Between The Purple Passages

Report: The voyages and adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, A Portugal

The voyages and adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, published in 1653, is the first English translation of Fernão Mendes Pinto’s 1583 memoir Peregrinação, which details Pinto’s experiences in various parts of the world not yet widely explored by contemporary European powers. In being translated into English at all—around the beginning of the English book trade’s Continue reading

Past Essays, Prose and Poetry

Fernand Mendez Pinto, Fernao Mendes Pinto, Peregrinação
Understandings of The World, Matter, & Relations Between the Human and Non-Human in Medieval and Post-Modern Literature

The Fall Medieval Christian society understood the Fall as an upheaval of God’s intended design for creation as it brought about a reconfiguration of humans’ relationship to their surroundings, creating a world in which humans now needed to kill animals for food and clothing. The Fall was also understood as the introduction of pain into Continue reading

Faith and Culture, Past Essays

De Proprietatibus Rerum, Genesis, Geoffrey Chaucer, Isidore of Seville, John of Trevisa, On The Properties of Things, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville
Augustine, Genesis 1 and 2, & Female Subordination

In ‘The Literal Meaning of Genesis’ Augustine of Hippo (354 AD – 430 AD) comments on the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 to form judgements on the nature of biblical manhood and womanhood and to develop ideas about the body and human sexuality, focusing particularly on the distinction between the carnality of the Continue reading

Faith and Culture, Past Essays

Augustine, Genesis
Close Reading: Arachne, trans. by William Caxton

In his Middle English translation of a French retelling of the story of ‘Arachne’ found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, William Caxton capitalises on the theme of propriety in the relationships between the gods and immortals and amongst mortals of different social standings to primarily warn readers against overstepping their bounds, focusing particularly on the proper deference Continue reading

Past Essays, Prose and Poetry

Medieval Literature, Metamorphoses, Ovid, Ovide moralise, The Book of Ovyde Named Methamorphose, William Caxton
Close Reading: Autobiography of Eve by Ansel Elkin

Wearing nothing but snakeskin boots, I blazed a footpath, the first radical road out of that old kingdom toward a new unknown. When I came to those great flaming gates of burning gold, I stood alone in terror at the threshold between Paradise and Earth. There I heard a mysterious echo: my own voice singing Continue reading

Past Essays, Prose and Poetry

Ansel Elkin, Autobiography of Eve
“A Rich Man’s Whimsy”: Approaches to Rewilding in Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border

In her 2015 novel The Wolf Border Sarah Hall depicts the phenomena of rewilding, a process in conservation biology whereby extirpated species are reintroduced to their original landscapes in an effort to decrease human intervention in nature’s processes. Set against the backdrop of an alternate Scottish independence referendum, Hall explores the idea of reintroducing the Continue reading

Past Essays, Prose and Poetry

Sarah Hall, The Wolf Border
“Harlotrye” and “Moralitee”: Sexual & Other Violence in Chaucer’s ‘The Miller’s Tale’ and ‘The Reeve’s Tale’

Excluding ‘The Knight’s Tale’, the first fragment of The Canterbury Tales is characterised by “harlotrye” referring to crude jesting, not exclusively of a sexual nature as harlotry particularly means now. Chaucer represents harlotry as the antithesis of morality, or “virtuous conduct and thought” as in the ‘Miller’s Prologue‘ Chaucer the pilgrim (the voice narrating the Continue reading

Past Essays, Prose and Poetry

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale
Close Reading: Opening of ‘The Miller’s Tale’, Geoffrey Chaucer

This carpenter hadde wedded newe a wyf Which that he loved more than his lyf;Of eightene yeer she was of age.Jalous he was, and heeld hire narwe in cage,For she was wilde and yong, and he was oldAnd demed himself ben lyk a cokewold.He knew nat Catoun, for his wit was rude,That bad man sholde Continue reading

Past Essays, Prose and Poetry

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Miller’s Tale
Close Reading: ‘Sonnet 45’, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Mary Wroth

Good now be still, and doe not me torment, With [multituds] of questions, be at rest, And onely let me quarrell with my breast,Which stil lets in new stormes my soule to rent. Fye, will you still my mischiefes more augment? You saye, I answere crosse, I that confest Long since, yet must I euer Continue reading

Past Essays, Prose and Poetry

Mary Wroth, Renaissance Poetry
Reading Alien (dir. by Ridley Scott) Against Barbara Creed’s ‘The Monstrous Feminine’

Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s theory of sexuality, in an essay titled ‘The Monstrous-Feminine’ Barbara Creed applies psychoanalytic theory to the horror film genre, observing the relationship between femininity and monstrosity. In her rejection of the widespread evaluation of the female role in horror as one of pure victimisation, she argues that there is a subconscious Continue reading

Past Essays, The Stage and Beyond

Barbara Creed, Ridley Scott

About

If your hobbies also include reading, thinking excessively about everything you read, and learning other people’s thoughts on the things they’ve read recently or a long time ago, you’re very welcome here!

This is where you can find my observations on various texts (a text here being anything that can be ‘read’ and thus including film, theatre, or Taylor Swift lyrics, for example) and what I think can be found between their “purple passages”.