She talks to wolves...

I am easily delighted by satirical dictionaries of all types*, from Gustave Flaubert's Dictionnaire des idées reçues** (The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas) to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary.

While I was reading David Duff's Romance and Revolution: Shelley and the Politics of a Genre, I stumbled across the following quoted material:

Enquiry, -- according to the modern construction, signifies Sedition. In the old English dictionary, it was held a CONSTITUTIONAL PRIVILEGE, derived from MAGNA CHARTA and the BILL OF RIGHTS, for the people to enquire into the conduct of Kings or Ministers, and into the errors of their government; but all things now seem in a state of revolution, and, according to Mr. Pitt's new code, which is implicitly adopted by all the legal courts through the three kingdoms, enquiry implies disloyalty, sedition, or treason, and they who are audacious enough to claim this ancient obsolete privilege, expose themselves to the penalties of fine, pillory, or imprisonment, and if in Scotland, of transportation for fourteen years to BOTANY BAY. The people, however, begin to murmur at the revolution that the word has undergone, and to think that this is not altogether a FREE country.

This was quoted from Charles Pigott's Political Dictionary published in 1795. And it's completely awesome-- an entirely undiscovered*** (by me, previously) book of satire that I'm totally justified in tracking down a copy of because it pertains to the literary eras I'm studying this semester. It also represents the political and cultural atmosphere that helped build up to the Victorian era, which may very well be the area of specialization I'm going into (post on that at a later date).

Also, you know, hooray satire! Boo reactionary government in Britain following in the wake of the French Revolution.


* Well, really, satire in all forms. It's one of my favorite things ever, satire.

** Link will take you to the French edition; I'm sorry, I couldn't find an English translation online. (Admittedly, I didn't look for very long. I have to write this academic book review!)

*** Speaking of undiscovered satirical dictionaries, in the course of writing this post I found out about Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's The Meaning of Liff and am now excited over something completely different.


† Subject line brought to you by Red Stripe. (This extra footnote brought to you because I just really wanted to use the little dagger graphic.)

I just finished reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Surprisingly for only the third time in my life, considering how much I love Hurston's writing and this story in particular.

Although I think this book contains some Truths, I must admit it's a woman's book. That and the fact that a lot of the book is in a specific dialect seems to be preventing my students (mostly male) from reading it and reading it well. Except for the smart girl. She's done just fine.

Sigh. Anyway, while I go off and make the final quiz, allow me to leave you with some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."

"So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment."

"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches."

"She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid."

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

"She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman."

"They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."

"Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."

"Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves."

"The light in her hand was like a spark of sun-stuff washing her face in fire."

"She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."