This week’s reading assignment focuses on diaries, reflections, letters, and biographies with a strong personal contribution of the author.
John Bunyan was not to my taste at all, but this is probably just because my personal preferences don’t lie in spiritual literature. Didn’t like his wailing about his spiritual calling and excursions among the poor.
Samual Pepys is a household name. I remember reading his diary entry on the fire in London in 1666 at school and listening to a part of it on the ‘English Literature’ Audio CD.
Montagu’s letters are interesting since she is writing from abroad and tell us something about how an English women of the 18th century experienced other European countries.
Boswell, Johnson, Piozzi and Burney formed the Streatham circle centerd around Samual Johnson. Boswell’s biography of Johnson is very subjective and Piozzi’s record of the friendship with Johnson can also be considered as a kind of bio, but of course it bears a strong personal print as well. Today an author would rather try to avoid that and want to be – or at least appear – objective. What also strikes me as different from our modern times are the extensive journals and very long and sophisticated letters. Does anyone still write letters like this? Or emails? We tend to be rather short.
September 18, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I hope that in class we will pick up on some of your ideas, in your last paragraph, about how these texts compare with what we expect contemporary biography etc. to accomplish.