#jellicoe-lodge

[jellicoelodge]

Announcing Fireside Chats

Reading Works of Spiritual Comfort In Community

The Jellicoe Lodge returns! As the cold season descends upon us, Jellicoe Lodge is proud to host a seasonal reading of a spiritual classic meant to bring warmth, comfort, and light to our souls. This year, the Lodge will be posting sections of Julian of Norwich’s shorter showings in the Revelations of Divine Love. It is hoped that this will provide rich spiritual rest and encourage warm community. (Thanks to @iseult-blanchemains for the idea!)

Here’s how it works:

Each week a chapter of the shorter reading will be posted here on the Jellicoe Lodge site. Read along with us and feel free to repost, quote, ponder and discuss as you feel the need to; or simply read!

And always remember: All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.

[thebirdandhersong]

a recurring thought I had while listening to Susanna Clarke's The Wood at Midwinter: now this is a story I'd love to read with the Jellicoe Lodge girls

[fictionadventurer]

Contenders For the Title of Modern-Day Successors to Penny Dreadfuls:

Police procedurals

Harlequin romances

Hallmark movies

Marvel movies

Those endless chapter-book series for elementary school kids (Puppy Place and Color Fairies or whatever is actually popular with kids these days)

Those endless book series that show up in supermarkets and airports (Danielle Steele, James Patterson, etc.)

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Shout out to my old Hamlet essay that said the world of Hamlet fundamentally did not allow love, so all those who loved were destroyed, except for Horatio who transcended the narrative by in the final scene becoming the narrator and thus taking on the role of playwright rather than character, so escaping the loveless world by becoming bigger than it. Very galaxy brain.

[perhaps-mr-collins-has-a-cousin]

(Guys I’m reading Howl’s Moving Castle for the first time and I just gotta say: ???? ???? I’m about 2/3 of the way through and although I’m absolutely loving the off-the-wall bizarreness of it, I just keep waiting for something to make sense, for something to be explained, and instead weird things just keep on happening and arrgh my questions are piling up!!)

[apesoformythoughts]

My thoughts on “A Piece of Chalk” are, like the essay itself, a bit meandering. Instead of walking the English countryside, it’s GK’s mind that we get to explore, with a few GK classics: color-inspired digressions (gotta love his praise of brownness), rectifying modern impressions about earlier people/ideas, and showing us familiar ideas in a new light.

That “mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth” struck me as something that merits further reflection. Doesn’t it make sense, though? Precisely as people are drifting further away from nature (in their work, their leisure, their nourishment) , they speak more and more about it and about “connecting” to it; whereas beforehand it just was part of people’s lives, like the background. Reminds me of a friend from college whose family is from Greece. He made it a very conspicuous part of his personality once you got to know him—perhaps a bit too much, if you’d asked some of our friends. Meanwhile, for me, who had actually been born and raised in another country, my “nationality” was such an ingredient part of the background of my life, that I rarely brought it up: it was just there.

The last bit about Southern England being a piece of chalk makes me think of something a mutual once said or quoted: man has never loved anything he couldn’t get his arms around. If Southern England is a piece of chalk, GK can carry it around with him wherever he goes, letting it “explode” all over his brown paper. If I may be so bold, I think this perfectly captures GK’s way of loving: we can only love what’s vast by shrinking it. We can’t quite “love humanity,” we’ve got to love our specific and sometimes-annoying family and neighbors (*ahem*, Mann vs Cooper in Interstellar).

There’s always more that could be said. I hope to reflect more on the meaning and implications of virtue being “a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.” Then, of course, there’s GK as forerunner of Lovecraftian horror: “…blind old gods that man worshipped before the dawn of right…”

[francesderwent]

okay I’m sure that Lewis and Tolkien actually had words on this topic, but the dedication kind of makes it sound like Lewis was like “I’m struggling with this theological point, could you explain it to me?” and Tolkien was like “no, I’m gonna write a poem about it instead. it’s gonna rhyme. you’re welcome”

[itspileofgoodthings]

Wait are we reading the light princess???? Please allow me to contribute to the discussion by saying that the prince teaching the princess to walk at the end and her falling down repeatedly and then saying “is this gravity? I don’t like it” and him scooping her up into his arms and kissing her and saying “no no that’s not gravity this is” is, in fact, the height of romance.

[jellicoelodge]

CHAPTER III

"I desired to suffer with Him"

And when I was thirty years old and a half, God sent me a bodily sickness, in which I lay three days and three nights; and on the fourth night I took all my rites of Holy Church, and weened not to have lived till day. And after this I languored forth two days and two nights, and on the third night I weened oftentimes to have passed; and so weened they that were with me.

