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legend-collection · 3 years ago

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Aibell

Aibell (sometimes Aoibheall (modern Irish spelling), also anglicised as Aeval) was the guardian spirit of the Dál gCais, the Dalcassians or Ó Bríen clan. She was the ruler of a sídhe in north Munster, and her dwelling place was Craig Liath, the grey rock, a hill overlooking the Shannon about two miles north of Killaloe. Aibell also had a lover (called Dubhlainn Ua Artigan) and a magic harp (of which it was said "[w]hoever heard its music did not live long afterwards").

The name Aoibhell may come from Gaelic aoibh, meaning "beauty" (or aoibhinn "beautiful"). Alternatively, as a theonym it could be derived from Proto-Celtic *Oibel-ā, literally "burning fire", which may have been a byword for the notion of "ardour"; the Romano-British equivalent of this Proto-Celtic theonym is likely to have been *Oebla. A variant name for the character is Áebinn.

Creation by Jill Willich

In Seán Ó Seanacháin's song An Buachaill Caol Dubh, Aoibheal appears to the "Dark Slender Boy" (representing alcohol addiction) and his friend the drinker. In the last verse Seanacháin expands by saying that, when Aoibheal met the two of them walking the road, she promised the lad a hundred men if he would let go of the poet. The lad replied that he was steadfast and true and would not desert his friends until they died. Thus Seán acknowledges his addiction will never disappear.

Lady Gregory

AND Aoibhell, another woman of the Sidhe, made her dwelling-place in Craig Liath, and at the time of the battle of Cluantarbh she set her love on a young man of Munster, Dubhlaing ua Artigan, that had been sent away in disgrace by the King of Ireland. But before the battle he came back to join with Murchadh, the king's son, and to fight for the Gael. And Aoibhell came to stop him; and when he would not stop with her she put a Druid covering about him, the way no one could see him. And he went where Murchadh was fighting, and he made a great attack on the enemies of Ireland, and struck them down on every side.

And Murchadh looked around him, and he said: "It seems to me I hear the sound of the blows of Dubhlaing ua Artigan, but I do not see himself." Then Dubhlaing threw off the Druid covering that was about him, and he said: 'I will not keep this covering upon me when you cannot see me through it. And come now across the plain to where Aoibbell is," he said, "for she can give us news of the battle." So they went where she was, and she bade them both to quit the battle, for they would lose their lives in it. But Murchadh said to her, "I will tell you a little true story," he said; "that fear for my own body will never make me change my face. And if we fall," he said, "the strangers will fall with us; and it is many a man will fall by my own hand, and the Gael will be sharing their strong places." "Stop with me, Dubhlaing," she said then, "and you will have two hundred years of happy life with myself." "I will not give up Murchadh," he said, "or my own good name, for silver or gold."

And there was anger on Aoibhell when he said that, and she said: "Murchadh will fall, and you yourself will fall, and your proud blood will be on the plain tomorrow." And they went back into the battle, and got their death there. And it was Aoibhell gave a golden harp to the son of Meardha the time he was getting his learning at the school of the Sidhe in Connacht and that he heard his father had got his death by the King of Lochlann. And whoever heard the playing of that harp would not live long after it. And Meardha's son went where the three sons of the King of Lochlann were, and played on his harp for them, and they died. It was that harp Cuchulain heard the time his enemies were gathering against him at Muirthemne, and he knew by it that his life was near its end.

Aoibheal also features prominently in the 18th-century comic poem Cúirt An Mheán Oíche by Brian Merriman. The poem begins by using the conventions of the Aisling, or vision poem, in which the poet is out walking when he has a vision of a woman from the other world. Typically, this woman is Ireland and the poem will lament her lot and/or call on her 'sons' to rebel against foreign tyranny. In Merriman's hands, the convention is made to take a satirical and deeply ironic twist.

In the opening section of the poem, a hideous female giant appears to the poet and drags him kicking and screaming to the court of Queen Aoibheal of the Fairies. On the way to the ruined monastery at Moinmoy, the messenger explains that the Queen, disgusted by the twin corruptions of Anglo-Irish landlords and English Law, has taken the dispensing of justice upon herself. There follows a traditional court case under the Brehon law form of a three-part debate.

