Joy Evangelion wrote:You knock the three books out during a slow work week in first grade and then write some single spaced fifty page book reports on them or something?
nahhh that was the first and only time I read them, didn't mean to be misleading
Anyway, I finally finished the Faerie Queene. This shit was LONG at 1050 pages, and Spenser planned for 6 more books based on 6 more virtues (though he based them on Aristotle's and I don't think there were 12...). Sheer quantity of content prevents me from going into too much detail, but each book was filled with chivalric episodes packed to the brim with references to greek and roman antiquity, each allegorical to part of Elizabeth I's reign (thank you footnotes). I'm into that stuff but even if you aren't Spenserian stanzas are really fun to read, and once you read a few they get you into a rhthym from which it is hard to extricate yourself. The thing ends with two sectiosn called the Mutabilitie Cantos; whether they were intended as an ending or not I don't know but the content is more philosophical than any of the preceding books and so is lofty enough to serve as a decent conclusion. They're also capped of by two really evocative stanzas:
When I bethinke me on that speech whyleare,
Of Mutability, and well it way:
Me seemes, that though she all vnworthy were
Of the Heav'ns Rule ; yet very sooth to say,
In all things else she beares the greatest sway.
Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle,
And loue of things so vaine to cast away;
Whose flowring pride, so fading and so fickle,
Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle.
Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd,
Of that same time when no more Change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things firmely stayd
Vpon the pillours of Eternity,
That is contrayr to Mutabilitie:
For, all that moueth, doth in Change delight:
But thence-forth all shall rest eternally
With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:
O thou great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight.
Currently reading Acts of Worship (some really good short stories by Mishima in here covering a wide range of topics, would strongly recommend at least reading
Sword and
Cigarette) and a collection of Melville's shorter fiction that I got about 1/3 of the way through a few months back and never completed. I'm in the middle of The Encantadas and there's some really wonderful imagery even by Melville's standards.
