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Sto caricando le informazioni... The British Barbarians: A Hill-Top Novel (1895)di Grant Allen
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. According to Grant Allen's introduction, the "hill-top" of the subtitle means that "it has seldom happened that writers of exceptional aims have been able to proclaim to the world at large the things which they conceived to be best worth their telling it" (vii-viii). Commercial requirements mean that they-- including Allen himself-- have to dilute their meanings: "I have never said a thing I did not think: but I have sometimes had to abstain from saying many things I did think" (xi). So Allen devised "the Hill-Top novels," where he would say what he did think; in them, "the reader who cares for truth and righteousness may take it for granted that the book represents my own original thinking, whether good or bad, on some important point in human society or human evolution" (xii-xiii). This is all well and good, I suppose, but then Allen spends seven pages explaining his "hill-top" metaphor, and it all gets rather goofy: "the oxygen of the hill-tops is [...] rich in ozone. Now, ozone stands to common oxygen itself as the clean-cut metal to the dull and leaden exposed surface" (xix). All that said, Allen published no other "hill-top novels," though it looks like his earlier The Woman who Did had at least one reissue with that subtitle. I guess money spoke louder than his principles. The novel itself is about a scientist from the future (the 25th century, if I remember right) named Bertram, who is writing a history of taboo. He's a member of a Nomological Society; apparently nomology is the study of laws. He's come back to the Victorian period to study their taboos: they claim, of course, to have no taboos, unlike those primitives elsewhere, and thus Allen uses Bertram to satirize a lot of contemporary British culture and conventions. It's a lot like those episodes of Star Trek where they go back to the 20th century and act completely baffled at everything they see. Bertram's morality is scientific: for example, because human beings are "of one blood" evolutionarily, it baffles him to see inter-human violence. He ends up getting involved with a married woman: female sexual agency being one of the greatest Victorian taboos of all (and one that still lingers today). It's a cute idea that's perhaps overly long even at 200 pages, but a decent enough read. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
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Classic Literature.
Fantasy.
Fiction.
Science Fiction.
HTML: This amusing science-fiction-tinged satire centers on an anthropologist sent from the future to make a study of British society in the late nineteenth century. Bertram Ingledew comprehensively documents and describes the savage rituals and beliefs he observesâ??and even converts one member of the "tribe" to his way of thinking. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.8Literature English English fiction Victorian period 1837-1900Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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It's not very well written either. Characters are very two dimensional and much of the 'plot' simply entails the traveller denouncing the foibles of the people around him. While this book no doubt effectively satirises some British colonial attitudes, the irony is that some of the views espoused would themselves be frowned upon today. ( )