In the first part, a young woman calls on Aoibheal declares her case against the young men of Ireland for their refusal to marry. She complains that, despite increasingly desperate attempts to capture a husband via intensive flirtation at hurling matches, wakes, and pattern days, the young men insist on ignoring her in favour of late marriages to much older women. The young woman further bewails the contempt with which she is treated by the married women of the village.

She is answered by an old man who first denounces the wanton promiscuity of young women in general, suggesting that the young woman who spoke before was conceived by a Tinker under a cart. He vividly describes the infidelity of his own young wife. He declares his humiliation at finding her already pregnant on their wedding night and the gossip which has surrounded the "premature" birth of "his" son ever since. He disgustedly attacks the dissolute lifestyles of young women in general. Then, however, he declares that there is nothing wrong with his illegitimate children and denounces marriage as "out of date." He demands that the Queen outlaw it altogether and replace it with a system of free love.

The young woman, however, is infuriated by the old' man's words and is barely restrained from physically attacking him. She mocks his impotent failure to fulfill his marital duties with his young wife, who was a homeless beggar who married him to avoid starvation. The young woman then argues that if his wife has taken a lover, she well deserves one. The young woman then calls for the abolition of priestly celibacy, alleging that priests would otherwise make wonderful husbands and fathers. In the meantime, however, she will keep trying to attract an older man in hopes that her unmarried humiliation will finally end.

Finally, in the judgement section Queen Aoibheal rules that all laymen must marry before the age of 21, on pain of corporal punishment at the hands of Ireland's women. She advises them to equally target the romantically indifferent, homosexuals, and skirt chasers who boast of the number of women they have used and discarded. Aoibheal tells them to be careful, however, not to leave any man unable to father children. She also states that abolishing priestly celibacy is something only the Vatican can do and counsels patience.

To the poet's horror, the younger woman angrily points him out as a 30-year-old bachelor and describes her many failed attempts to attract his interest in hopes of becoming his wife. She declares that he must be the first man to suffer the consequences of the new marriage law. As a crowd of infuriated women prepares to flog him into a quivering bowl of jelly, he awakens to find it was all a terrible nightmare.

#Aibell #ireland

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thewalkingsnapplecap · 5 years ago

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The Curious Case of Real Life Ornamental Garden Hermits

In modern times if you want to show off extreme wealth, you may purchase expensive sports cars, buy a private jet, wear flashy jewelry, or, as boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been known to do, travel around carrying suitcases filled with sometimes millions of dollars in cash. Such extravagant displays of wealth are a trademark of the boxer with Mayweather reportedly having a standing arrangement with his bank to have huge sums of money in cash periodically delivered to his palatial home with the primary purpose being to facilitate flaunting his fabulous wealth, instead of using a card like mere plebeians.

Going back a few centuries in Britain, a popular way to achieve a similar effect was to simply hire a random person to live on your property, with their job generally being to cease bathing or grooming in any way and otherwise spend their days sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing but looking like a stereotypical hermit, all for the enjoyment of guests.

While it isn't fully clear exactly how the idea of the so-called Ornamental Hermit came about, author of The Hermit in the Garden, Dr. Gordon Campbell of the University of Leicester speculates, "The idea of keeping an ornamental hermit probably began in Tivoli to the east of Rome when the Emperor Hadrian had a villa. In his Villa, he had a little pond and in the middle of the pond, he had a little house for one where... he could retreat from the horrors of running the Roman Empire."

What does any of this have to do with 18th century Britain? In the 16th century, the villa was excavated and this little villa was discovered. Pope Pius IV then decided he too should have a similar little building in the Vatican gardens to use as a retreat. This was subsequently built, called the Casina Pio IV, helping to set the idea in popular landscape architecture.

This finally brings us to the 18th century. Around this time, famed landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown, who designed nearly 200 parks, some of which are still around today, strongly pushed for getting rid of elaborately perfect, artificial looking gardens, and instead chose to design parks that looked as if the landscaping of the region was completely natural. Of course, everything was nonetheless still carefully planned out, with paths, streams, artificial lakes, and other landscaping carefully done to create an area that looked like something out of a classic painting.

