’t mind all the blood…). But his horrifying winter tale “The Interlopers” is a work of #Gothic art, worthy of the tradition of James Hogg & #RobertLouisStevenson
At the University of Milan we are seeking a research fellow to participate in the “MetaLing Corpus: Creating a corpus of English linguistics metalanguage from the 16th to the 18th century” project: https://expertise.unimi.it/resource/project/PRIN202223AANDR%5F01
Through archival research and corpus compilation, the project aims to assess the genres and text-types involved in the circulation of linguistic knowledge, and to throw light onto unconventional texts and voices besides the major works and figures on which scholarship has naturally concentrated. The project is divided into three phases 1) collection of texts, 2) building the corpus, 3) lexical extraction and database creation, combining human and computational tools. The core part of our study will involve the analysis of the terminology, discursive strategies and descriptive metaphors used to describe and compare languages in English, in diachronic perspective.
The successful applicant will work with the project team to identify relevant primary materials and build an electronic corpus of texts. The post is for someone with a postgraduate degree in Linguistics, English, Computer Science or related discipline. Candidates may or may not have a doctorate at the time of application. The researcher will have the opportunity to contribute to the project database, work in archives, and develop academic writing in individual and joint papers.
Post: Postdoctoral research fellow, Early stage researcher or 0-4 yrs (Post graduate)
Location: Milan (on-site)
Duration: 18 months, fixed-term/contract
Salary: EUR 21,888 per annum
Closes: 4th January 2024
Interview date: 16th January 2024
We'd appreciate if you boost or forward to any potentially interested candidates. In case of questions or difficulties with understanding Italian (language or bureaucracy), do get in touch with me or the provided contacts. Further details in the attached file.
Book 56, 2023: am Homeless if this is not my Home by Lorrie Moore. I love Lorrie Moore’s work; her short stories especially. But this novella about a man driving across America with the ghost/corpse of his ex-lover just didn’t resonate with me at all. I liked some lines, and the final chapter was good but nope, not for me. And that’s fine. Has anyone else read it, and liked it? @bookstadon#novels#Reading#literature
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." I wrote a piece about Isaiah Berlin's "The Hedgehog and the Fox," how he divides up thinkers and writers, and the effects of dichotomies like these https://bryankam.com/d2#literature#philosophy@philosophy@literature
Today in Writing History December 15, 1905: The Pushkin House was established in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to preserve the cultural heritage of Alexander Pushkin, (6/6/1799–2/10/1837). Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He was influenced by Enlightenment writers and thinkers, like Diderot and Voltaire. He spoke out in support of social reform, and wrote poems, like “Ode to Liberty,” leading to the government exiling him from the capital. In 1920 the Pushkin House was renamed the Institute of New Russian Literature, with the main objective of preparing authoritative "academic" editions of works by Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and others.
CFP: “Scotland 30 years after Trainspotting”
Études écossaises, UGA éditions, Université Grenoble Alpes
This issue of Études écossaises seeks to take TRAINSPOTTING’s unique depiction of Scottish society as the starting point for an
investigation into the nature of contemporary Scottish life & how it has evolved between 1993 & 2023. Deadline for abstracts: 1 March 2024
“The effect of the piece, read all at once, is exhilarating. It’s quite like reading a book of interviews with V. S. Naipaul. Three quarters of the world’s literature is dismissed with mandarin contempt, and yet the unmistakable love of good writing is everywhere on display.”
Anthony Madrid on the rigmarole William Drummond of Hawthornden produced, of Ben Jonson’s conversations
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. You are a pilot who crash lands in a desert, where you meet an alien child who lives on his own asteroid and dispenses cryptic stories about his travels on earth and elsewhere. 3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
George MacDonald (1824–1905) was born #OTD, 10 Dec. Seen by many as the forefather of modern #fantasy fiction, he was a huge influence on later writers including JRR #Tolkien & #CSLewis
“The sheer imaginative force of LILITH makes nonsense of our everyday notions of ‘good writing’. MacDonald aims not to make us read, but to make us dream”
David Melville Wingrove on LILITH, MacDonald’s last – & very strange – major work
RETHINKING GEORGE MACDONALD: 16 essays on MacDonald’s place in the #Victorian literary scene, his engagement with the works of his contemporaries, & his interest in the social, political, & theological movements of his age – also online via Project MUSE
"To trace the unfamiliar to the familiar... is to understand."
Incredible Adventures
Algernon Henry Blackwood British writer of tales of mystery and the supernatural died #OTD in 1951. His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. via @wikipedia
Portuguese journalist and author Almeida Garrett died #OTD in 1854. In 1843, he published Romanceiro e Cancioneiro Geral; two years later, he wrote the first volume of his historical novel O Arco de Santana. This latest signified a change in Garrett's style, leading to a more complex and subjective prose with which he experimented at length in Viagens na Minha Terra. via @wikipedia
"Quem disse à estrela o caminho
Que ela há de seguir no céu?
A fabricar o seu ninho
Como é que a ave aprendeu?
Quem diz à planta — 'Floresce!' —
E ao mudo verme que tece
Sua mortalha de seda
Os fios quem lhos enreda?
[...]".
"Who told the star the way
That it should follow in the sky?
To make its nest
How did the bird learn?
Who tells the plant - 'Bloom! -
And to the mute worm that weaves
Its shroud of silk
Who entangles the threads?
[...]".
"This interdisciplinary study analyses the connections between literary Modernism and right-wing ideology. Moreover, it is the first academic study to explore the reception of these Modernist authors by today's far right, seeking to understand in what ways they use strategic readings of Modernist texts to legitimise right-wing ideology."