lareinenoire (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lareinenoire) wrote2007-02-09 07:21 pm
lareinenoire) wrote2007-02-09 07:21 pm
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Squee!!!!
So.
Philip Pullman justified the existence of my dissertation today.
He gave a lecture in the English Faculty on what he called 'the fundamental particles of narrative', namely small mundane events that permeate stories -- they are, of themselves, neutral, but can take on nearly any meaning depending on context.
The 'event' he used was pouring a liquid from one container into another, how it appears in art and literature, and how the action itself does not change, but how the changing context affects the way we view it. Among the many examples were Rembrandt's Belshazzar's Feast (where the spilling wine from stolen goblets becomes a metaphor for excess), Ingrès' La Source (where it represents ever-replenishing fullness flowing into scarcity), and Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' (the River Alph contrasted with the Abyssinian maid as very different sources of inspiration -- which led to a hilarious digression involving the Sacred Cow of Paradise, since where else would one get the milk of paradise that Coleridge so wished to drink?).
A sidenote regarding inspiration that I loved -- that inspiration for stories is less about actually inventing something, and more about discovering something that already existed. Thank you, Mr Pullman, for saying that aloud. I don't write my stories, at least not in the way people seem to think I do. I'm just taking dictation from the characters in my head.
Anyway, back to the point.
Basically, what he was trying to come back to is that all stories consist of these 'particles' -- other examples he gave were journeys, the balance (upsetting and resetting thereof), echoes, cyclical structures, bringing together and splitting apart of things -- repeated and reworked in patterns.
My dissertation is nothing if not trying to follow changing character patterns through nearly five hundred years of literature. Ergo, Philip Pullman has justified the existence of my dissertation.
Also, he's a brilliant speaker.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deliasherman had an entry in her journal the other day about writers reading their work aloud. He does voices! It's *so* neat!! I would *love* to hear him read bits of the Sally Lockhart trilogy, if only to hear his version of Jim Taylor.
I didn't ask any questions -- I was too busy taking in what he'd said -- but now I wish I'd stayed after to tell him that he'd just made me feel justified in my research. And -- however indirectly -- my writing as well.
I was already a fangirl to begin with, but this just clinches it. I'm just sad all of my copies of his books are three thousand miles away.
And, on an unrelated note, today's rehearsal of Oedipus yielded the best performances yet from the principals. Oedipus was genuinely scary! Which is precisely what I was looking for. The Chorus still needs lots of work -- maybe I should assign them a night to go out together for drinks so they can become a collective?
Philip Pullman justified the existence of my dissertation today.
He gave a lecture in the English Faculty on what he called 'the fundamental particles of narrative', namely small mundane events that permeate stories -- they are, of themselves, neutral, but can take on nearly any meaning depending on context.
The 'event' he used was pouring a liquid from one container into another, how it appears in art and literature, and how the action itself does not change, but how the changing context affects the way we view it. Among the many examples were Rembrandt's Belshazzar's Feast (where the spilling wine from stolen goblets becomes a metaphor for excess), Ingrès' La Source (where it represents ever-replenishing fullness flowing into scarcity), and Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' (the River Alph contrasted with the Abyssinian maid as very different sources of inspiration -- which led to a hilarious digression involving the Sacred Cow of Paradise, since where else would one get the milk of paradise that Coleridge so wished to drink?).
A sidenote regarding inspiration that I loved -- that inspiration for stories is less about actually inventing something, and more about discovering something that already existed. Thank you, Mr Pullman, for saying that aloud. I don't write my stories, at least not in the way people seem to think I do. I'm just taking dictation from the characters in my head.
Anyway, back to the point.
Basically, what he was trying to come back to is that all stories consist of these 'particles' -- other examples he gave were journeys, the balance (upsetting and resetting thereof), echoes, cyclical structures, bringing together and splitting apart of things -- repeated and reworked in patterns.
My dissertation is nothing if not trying to follow changing character patterns through nearly five hundred years of literature. Ergo, Philip Pullman has justified the existence of my dissertation.
Also, he's a brilliant speaker.
deliasherman had an entry in her journal the other day about writers reading their work aloud. He does voices! It's *so* neat!! I would *love* to hear him read bits of the Sally Lockhart trilogy, if only to hear his version of Jim Taylor.I didn't ask any questions -- I was too busy taking in what he'd said -- but now I wish I'd stayed after to tell him that he'd just made me feel justified in my research. And -- however indirectly -- my writing as well.
I was already a fangirl to begin with, but this just clinches it. I'm just sad all of my copies of his books are three thousand miles away.
And, on an unrelated note, today's rehearsal of Oedipus yielded the best performances yet from the principals. Oedipus was genuinely scary! Which is precisely what I was looking for. The Chorus still needs lots of work -- maybe I should assign them a night to go out together for drinks so they can become a collective?
He do the police in different voices
Re: He do the police in different voices
no subject
PS--My characters 'talk' in my head as well.
no subject
I think your chorus need to take strange substances and run around in the countryside ripping up deer, that should bring them together - oh, sorry, wrong play...
no subject
But they are improving. I've been trying to drill into them the idea that they've been starving for three months and all their children are dead. ;)
It was part of a lecture series through Trinity, I believe, though I didn't catch the name offhand. I think it was a once-a-year thing, or maybe once-per-term.
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