The Vulgar Eclectic

Tag: classics

  • Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

    I finished reading Agnes Grey (1847) by Anne Brontë. This is the first book she published and the only one I have read by her.  The novel carried me away to Agnes’s world and I could often relate to her inner thoughts. The fictive world that Brontë builds is simple and clean, and feels bright…

  • Pharsalia by Lucan, video

    I just posted the first video I’ve made for The Vulgar Eclectic. Here it is:

  • Pharsalia by Lucan

    “No, it will be the match we always have— Liberty pitted against a Caesar“ I recently finished reading Pharsalia (written about 65 AD) by the Roman poet Lucan, translated by Jane Wilson Joyce. This is an epic in ten parts written in verse in the tradition of Homer and Virgil. Unlike those poems, however, Pharsalia…

  • Carmina Achilochi: the Fragments Of Archilochos

    I read this collection of poems by the Greek lyric poet Archilochus back in January of 2021 and wrote a very brief reaction: I just finished reading Carmina Archilochi: the Fragments Of Archilochos, translated by Guy Davenport. Archilochos was a 7th Century Greek poet and soldier. This book was really fun to read and felt…

  • The Queen of the Air

    I finished reading The Queen of the Air (1861) by John Ruskin, an English writer who explored a wide range of topics throughout his life. This book was a collection of four different pieces, all connected in some way to the ideas represented by the Greek goddess Athena. It took me a while to fall…

  • Hedda Gabler

    I just finished reading Hedda Gabler (1891), a play written by Henrik Ibsen and translated by Una Ellis-Fermor. The play elicited one of the strongest reactions I’ve had in a reading experience in recent memory. I found myself shouting out loud at a few points, so agitated was I by the circumstances of the play…

  • Confessions of an English Opium Eater

    I just finished reading Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) by Thomas De Quincey. This is a delightful little autobiographical book. A good chunk of it is a memoir of De Quincy’s youth, and includes an interesting description of his time living on the streets of London as a runaway.  The remaining segments of…

  • Orestes by Euripides

    I finished reading Orestes by Euripides (408 BC), translated by Philip Vellacott. I love Euripides and this play is no exception. It is beautifully written and was exciting and dramatic to read, but also encourages prolonged reflection. The ending of the play left me a little confused, as did the moral nature of many of the…

  • Journey to the Centre of the Earth

    I just finished reading Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) by Jules Verne, translated by Frank Wynne. It was a great and entertaining adventure and brimmed with that boyish optimism, perhaps born out of the rapidly expanding world of science, shared by similar books of the era.  I was a bit surprised at…

  • The Brothers Karamazov

    I finished reading The Brothers Karamazov (1879) by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by David McDuff. One of the strengths of this novel was the distinctness of the characters, especially the three brothers of the title, dissimilar but bound together by family and fate. The reader grows to care for the brothers, even as faults and predilections…