As for structures, these included things like elaborate stone bridges and models of ancient temples, but also often including something much simpler- a hermitage style retreat. These could be proper buildings, but more commonly were things like hobbit-hole type underground homes. They also sometimes were made of stone, occasionally carefully constructed such that existing tree roots would appear to have grown around the stone, with moss placed to grow on it as well. Adding macabre elements was also common, such as using bones of animals as decoration, or even in some cases as floor or wall material.

Inside these structures would generally be placed various items like human skulls, books, hour glasses, etc. In the early going, some estate owners would actually use these structures as a retreat for themselves, to reconnect with nature and relax. But, eventually, somebody got the bright idea to take it a step further.

Instead of making it look like a hermit lived in the structure or using it as a retreat themselves, the estate owners started hiring actual people to live in their hermitages. These individuals would often be asked to dress like a stereotypical druid, though what the druids actually wore isn't precisely known. As noted, they would also sometimes be asked to grow long beards, allow their hair, toenails, and beard to grow indefinitely, etc. etc.

As you might imagine, finding someone interested in wiling away their years sitting around in squalor, and in some cases strictly forbidden from venturing into the outside world, wasn't exactly an easy thing, despite the fact that some land owners were offering a princely sum for an individual willing to do it.

For example, at Painshill Park, Charles Hamilton offered £700 (about a £1.2 million today) to anyone willing to live for seven years in the hermitage constructed in his garden. The specific ad Hamilton placed seeking such a hermit stated the person hired:

shall be provided with a Bible, optical glasses, a mat for his feet, a hassock for his pillow, an hourglass for timepiece, water for his beverage, and food from the house. He must wear a camlet robe, and never, under any circumstances, must he cut his hair, beard, or nails, stray beyond the limits of Mr. Hamilton's grounds, or exchange one word with the servant.

Unfortunately for Hamilton, after a mere few weeks of service, his first hired hermit was found hanging out at a nearby pub rather than sitting around contemplating his life.

In another case, one John Timbs of Lancashire offered 50 pounds per year to anyone willing to live in his underground hermitage. Not without creature comforts, however, this particular hobbit-hole apparently included a chamber organ, a bath, unlimited books of the hermit's request, and high quality food from Timbs' own table. Again, as was common, an interested applicant would have to agree not to cut "his hair, beard, toe-nails, or fingernails" for the duration.

In yet another case, the advert noted,

Wanted- Ornamental hermit to occupy natural cave dwelling under waterfall for seven years. The successful candidate shall be provided with Bible, water, spectacles, camlet robe, hourglass, and food from the house. No hair- nail, or beard trimming permitted. Sum offered 600 pounds.

There are also a few known instances of people attempting to volunteer their services as an Ornamental hermits, such as this ad that appeared in the January 11, 1810 edition of the London Courier:

A young man, who wishes to retire from the world and live as a hermit, in some convenient spot in England, is willing to engage with any nobleman or gentleman who may be desirous of having one. Any letter addressed to S. Laurence (post paid), to be left at Mr. Otton's No. 6 Coleman Lane, Plymouth, mentioning what gratuity will be given, and all other particulars, will be duly attended.

When a particular property owner could not find a suitable candidate, they often resorted to placing dummies or occasionally fully fledged automatons in the hermitages. For example, in the mid-18th century on Sir Samuel Hellier's Wodehouse estate's 18 acre gardens, he had a mechanical hermit constructed apparently capable of some form of human-like movement when manipulated by a hidden servant.

As for what the flesh and blood ornamental hermits would get up to, this varied based on the requirements of their benefactors. Some seem to have wished them to sit around and do nothing, speaking to no one, as in the aforementioned case of Charles Hamilton. Others only cared that they look the part, and otherwise when guests weren't around were free to socialize with other servants, take the occasional bath in the main house, etc. Still others would ask their hermits to entertain guests with poetry of their own making or otherwise impart the wisdom they were supposed to have acquired through spending their days mostly in solitude.

In at least one case, naturalist Gilbert White actually convinced his own brother, a minister by the name of Henry, to take up the post for a time on his estate in 1763, apparently much to the excitement of his various guests. For example, consider this account by one Catharine Battie upon meeting Henry,

in the middle of tea we had a visit from the old Hermit his appearance made me start he sat some with us & then went away after tea we went in to the Woods return’d to the Hermitage to see it by Lamp light it look’d sweetly indeed. Never shall I forget the happiness of this day ...