And being in youth as yet, I thought it great sorrow to die;—but for nothing that was in earth that meliked to live for, nor for no pain that I had fear of: for I trusted in God of His mercy. But it was to have lived that I might have loved God better, and longer time, that I might have the more knowing and loving of God in bliss of Heaven. For methought all the time that I had lived here so little and so short in regard of that endless bliss,—I thought [it was as] nothing. Wherefore I thought: Good Lord, may my living no longer be to Thy worship! And I understood by my reason and by my feeling of my pains that I should die; and I assented fully with all the will of my heart to be at God's will.

Thus I dured till day, and by then my body was dead from the middle downwards, as to my feeling. Then was I minded to be set upright, backward leaning, with help,—for to have more freedom of my heart to be at God's will, and thinking on God while my life would last.

My Curate was sent for to be at my ending, and by that time when he came I had set my eyes, and might not speak. He set the Cross before my face and said: I have brought thee the Image of thy Maker and Saviour: look thereupon and comfort thee therewith.

Methought I was well [as it was], for my eyes were set uprightward unto Heaven, where I trusted to come by the mercy of God; but nevertheless I assented to set my eyes on the face of the Crucifix, if I might; and so I did. For methought I might longer dure to look even-forth than right up.

After this my sight began to fail, and it was all dark about me in the chamber, as if it had been night, save in the Image of the Cross whereon I beheld a common light; and I wist not how. All that was away from the Cross was of horror to me, as if it had been greatly occupied by the fiends.

After this the upper part of my body began to die, so far forth that scarcely I had any feeling;—with shortness of breath. And then I weened in sooth to have passed.

And in this [moment] suddenly all my pain was taken from me, and I was as whole (and specially in the upper part of my body) as ever I was afore.

I marvelled at this sudden change; for methought it was a privy working of God, and not of nature. And yet by the feeling of this ease I trusted never the more to live; nor was the feeling of this ease any full ease unto me: for methought I had liefer have been delivered from this world.

Then came suddenly to my mind that I should desire the second wound of our Lord's gracious gift: that my body might be fulfilled with mind and feeling of His blessed Passion. For I would that His pains were my pains, with compassion and afterward longing to God. But in this I desired never bodily sight nor shewing of God, but compassion such as a kind soul might have with our Lord Jesus, that for love would be a mortal man: and therefore I desired to suffer with Him.

[thebirdandhersong]

Talked to a visiting prof today and was like 👀👀 someone I would LOVE to introduce to my book club girls* and .5 seconds later was like. Ah. He's married and has three kids. Nevermind

*I use this term loosely for the circle of female tumblr girlies i talk to on a daily basis because we technically are a sort of book club (Jellicoe Lodge and adjacent! and we are almost always reading the same book, i.e. the Bible) when I'm talking to irl people in canada

[fictionadventurer]

Where does fanfiction sit in relation to this penny dreadful category? It's another category of "lesser" fiction that leads to plenty of rants that attack or defend its literary qualities. It's something that many people admit to reading endlessly when they are unable to read "real" literature. It's seen as something that can corrupt the youth--and it often does contain shocking content that would not have been welcome in your typical penny dreadful.

Like a penny dreadful series, fanfiction is built upon the fact that people have an appetite for endless stories about familiar characters in stock situations. But penny dreadfuls tend to be plot driven--adventurers, detectives, and so on--with stories that begin and end in a single volume. Fanfiction is very character oriented, and its most popular genres--romance, hurt/comfort--can be almost or entirely plotless. A penny dreadful series, even though it might be similar to a million other characters and stories out there, still creates its own characters and world. Fanfiction creates stories that rely upon the familiar characters and world from another work.

Both penny dreadfuls and fanfiction are part of the collective storytelling tradition of humanity. An storyteller told endless tales of Robin Hood in the marketplace. An author wrote an endless series of detective thrillers for the Edwardian public. A fanfiction writer composes endless one-shots about the characters in their favorite television series. The oral storyteller told tales about characters who belonged to no one and everyone, characters who had been built up by centuries of retelling. The penny dreadful author wrote about characters who reminded one of those stock heroes of folktales, but became the property of a particular publishing company. The fanfiction author writes tales about specific characters that do belong to a particular story written by a particular company, but makes them a part of the public imagination. What I'm getting at is that they're not quite the same thing, but they come from the same tradition. "Literature is a luxury. Fiction is a necessity." Whatever their other differences, both types of fiction stem from the human desire to satisfy that need with whatever stories they can find.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

the idea that “woman is a divine creature” is more offensive than “the woman is the weaker creature” is so true and something I’ve literally never seen anyone talk about

[perhaps-mr-collins-has-a-cousin]

“The day will come when I go walking with my pretty wife. I always like things to be pretty. If I had to marry someone like that pock-marked Ofuku at the cracker shop, or the girl at the firewood store with the bulging forehead—no thank you. I’d send her home. No pockmarks for me!”

