When in doubt as to what I do of a Sunday night, do inquire here. The new BBC adaptation of Emma is everything that one could want from our favorite production company. Granted, there are moments when one wonders if the dialogue is being intentionally drawn out to make the story last for six hours, or however long this thing turns out to be. It's a bit amusing to me that there's a fanbase in the world that would be disappointed if their films were any shorter.
because you were all wondering what I'm writing my dissertation on, here's a brief synopsis of my 'research context': When James Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry in 1760, he went to great lengths to make the Fragments appear to be authentic remains of an ancient, heroic oral tradition. His reasons for this were largely political, and as such, influenced the content of the epics themselves. As an attempt to establish a particularly Scottish identity, the poems were quite effective. However, to do so required both a simplification and a manipulation of traditional mythology. Stripped of anagogical significance, the Ossian epics more or less represented an Enlightenment version of history, tradition, and mythic heritage. The stories themselves were changed by their very purpose and in turn changed the manner of representing myth in future narratives. Moreover, the emphasis on the Ossian epics as authentic tales from the past, as ‘fragments,’ served...
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