While this might seem an awful lot of excitement for meeting a quasi-homeless person, it should be remembered that this wasn't that far away from a time when walking was literally the world's most popular spectator sport. And we're not talking racing someone or walking around and seeing the sites. No- crowds of thousands would gather simply to watch someone walk around quite normally in circles for sometimes days on end, such as in 1809 when one Captain Robert Barclay Allardice famously walked 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours.

Going back to hermits, occasionally a given land owner would strike gold and find someone actually interested in living as a hermit. Arguably the two most famous of these being Stephen Duck and Father Francis.

As for Stephen, he was a poet who accepted a position as a resident hermit at Richmond Park, owned by King George II's wife, Queen Caroline. His hermitage was described in 1735 editions of The Gentleman's Magazine,

A subterranean building is by Her Majesty’s order carrying on in the Royal Gardens at Richmond which is to be called Merlin’s Cave adorned with Astronomical figures and characters. The figures Her Majesty has ordered for Merlin’s cave were placed there... 1. Merlin at a table with conjuring books and mathematical instruments, taken from the head of Mr Ernest, page to the Prince of Wales. 2. King Henry VIII’s Queen, and 3. Queen Elizabeth who came to Merlin for knowledge, the former from the face of Mrs Margaret Purcell and the latter from Miss Paget’s. 4. Minerva from Mrs Poyntz’s 5. Merlin’s secretary from Mr Kemp’s one of His Royal Highness the Duke’s gardeners. 6. A witch, from a tradesman’s wife at Richmond....

Her Majesty has ordered also a choice collection of English books to be placed therein; and appointed Mr Stephen Duck to be Cave and Library Keeper and his wife Necessary Woman there.

As for the outside, they state it was made of a

heap of stones, thrown into a very artful disorder, and curiously embellished with moss and shrubs, to represent rude nature. But I was strangely surpris’d to find the entrance of it barr’d with a range of costly gilt rails, which not only seemed to show an absurdity of taste, but created in me a melancholy reflection that luxury had found its way even into the Hermit’s Cell.

Fully embracing the role, Duck apparently grew a lengthy beard and otherwise spent his time reading books from the queen's library, writing poetry, and talking with the many hundreds of people each year who would seek him out at the elaborate hermitage. Unfortunately for Stephen, he ultimately had enough and decided in 1756 to kill himself by jumping into the River Thames and failing to bother to surface.

As for Father Francis, he lived in a cave at Hawkstone Park, belonging to one Sir Richard Hill. Francis spent his time contemplating life and attending to people who would come visit him to seek advice from him. Those wishing to see Father Francis, would, to quote a 1784 account,

pull a bell, and gain admittance. The hermit is generally in a sitting posture, with a table before him, on which is a skull, the emblem of mortality, an hour-glass, a book and a pair of spectacles. The venerable bare-footed Father, whose name is Francis (if awake) always rises up at the approach of strangers. He seems about 90 years of age, yet has all his sense to admiration. He is tolerably conversant, and far from being unpolite.

When Francis died after 14 years of service, a suitable replacement couldn't be found, so he was replaced by an automaton, with it noted by one visitor who saw the fake hermit:

The face is natural enough, the figure stiff and not well managed. The effect would be infinitely better if the door were placed at the angle of the wall and not opposite you. The passenger would then come upon St. [sic] Francis by surprise, whereas the ringing of the bell and door opening into a building quite dark within renders the effect less natural.

How the movement in this case was achieved was apparently to have a hidden worker manipulate the automaton each time someone entered to cause it to stand up. At that point, the worker would then manipulate the mouth using a string, while reading out various lines of poetry.

All good things must come to an end, however, and by the early 19th century, having an ornamental hermit on your estate was already falling out of fashion.

But let us never forget that the human drive to one-up our fellow denizens on our journey to the grave is so strong that for a brief period in history people actually took to, essentially, hiring a random squatter to come hang out on their property, just so they could show off the unkempt individual to guests.

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topmixtrends · 7 years ago

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IN “Passage to India,” the quintessentially American poet Walt Whitman celebrated the networks of commerce that were linking the world together at the end of the 19th century:

The earth to be spann’d, connected by net-work, The people to become brothers and sisters, The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together.

