Notes about literature, with likely emphasis on my ongoing scholarly project: To identify the extent to which certain 19th- and early 20th-century fictions use the conventions of the 14th-century dream vision genre, and the extent and reasons to which they pretend not to do so.
5 Jul 2022 2 minute read 0 comments DoctorPlatypus
One of the differences between reading Peter Pan and watching it in movie or stage format is the prominence of the narrator in the novel, which famously opens "All children, except one, grow up" (1). This assertion is obviously false even from our c...
26 Apr 2022 4 minute read 1 comment DoctorPlatypus
Based on the notes included as part of "Rip Van Winkle", we know that the narrator is Dietrich Knickerbocker, who is Dutch. If he's anything like the narrator for "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" he is very much biased in favor of the Dutch. (Ichabod Crane...
26 Mar 2022 3 minute read 0 comments DoctorPlatypus
In the context of my latter-day dream visions project, I have been reading and thinking about "Rip Van Winkle" as an early American fiction that may or may not inherit the medieval dream vision genre. I'm not ready yet to write the full argument abou...
25 May 2021 2 minute read 2 comments DoctorPlatypus
I read this novel in high school and really really liked it. This time, 30-something years later, having forgotten all but the first few chapters (the part about the eclipse), I found Hank to be extremely obnoxious in his know-it-all smartassery, but...
