Non Homerus, sed Euripides!

[timeripple]

We’re reading Charlotte Mary Yonge’s The Daisy Chain in my Victorian children’s lit class, and I... kind of love it. I’m probably the only person in class who thinks the parts where they talk about Greek are the best bits. (And they talk about Greek a lot. XD) One of the characters has to declaim Priam's speech to Achilles during an examination. Of course I dug out Benner’s Iliad and tried to recite it myself. Scansion fail!

Oh, Greek. I better hurry up and write my weekly theme so I can translate that speech so I can talk about it in class and how it's relevent to the novel. I could just look up a translation, I guess, but it’s more... fun this way?

Comments

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

Huh. I've never heard of it. Clearly need to brush up on my classic kid's lit. But perhaps it won't be as fun without the Greek knowledge base.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

It's not her most famous novel, but I believe it was a bestseller back in the day. Dense as it is, I'm enjoying it. And they don't talk about Greek that much. ;)

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

Speaking of classic kid's lit, I still do want to read your paper on pseudo-sibling romance in Five Little Peppers, Jack and Jill, and The Wide, Wide World, if I may... but I haven't finished the latter yet. It's on my shelf waiting for me to get past my irritation with the first little bit. (My mother had a spare copy lying around that she was happy to loan me open-endedly last Christmas. Perhaps I would have read it by now if the loan had been a little less open-ended.)

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Oh, do you really? I'd be delighted to send it to you. I actually spend most of it talking about An Old-Fashioned Girl in the context of Little Women, but the first few pages are about The Wide, Wide World and The Lamplighter. (Didn't have time for Five Little Peppers or Jack and Jill.) It's kind of muddly at first because I was trying to contextualize the pseudosibling romance bit with my hypothesis about why they even need pseudosiblings, but that really needed a longer paper too.

And yes, the Wide, Wide World is completely infuriating. No, I'm sorry to say she does cry every other page all the way to the end. Does your mother's copy include the not-originally-published last chapter?