Aided by the invention of the steamship and the expansion of telegraphs and railways, the world economy entered a phase of globalization, celebrated here by Whitman in tones that prefigure the enthusiasm of today’s apostles of the information age. Maya Jasanoff quotes the poem at the beginning of her new book The Dawn Watch to illustrate the roots of globalization.

The races did not, however, live in the harmony envisioned by Whitman. During a period of relative peace within Europe and North America, the imperial powers extended their control of the rest of the world, and entered an age of empire that lasted until their competing desires for conquest exploded in World War I.

One novelist was in a unique position to chronicle 19th-century globalization and analyze the contradictions of imperialism. Born in what is today Ukraine, to Polish nationalists dedicated to the memory of a country that had been partitioned among three empires, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was welcomed into the world by a song from his patriot father:

Baby son, tell yourself, You are without land, without love, Without country, without people, While Poland — your Mother is in her grave.

More literally orphaned at the age of 11, and inspired by the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, Konrad Korzeniowski set out to sea before his 17th birthday. After personal disasters and (probably) a suicide attempt in Marseilles, he arrived in London when he was 20. There he joined the British Merchant Marine and sailed all over the world in service of British commerce.

Sixteen years later, as Joseph Conrad, he retired from the sea and began writing several of the greatest novels of modern English literature. In her brilliant book, Jasanoff explains how four of the best of these novels offer insights into globalization and imperialism that remain relevant today.

Jasanoff is an insightful and imaginative historian. Her earlier books told compelling stories of the lives of both powerful and obscure inhabitants of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, and won her many accolades (including the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize at Yale, where I teach). A genius of the archives, she brought together, in her award-winning Liberty’s Exiles, the stories of the losers of the American Revolution — the loyalists who left the newly founded United States and wound up in Canada, Jamaica, Sierra Leone, and throughout the empire. Likewise, her first book, Edge of Empire, introduces a rich cast of characters (British and French collectors of antiquities in India and Egypt), an empathetic understanding of how diverse communities interacted in the face of large historical forces, and a novelist’s skill at complex storytelling.

In The Dawn Watch, Jasanoff tells the life story of a novelist. The book comes in the form of a biography of Joseph Conrad, but in fact through Conrad she tells the story of a whole phase in world history. Conrad’s insights into his time have been recognized by earlier generations, notably by Hannah Arendt, who drew on his novels for her analysis of imperialism and racism in The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Recent generations of students and scholars may have been put off reading Conrad by his deliberate use of racist language and some of his stereotypical assumptions, which were famously exposed by Chinua Achebe. In reply to Achebe, Jasanoff quotes a young Barack Obama, who said of Heart of Darkness, “the book teaches me things […] [a]bout white people, I mean. See, the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world.” And many postcolonial novelists, notably V. S. Naipaul, have admired Conrad for his mostly unsentimental analysis of race relations and his boundless curiosity about life at the edges of empire.

Boundless curiosity is also an attribute of Maya Jasanoff. In her earlier books, she pursued obscure characters through even more obscure archives. In The Dawn Watch, she travels in the footsteps of a famous writer. Other biographers have followed Conrad’s trail, notably Norman Sherry, who in the mid-20th century was able to interview many immediate relatives of people who had known the novelist. Sherry uncovered some of the “originals” of Conrad’s fictional characters. Nearly a century after his death, such pathways have closed, but Jasanoff found ways of reliving Conrad’s experiences, notably by traveling on a container ship from Hong Kong to Southampton, England, along routes followed by Conrad during his lifetime, and traveling by boat along the Congo River, the setting of Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s most famous and notorious work.

Jasanoff’s travels have given her an empathy and an understanding for Conrad, and also for the victims of imperialism, that breathe on every page of this magnificent book. She sees his plots in relation to the basic drama of his life, but sees that drama as itself reflective of broader historical events:

Conrad’s fiction usually turns on the rare moments when a person gets to make a critical choice. These are the moments when you can cheat fate — or seal it. You can stay on board a sinking ship or jump into a lifeboat. You can hurt someone with the truth or comfort them with a lie. You can protect a treasure or steal it. You can blow something up or turn the plotters in.

You could spend your whole life in the place where you were raised or you could leave and never come back.