“How good of you to come then,” the shop wife laughed. “Haven’t you noticed my spots?”

“Oh, but you’re old. I’m talking about brides. Once you’re old, it doesn’t matter.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” the woman sighed.

This exchange is so funny to me, but what’s even funnier is how she immediately turns it back on Shota and embarrasses the living daylights out of him:

“Well, let’s see now. There’s Oroku at the flower shop. She has a pretty face. And Kii at the fruit stand. And who else? Who else, I wonder? Why the prettiest one is sitting right next to you. Shota, who will it be? Oroku with those eyes of hers? Kii and her lovely voice? Tell us who.”

“What are you talking about? Oroku, Kii—what’s so good about them?” Shota’s face turned scarlet, and he backed away from the light, into a corner.

“Does that mean it’s Midori, then?”

“How do I know?” He looked away, tapping out a song against the wall. “The water wheel goes round and round.”

Midori and the rest had begun another game of marbles. Her face was not flushed in the slightest.

[apesoformythoughts]

I’m rereading “The Wreck Of The Deutschland,” and Ron Hansen’s Exiles (which I read last year) keeps coming to mind, which makes it slightly difficult to “untangle” the experience of the poem from the experience of the novel. 

[francesderwent]

“Mythopoeia”: literally just the bits I liked best

“There is no firmament, only a void, unless a jewelled tent myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth. The heart of man is not compound of lies, but draws some wisdom from the only Wise, and still recalls him. Though now long estranged, man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.”

“Yes! 'wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat! Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream, or some things fair and others ugly deem? All wishes are not idle, nor in vain” 

“Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys, garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.”

[fictionadventurer]

Chesterton would, for the most part, approve of the larger-than-life good vs. evil storylines of Marvel movies, because they're drawn from the same types of mythological archetypes that he praises penny dreadfuls from drawing from. What he wouldn't approve of is the rampant capitalism that fuels the storytelling ethos behind the MCU.

This part of "A Utopia of Usurers" comes to mind:

I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement. I do not necessarily mean that there will be no good art; much of it might be, much of it already is, very good art. You may put it, if you please, in the form that there has been a vast improvement in advertisements. [...] But the improvement of advertisements is the degradation of artists. It is their degradation for this clear and vital reason: that the artist will work, not only to please the rich, but only to increase their riches; which is a considerable step lower.

A Marvel movie may be a decent story. It may even be art. But it's first and foremost an advertisement, meant to entice the audience to watch all the other movies and TV shows in the universe so they can get the full story. Even penny dreadfuls didn't sink so low--if you bought a book, you'd get a full story in each volume. You could read as many of the books as you desired, but you didn't have to read all of them. The MCU is increasingly requiring its viewers to watch more and more shows just to get the answers from this one. Art, perhaps, but a type meant to increase their riches.

To pull another quote, this part of "A Defense of Penny Dreadfuls" struck me:

A work of art can hardly be too short, for its climax is its merit. A story can never be too long, for its conclusion is merely to be deplored, like the last halfpenny or the last pipelight. And so, while the increase of the artistic conscience tends in more ambitious works to brevity and impressionism, voluminous industry still marks the producer of the true romantic trash. There was no end to the ballads of Robin Hood; there is no end to the volumes about Dick Deadshot and the Avenging Nine. These two heroes are deliberately conceived as immortal.

The MCU characters are drawn from immortal archetypes: the Noble Soldier, the Atoning Knight, the Warrior Prince. You could tell tons of stories with these types of characters. Robin Hood is immortal because he's the same in all his legends, no matter who's telling the story. The MCU's characters change from film to film, based on the director's whims. The characters don't stay the same like they do in penny dreadfuls, but they also don't develop the way they do in more literary works. The structure is too haphazard. You just get individual directors giving us unfamiliar characters in each installment.

@thatscarletflycatcher hits the nail on the head by saying that Marvel's problem is when it pretends to be high art. There's nothing wrong with a fun little story. But they try to pretend there's something noble and artistic about their storytelling model, as if increasing length makes it more complex, when really, a long series works best when it's less complex. Claiming to be something they're not, trying to create High Art on a penny dreadful philosophy, gives us something that doesn't quite work on either level.

Ok Jellicoe Lodgers…trying to decide how Chesterton would have us view Marvel in light of “In Defense of Penny Dreadfuls”