http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/justtheplaceforasnark.blogspot.com Comments & Reviews of http://justtheplaceforasnark.blogspot.com/ on StumbleUpon en-us Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:46:50 -0800 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:05:13 -0700 http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/justtheplaceforasnark.blogspot.com http://cdn.stumble-upon.com/images/logo_su_36x36.png Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:05:13 -0700 http://dexter709.stumbleupon.com/review/34790401/ dexter709 - Fitfully illustrating Lewis Carroll & other graphic agonies"]]> http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/justtheplaceforasnark.blogspot.com Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:37:26 -0800 http://jack-black.stumbleupon.com/review/28253522/ jack-black - Snarks and Boojums Burne-Jones Ship of Souls window, Christ Church, Oxford, 1859. JB Notes: Tim's recent 'Hunting of the Snark' (1878)  post sent me back to Lewis Carroll's poem  - for the first time since about age nine. An adult eye suggests a satiric reading for the fabulous journey. First Thoughts: The metre suggests its affinities with 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. The trope of the ship of souls suggests Burne-Jones window recently installed. (1859)  What if it's the ship of fools - ie social system - he's satirizing? Bankers, barristers recall the Merdles and Jarndyces of Dickens's (Bleak House, etc.) caricatures of the corrupt professionals the time of the Great Crash/ Railway Boom & Bust (1860?). If a political satire then maybe the great political issue of the day (1874) - and one on which the Liberals and Tories two parties were coming together in a most unlikely way - was what is being satirized. The Tories had spent the whole of the 19th century deploring the working man's political aspirations and equating his voice with that of a 'swinish multitude' or 'sanguinary mob'. Then in 1874, in their greatest political coup, their leader Disraeli turns round, 'steals the Liberals clothes while they were bathing', and grants the supposed mob the vote, leaving the Liberals speechless! Why? By siezing the initiative Diz got to redraw the electoral boundaries of the constituencies so as to favour votes to his own party. On any purely numerical count the expanded electorate of urban poor would overwhelm the middle-classes. But Diz managed it so that the packed urban poor votes were wasted and ringfenced in the boroughs while the much less densely-populated rural counties were over-represented in Parliament. Why would all  this have interested Lewis Carroll? First the mathematical audacity; second he had himself written or was to go on to write several treatises on psephology and electoral calculus (see eg his Wiki page) . And his college was 'the staff college of the Establishment' producing  half a dozen Prime ministers in his lifetime. Since 1789 the spectre of mob rule had hung over British politics. All at once in a puff of smoke Diz dissipated it! Was the Snark/Boojum a reflection of the sudden ambivalence of the multitude - at once to be courted and feared?]]> http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/justtheplaceforasnark.blogspot.com Tue, 20 May 2008 23:14:56 -0700 http://bollonet.stumbleupon.com/review/21554867/ bollonet - Jag vet inte vad detta är, "snark"? Det har med Levis Carol Oates att göra. Är det nya illustrationer i 1800-tals-kopparstick-stil? Jag tycker den ondskefullt plirande mannen på bilden är lik FRITZL (källarFritzl) iklädd babymössa! ]]> http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/justtheplaceforasnark.blogspot.com