Modernist Fiction, Its Origins and Beyond... and other stuff

Please join us for a discussion and read through over the next year on Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, sometimes shortened to Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. The six volumes cover, from 98 to 1590, the peak of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and its emergence as the Roman state religion, the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and the fall of Byzantium, as well as discussions on the ruins of Ancient Rome.

Online Text Link:
https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/25717/pg25717-images.html#vol01

Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Empire-Volumes-Everymans-Library/dp/0307700763

To commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Thomas Mann's birth on June 6, 2025 please join us in a Seminar where we will read Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, the Magic Mountain, Joseph and his Brothers, and Doctor Faustus over the course of the next year or so. In this Meetup we will begin a read through of Joseph and His Brothers. Please read Parts 4-5 of Joseph in Egypt for this Meetup.

John E. Woods Translation Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-His-Brothers-Stories-Provider/dp/1400040019

H. T. Lowe-Porter Translation Amazon Purchase Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-his-brothers-Thomas-Mann/dp/B0007ILLVW

Please join us for a live reading and discussion of Walt Whitman's poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a long poem written by American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) as an elegy to President Abraham Lincoln. It was written in the summer of 1865 during a period of profound national mourning in the aftermath of the president's assassination on 14 April of that year.

The poem, written in free verse in 206 lines, uses many of the literary techniques associated with the pastoral elegy. Despite being an expression to the fallen president, Whitman neither mentions Lincoln by name nor discusses the circumstances of his death in the poem. Instead, he uses a series of rural and natural imagery including the symbols of the lilacs, a drooping star in the western sky (Venus), and the hermit thrush, and he employs the traditional progression of the pastoral elegy in moving from grief toward an acceptance and knowledge of death. The poem also addresses the pity of war through imagery vaguely referencing the American Civil War (1861–1865), which effectively ended only days before the assassination.

Written ten years after he published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" reflects a maturing of Whitman's poetic vision from a drama of identity and romantic exuberance that has been tempered by his emotional experience of the American Civil War. Whitman included the poem as part of a quickly written sequel to a collection of poems addressing the war that was being printed at the time of Lincoln's death. These poems, collected under the titles Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps, range in emotional context from "excitement to woe, from distant observation to engagement, from belief to resignation" and "more concerned with history than the self, more aware of the precariousness of America's present and future than of its expansive promise". First published in autumn 1865, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"—along with 42 other poems from Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps—was absorbed into Leaves of Grass beginning with the fourth edition, published in 1867.

The poem is one of several that Whitman wrote on Lincoln's death. Although Whitman did not consider the poem to be among his best, it has been compared in both effect and quality to acclaimed works of English literature, including T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

Online Text Link:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45480/when-lilacs-last-in-the-dooryard-bloomd

We will begin a Chinese Literature Seminar starting in March 2023 to December 2025 where we will read the Six Classical Chinese Novels along with the 120 Short Stories of the San Yan. The Six Classical Novels of Chinese Literature consisting of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber, the Scholars, and the Plum in the Golden Vase are widely considered among the greatest and longest novels ever written. In this fifth and final part of this new series, we will now try to read the Dream of the Red Chamber.

Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou Meng) or The Story of the Stone (Shitou Ji) is a novel composed by Cao Xueqin in the middle of the 18th century. One of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature, it is known for its psychological scope, and its observation of the worldview, aesthetics, life-styles, and social relations of 18th-century China.

The intricate strands of its plot depict the rise and decline of a family much like Cao’s own and, by extension, of the dynasty itself. Cao depicts the power of the father over the family, but the novel is intended to be a memorial to the women he knew in his youth: friends, relatives and servants. At a more profound level, the author explores religious and philosophical questions, and the writing style includes echoes of the plays and novels of the late Ming, as well as poetry from earlier periods.

Cao apparently began composing it in the 1740s and worked on it until his death in 1763 or 1764. Copies of his uncompleted manuscript circulated in Cao's social circle, under the title Story of a Stone in slightly varying versions of eighty chapters. It was not published until nearly three decades after Cao's death, when Gao E and Cheng Weiyuan (程偉元), edited the first and second printed editions under the title Dream of the Red Chamber in 1791–92, adding 40 chapters. It is still debated whether Gao and Cheng composed these chapters themselves and the extent to which they did or did not represent Cao's intentions. Their 120 chapter edition became the most widely circulated version. The title has also been translated as Red Chamber Dream and A Dream of Red Mansions. "Redology" is the field of study devoted to the novel.

We will be using the Hawkes and Minford translation but any translation will suffice. Please read the introduction and Chapters 1-5.

Volume 1:
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Stone-Dream-Chamber-Vol/dp/0140442936/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=dream+of+the+red+chamber+hawkes&qid=1659417305&sr=8-1

Volume 2:
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Stone-Vol-Crab-Flower-Club/dp/0140443266/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=dream+of+the+red+chamber+hawkes&qid=1659417305&sr=8-6

Volume 3:
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Stone-Dream-Chamber-Warning/dp/0140443703/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=dream+of+the+red+chamber+hawkes&qid=1659417305&sr=8-2

Volume 4:
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Stone-Dream-Chamber-Vol/dp/0140443711/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=dream+of+the+red+chamber+hawkes&qid=1659417305&sr=8-11

Volume 5:
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Stone-Dream-Chamber-Vol/dp/014044372X/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=dream+of+the+red+chamber+hawkes&qid=1659417305&sr=8-3