Comments for Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two

Comment on Mapping Trollope: Geographies of Power by ellenandjim

ellenandjim — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:26:32 +0000

I find that all fascinating. I still kind of wanted a shorter 1 or 2 sentence definition, but your discussion makes it understandable why you would find that difficult to do, and I never had any idea about Jane Austen only writing about southern England, although that makes perfect sense when I think about where she lived in Bath, Winchester, Chawton, and those are where the novels are often set, so to some extent she was writing regional fiction perhaps.

It interests me because I am a regional novelist, having set all my novels I’ve published to date in Upper Michigan and with only a few exceptions almost completely within the city of Marquette. Then I wrote a history of Marquette that includes maps and I connected all my places discussed in the book – laying it out like a walking tour map – largely to the places I wrote about in my novels, so I guess I’ve been mapping all along. I also edited a book for friend who writes children’s books where I suggested she put a map of where the characters lived and played (they are cats who live in a small neighborhood) in the end papers, which she did.

I suspect to some degree I was influenced in my mapping interests from
reading the Oz book as a child and having the Del Rey editions that included maps of Oz which people had created from reading Baum’s books (and in some cases having to deal with contradictions he made – the Winkies and Munchkinland countries are west or east of the Emerald City depending on how he described them. Anyway, thank you for the discussion. Now I can understand what mapping is and what are its benefits.

Tyler

Comment on Mapping Trollope: Geographies of Power by Jackie E. Nichols

Jackie E. Nichols — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:12:41 +0000

Writers such as Thackeray , Eliot and Collins admired and befriended Trollope, and George Eliot noted that she could not have embarked on so ambitious a project as Middlemarch without the precedent set by Trollope in his own novels of the fictional — yet thoroughly alive — county of Barsetshire.

Comment on Mapping Trollope: Geographies of Power by ellenandjim

ellenandjim — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:57:46 +0000

And it’s still a case he’s left out. It startling to read Moretti and not one mention of Trollope. Your remarks are helpful — for as you can see I’m thinking out “behind” the paper I’m going to write. Much that I mean to say is generally outlined here though.

Comment on Mapping Trollope: Geographies of Power by ellenandjim

ellenandjim — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:56:08 +0000

Catherine C. Analysing Trollope is always a challenge. He is working on many levels. I think of how Trollope inhabits his own landscape himself. Perhaps because of his travels and his love of walking. (Wasn’t his brother an obsessive walker?) Then there is the fact that in his work for the postal service he walked the routes with letter carriers, so he has a professional/efficiency driven perspective. Then as a writer who wrote to plan with a view to commercial success, there is the overlay of his “novel map.” Trollope was quite frank about his methods in his autobiography. Complex, very complex topic. It is no accident that the term of art “gene mapping” sprang into use. It seems to me as if everyone has created internal maps. They overlay one another in many dimensions.

Comment on Mapping Trollope: Geographies of Power by ellenandjim

ellenandjim — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:18:11 +0000

Catherine C: “That’s a wonderful insight, Ellen. Building imaginary worlds is a way of creating security. Many creative people do this, I think. Few have the discipline or the skill to share their worlds with others. And to make their “internal worlds” real. Trollope did.”

Comment on Mapping Trollope; or, Trollope as geographer by Mapping Trollope: Geographies of Power | Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two

Mapping Trollope: Geographies of Power | Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:49:51 +0000

[…] used the occasion to get down some of my thoughts towards my paper. One of the purposes of this blog is to work out thoughts towards scholarship projects. I wrote to […]

Comment on From the Scripts and Voice-over commentary: Downton Abbey by 5.17.13 … very random … let’s meditate on them … | Dennard's Clipping Service

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Comment on Ronald Colman & A Tale of Two Cities by Smith’s Ethelinde, into Volume 3 | Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two

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Comment on From the Scripts and Voice-over commentary: Downton Abbey by ellenandjim

ellenandjim — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:12:28 +0000

I was trying to suggest that reading the scripts & listening to voice-over and watching slowly snapping stills does deepen the experience.

When it comes to other forms of art, we are not worried if we turn to other things to deepen our experience.

Thank you for the encouragement on the Downton blogs. I have many postings but it is such work to make them into blogs. A whole bunch are in two Yahoo lists if you want to join either then you may use the search engine in the archives:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Trollope19thCStudies/?yguid=4116918

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WomenwritersThroughTheAges/?yguid=4116918

I’ve just opened a fourth list whose first half of name is about the Poldark novels and films but the second half shows that I hope if it grows we can discuss film adaptations — costume dramas there. It is so hard to get a group of intelligent people shamelessly — so to speak — together to discuss these wonderful kinds of films:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WinstonGrahamPoldark_HistoricalFiction/?yguid=392538906

Thus far I have one person who is a Graham fan and one like myself who just loves the form — as I think you do. I can’t subscribe people.

I’ll look for that Titanic series on Netflix. I do mean to re-watch Gosford Park, especially the voice-over.

Ellen

Comment on From the Scripts and Voice-over commentary: Downton Abbey by gina in al

gina in al — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:38:51 +0000

Very interesting post, you encourage me to go back and watch again. Have you watched the Julian Fellowes Titanic miniseries from 2012? It is in four parts and I found it rushed and not terribly deep. I had hoped it would be more like Downton in its depth but I did not bond with the characters although they were portrayed by good actors. There was just not enough time for the details to be properly brought out. It could have been so much more. Please do continue with the Downton posts. I loved Poldark back when it first came out on Masterpiece Theatre. There were so many wonderful productions, War and Peace with a young Anthony Hopkins (to me, the essential Pierre) and The First Churchills.