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Laddar... They Were Defeated (1932)av Rose Macaulay
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. Before coming across this at an estate sale, I was familiar with Rose Macaulay only as the author of The Towers of Trebizond, her best known novel by far. From this book, I deduce, first, that she had the disposition and talents of a scholar as well; and second, that academia slighted her because of her sex. This is a sensitive portrayal of a the world of English letters in 1640 -- a world on the brink of the cataract that was the Civil War. Of the 527 poems in the Oxford anthology of seventeenth-century pottery, 127 are by people who appear as characters in this novel: Milton, Crashaw, Herrick, Marvell, Suckling, Cowley, Henry More, and John Cleveland (the villain of the piece, and a nasty piece of work Dame Rose made of him). This was published in the US under the title The Shadow Flies. My copy is of that edition. inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
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THEY WERE DEFEATED begins in 1640 at a harvest festival - but religious persecution is in the air, and the idyllic rural scene is soon darkened by the threat of a witch hunt... Rose Macaulay interweaves the lives of Robert Herrick and other contemporary poets with those of a small group of fictional characters. Their lives, and in particular the life of her heroine Julian, are set vividly before us against a period which was one of the most dramatic and unsetttled in English history. Skilfully intertwining tragedy, comedy and beauty, THEY WERE DEFEATED was Rose Macaulay¿s only historical novel, and is 'her greatest success' [Observer] First published in 1932. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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The trouble is, these people look as though they are being set up for an adventure story, but in fact they are only there to allow the author to comment on the ideas of 17th century England. They don't develop in the course of the story, despite listening — ad nauseam — to all sorts of clever people telling each other things they already know about current events. Not much happens, except on the news, and the characters continue much as they were, until the author gets tired of them and eliminates them arbitrarily.
With hindsight, some of what Macaulay is saying about 17th century England, with moderate Anglicans caught between the hardcore puritans on one side and papists on the other on the verge of a destructive conflict, must read onto the fascism and communism of thirties Europe. But a lot of it probably reflects her own somewhat complicated religious feelings as well.
A very interesting book, as history, and a very clever one technically, but I found it a disappointment as a novel. Obviously written as a by-product of Macaulay's Milton biography. ( )