Christina Gregg

            On Wednesday morning I finished translating the fourth verse of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the second and third verses of “Sparadrap” (Plasterwrap) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            At 11:00 I logged on for my British Literature tutorial. 

            Our second assignment is even more focused on close reading of the connections between content and form than the first one and the rubric is different. Analysis needs to be fresh and exciting with a clear response to the prompt. 

            She asked for our impressions of The Faerie Queen. I said that Spenser is not as good a storyteller as he is a poet. I understand that he wants to make the reader work but I think that he could do that while still making the narrative flow and transition in its entrelacement. In some ways it’s like a badly done collage in which the images are awkwardly separate and there is no harmonious relationship between them. 

            A lot of students talked about how much more interesting and complex the monsters are and about how Despair’s attack is not even physical but rather with words. 

            I said Spenser seems to like writing about the monsters because of their complexity while the heroes in general are less interesting, except for Britomart. She is more complex because she represents more than one thing. 

            Alexandra says that the difficulty of the narrative ties in with the allegory. I get that but I think there could still be a flow within the difficulty. 

            With allegory he is illustrating a larger concept. 

            I said that personification is an aspect of allegory but it deals more with characters while allegory could include many other elements than personification, such as location, situation, action, words, objects, and so on. I said if a character is supposed to represent a quality it isn’t necessarily a quality they possess during their struggle. It could be the character’s goal or an aspect of their self they have yet to realize or reach into. I observed that even though the Red Cross Knight defeats a monster called Error he continues to err throughout his adventure and so that draws into question what did the monster really represent. Perhaps a certain type of error relating to the reading of texts since the monster vomits books and papers. Or maybe the monster is a type of overture for the rest of the adventure, setting the theme of this knight’s story being one of a struggle with error. 

            The Red Cross story is more linear than the one featuring Britomart. 

            We did a close reading of three stanzas on page 674. I noticed that in stanza 23 Spenser returns to the pastoral in the middle of a battle with a monster when the monster’s children are described as being like insects biting a shepherd while he tends his flock. Apparently this is an allusion to classical poetry where there is often a return to the pastoral. We should look at allusion for our assignment. 

            I said that the sounds of the rhymes in stanza 22 are often serpentine with sounds like “stink”, “shrinke” and "sink", while the ones in 23 are softer with rhymes such as “tide”, "wide", "west", "best", "rest", "wings" and "murmurings". They seem to be softening the pain of the attack. 

            For lunch I had four year old cheddar with saltines. 

            In the afternoon I went out to buy a six-pack of Creemore. It feels weird just going across the street these days, almost like I’m doing something wrong by even leaving my apartment. 

            I finished reading The Marrow Hunters by Cherie Dimaline. I didn't always find it to be well written but it was often well told. About halfway through, starting with the death of the little girl Ri-Ri it became a real tear jerker with more losses along the way but ultimately ended happily. 

            The whole concept of Indigenous people having something special relating to dreams being generated in their marrow perpetuates a dangerous trope about them being biologically magical people. It brings us back to racial distinctions, which have been shown to be a myth. Near the end the story jumps into extreme fantasy where when the elder Minerva is taken by the Recruiters and they hook her up to their machines to drain her marrow, she begins to sing her dreams in the old language and it blows up their equipment and sets fire to their building. Minerva basically turns into an X-Man. 

            I read the selections from John Donne that are required reading for my British literature course. Apparently dying was a metaphor for orgasm and so there were quite a few poems about dying in a woman’s arms. There was also the belief that when people make love they share blood and so the poem “The Flea” talks about love as if it were a bug that has consumed the blood of both lovers. 

            I read a couple of poems by Aemilia Lania in which she argues that Eve should not be blamed for the original sin. She says crucifying Christ was far worse than giving Adam the forbidden fruit and men did that while women tried to stop it. 

            I had the other burger that I’d made on Sunday with ground chicken and stuffing. I had it on whole grain bread topped with ketchup, mustard, relish and scotch bonnet sauce accompanied by a beer while watching Interpol Calling. 

            In this story the Sicilian Mafia has forced certain Sicilians throughout the world to hold onto $50,000 each. But then the collector starts coming to retrieve the money and when he finds that the money has been spent he kills them. Duval asks Interpol to check on all unusual financial activity by Sicilians In London, Carlo owns a grocery store and is helped by his daughter Maria. Carlo gets a call from the collector. He tells him he has all the money but he’s really spent half of it on paying off his store's mortgage and buying a villa in Italy. He tells the collector he will deliver the money but prepares to get away. Duval learns of Carlo’s financial activities and goes to his store only to hear from Maria that her father has been missing for a day. When the collector calls again for Carlo they know he must be alive and so they wait for him. Meanwhile however Maria gets a note from a little boy on roller skates she knows that makes her think she is meeting her father down the street. Maria is taken by the collector. When Carlo comes back to the store he gets a call telling him to bring the money to the Turkish baths. Carlo shakes the police tail and so they have to find a way to get to him. Maria’s little dog was with her when she was taken and so Duval has local boys bring stray dogs and the boy with the skates picks the one that he knows to be Maria’s. The dog leads Duval to the Turkish baths where Carlo and Maria are rescued and Duval uses his judo on the collector. 

            Maria was played by Christina Gregg who became one of London’s top models in the 60s. She received starring roles in film and television and still has a following enough to sell books on beauty and exercise videos. In 1981 she married Lyle Blair and moved to Canada where she became a philanthropist, starting the Minstrel Foundation for inner city children and her and her husband founded the Shakespeare Globe Centre in London, Ontario and helped to build the Globe Theatre on the Thames.