Re: I am Franny!!! / We love Bill

J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Thu, 16 Jul 1998 23:03:24 -0400 (EDT) 

I think the post in which a person said, "someone in Russia and
Connecticut can make a connection with the work," pretty well sums up our
assumptions about universal lit.

Ok, let's talk Romeo and Juliet.  A person in Connecticut, and a person
in Moscow, have a HECK of a lot more in common with each other cuturally
than either one of them has with a person born and raised in Saigon,
Calcutta, or Central Africa.  If people from all five of these regions
read Romeo and Juliet, I suspect the Russian and the Connecticut people
would approach the text with a lot more common assumptions than the other
three would.  

That's why I insisted on Western Lit and not universal lit.  How many
works have we read from Chinese authors--written in the last hundred
years?  Yet how many millions may have been influenced by their work?

jim

On Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:41:40 +1000 Camille Scaysbrook
<verona_beach@geocities.com> writes:
>
>> Camille, I think the most important thing you said ther was that "we 
>all
>> know someone like" Falstaff or Hamlet.  In my mind, a great sort of
>"test"
>> for whether a piece of literature is able to be somehow "universal" 
>is
>> whether or not one, as a reader can make connections between the 
>fiction
>> they are reading and some aspect of their own lives.  I'm convinced 
>that
>my
>> life has been significantly effected by the  characters in the 
>fiction I
>> have read.  That's what great literature is all about.
>> 
>> I apologize and hope I have made some sense.
>> 
>> Patrick
>
>I agree - and I guess, by implication, those texts which are - dare I 
>say -
>UNIVERSAL - are those with which the most people can sympathise. 
>Simple as
>that (: That's a good reason why both Shakes and Sal are still read.


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