Recent reading
Feb. 16th, 2020 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaStatus of fic writing: at 19,500 words. \o/
Masculinity, Militarism and Eighteenth-Century Culture, 1689-1815, by Julia Bannister (2018)
Well hey, who knew I would find my court-martial information in a gender studies book? Admittedly not information on procedure, but the book analyzes a couple of mid-18th-century court-martials that were widely discussed in public, in the context of different models of masculinity for military men. Definitely useful as background material for fic.
I am slowly making my way through a concurrent re-read of Flight of the Heron and Christopher Duffy's The '45, which is an extremely readable and detailed 600-page brick about the war in which Flight of the Heron is set. I'm switching between them so I can compare events in the war, and I am so impressed with D K Broster's research and the depth of the background in the book. But then, her Wikipedia entry says that she was one of the first women to study history at Oxford at the end of the 19th century, and later worked as secretary to a professor of history.
One thing that struck me is how Keith's aversion to the Highlands in the beginning of FotH, which I had thought to be kind of exaggerated, is actually very historically reasonable. Did mid-18th-century Englishmen really think mountains were ugly? Turns out they did. Duffy quotes a contemporary source saying about the Scottish Highlands: "an eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility," where the mountains, "always horrid to behold, looked positively diseased when the heather was in bloom." I am boggled at how aesthetics change! It seems to be related to Age of Reason attitudes to landscapes as primarily seen as beautiful if they were cultivated, tamed, and useful to people (useful in a certain civilized way, I guess, since a lot of people made their living by transhumance with cattle and sheep in the Highlands). A far cry from the later Romantic period, anyway.
Oh, and also I read one non-FotH-related book, because my reservation on it came in at the library.
Den rödaste rosen slår ut, by Liv Strömqvist (2019) [The Reddest Rose Blossoms]
The author is a well-known Swedish feminist and this is the latest in her series of non-fiction graphic novels exploring romantic relationships and gender roles. She's always worth reading.
Masculinity, Militarism and Eighteenth-Century Culture, 1689-1815, by Julia Bannister (2018)
Well hey, who knew I would find my court-martial information in a gender studies book? Admittedly not information on procedure, but the book analyzes a couple of mid-18th-century court-martials that were widely discussed in public, in the context of different models of masculinity for military men. Definitely useful as background material for fic.
I am slowly making my way through a concurrent re-read of Flight of the Heron and Christopher Duffy's The '45, which is an extremely readable and detailed 600-page brick about the war in which Flight of the Heron is set. I'm switching between them so I can compare events in the war, and I am so impressed with D K Broster's research and the depth of the background in the book. But then, her Wikipedia entry says that she was one of the first women to study history at Oxford at the end of the 19th century, and later worked as secretary to a professor of history.
One thing that struck me is how Keith's aversion to the Highlands in the beginning of FotH, which I had thought to be kind of exaggerated, is actually very historically reasonable. Did mid-18th-century Englishmen really think mountains were ugly? Turns out they did. Duffy quotes a contemporary source saying about the Scottish Highlands: "an eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility," where the mountains, "always horrid to behold, looked positively diseased when the heather was in bloom." I am boggled at how aesthetics change! It seems to be related to Age of Reason attitudes to landscapes as primarily seen as beautiful if they were cultivated, tamed, and useful to people (useful in a certain civilized way, I guess, since a lot of people made their living by transhumance with cattle and sheep in the Highlands). A far cry from the later Romantic period, anyway.
Oh, and also I read one non-FotH-related book, because my reservation on it came in at the library.
Den rödaste rosen slår ut, by Liv Strömqvist (2019) [The Reddest Rose Blossoms]
The author is a well-known Swedish feminist and this is the latest in her series of non-fiction graphic novels exploring romantic relationships and gender roles. She's always worth reading.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-03-05 07:16 pm (UTC)Keith was a much more unusual name at the time of writing the book. It was a Scottish surname that became popular as an English first name in the 1940s-60s or so -- the Baby Boomer generation, like my dad -- and has since dropped like a rock, becoming desperately uncool, as briefly-popular names do. Broster's original readers would have had quite a different perception of it than modern Brits. (Probably more info than you needed, sorry, but I'm fascinated by names and the way they rise in and out of fashion!)
And due South's use of the name Margaret Thatcher was a really poor choice IMO. Obviously dS has lots of joke names, but that one's not funny, not for anyone who grew up under Thatcherism and Section 28. I doubt they put a lot of thought into it, but she might as well be called Beelzebub.
Sorry to hear about the cold. I'm looking forward to the podfic, once you're better!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-03-05 08:10 pm (UTC)Me and my sister were both given names which were unusual at the time, and sounded kind of like "old lady" names. But mine became very popular and common after that, while my sister's name remains an "old lady" name.
Yeah, I agree that Margaret Thatcher was in very poor taste. : / Although since I'm not British, it's of course not as close to home for me. *searches internet for Section 28* ...oh, I had no idea. : ((