Although written later, Conrad’s The Secret Agent tells the story of a terrorist plot in London in the 1880s, the decade when Conrad became a naturalized British subject. Jasanoff shows how the novel, a sort of rewriting of Dickens, reveals much about Conrad’s own life as a young man in London. She also suggests the relevance of Conrad’s analysis of 19th-century terrorism for our own day.

Conrad’s most technically adventurous novel, Lord Jim, tells the story of a young British sailor who does not live up to the code of the sea and who winds up traveling further and further east in an effort to escape from Western civilization. The story is related in a series of interviews and flashbacks that would later inspire Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Having spent so much time on shipboard, Jasanoff recognizes the storytelling technique (which goes all the way back to The Odyssey): this is “a narrative composed in sailor’s time.”

Citizen Kane was not the only major American film that retold a Conrad story in a different medium and setting. In the 1970s, when Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now, a film about the fate of US imperialism in Southeast Asia, he drew on Conrad’s African novel, Heart of Darkness, for his plot. Jasanoff shows that Conrad became a writer in Africa, where he worked on his first novel about Southeast Asia, Almayer’s Folly.

Conrad had spent most of his time as a sailor in Southeast Asia, and he later chronicled the intersection of a vast array of cultures in books like Almayer’s Folly and Lord Jim. Jasanoff retells the story of Conrad’s travels in the region, but she offers a new interpretation, pointing out that the ship he served on as first mate was active in the (illegal) slave trade, and tracing the presence of slavery in his portrayal of Malay society.

This interchange between the two regions forms part of the history of empire and suggests how racism and globalization intertwined. Jasanoff investigates the moral ambiguities of Heart of Darkness with great sensitivity and awareness both of Conrad’s biases and of the horrors he witnessed. She shows how Conrad exposed the horrors of the supposed Belgian civilizing mission in the Congo, but also analyzes his reluctance to get involved in political crusades, which she attributes to his reaction against the suffering caused by his parents’ idealism.

Perhaps Conrad’s greatest novel, and his most demanding, is about a region he never saw at first hand. Nostromo describes a revolution in a fictional Latin American country, Costaguana. By reconstructing Conrad’s process of writing the novel, and drawing on contemporary press accounts of the 1903 revolution in Panama, Jasanoff shows how Conrad evolved his critique of US power in Latin America; she sees him as a clear-sighted observer of the future of the Western hemisphere, despite the fact that he had only seen the Latin American coast briefly from onboard ship. Costaguana was therefore fictional, invented, in a way that the settings of his earlier novels were not, but Conrad was a sufficiently perspicacious reader of the newspapers and of human nature to offer a telling interpretation of current events, as well as a rich invented world of great depth and sympathy.

Most novelists tell us about an event and then describe its consequences. Conrad often reversed this chronology: in his best novels, he describes impressions and experiences and then spends pages analyzing their causes. The result is a kind of epistemological disorientation in which the reader continually gathers clues almost as in a mystery novel. Unlike in most mystery novels, however, the answer to Conrad’s riddles is not a simple “whodunnit.” Often, as in Lord Jim, he describes experiences precisely to show that the mystery is insoluble. As Jasanoff puts it in speaking of Conrad’s English alter ego, the narrator of both Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, “Marlow was constantly seeing things but only later managing to figure out what they meant.”

In what is probably the best book ever written on Conrad, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, the critic Ian Watt influentially described this method as “delayed decoding.” Maya Jasanoff has taken Conrad’s technique as her own. Frequently she tells us a wonderful story out of Conrad’s life, lovingly reconstructed from his memoirs and letters, only to explain a few pages later: “Yet almost none of what Conrad said lines up with other records.” A critic and historian with the virtuosity of a latter-day Sherlock Holmes, Jasanoff then goes on to retell the story based on her own findings. Through it all, she shows how Conrad’s story is part of a broader history — the history of globalization and empire — world history. This is the best book on Conrad since Watt’s. Maya Jasanoff has given us a Conrad for the 21st century.

Pericles Lewis, professor of Comparative Literature and vice president for Global Strategy at Yale University, is the author or editor of several books on literary modernism and 20th-century editor for the Norton Anthology of World Literature.

The post You Are Without Land, Without Love appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2kPRx3x

#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

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