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| Ming the Merciless |
- If Chabon is right (or, at least, if his ideal carries over to Eco in this case), then the story of Saint Antoninus isn't merely told to characterize the little town. Thoughts?
- Superstition, of course, is borne as explanation by the ignorant of an event otherwise unexplained. Any thoughts on how that applies here with Amalia, and maybe in context of events and information shared to this point?
- Wretched simoniacs....
- Of course the folio is Clarabell's treasure (or a foreshadowing thereof), and appropriately so, as he found it where he wasn't looking. But how will this, if so it does, tie into his memory? Regardless of the imminent connection, why is Shakespeare's first folio appropriate (and not only in personal terms to Yambo)? Of course, it's not real. Is it?
- "That's my book. Is it worth it?"
- The little bottle atop the bookcase: any connection at all to the "Drink Me" bottle of Wonderland (though not by drinking, surely, or literally so, anyway)?
- Gordon, Ming, and the castor oil.
1. Maybe it pertains to the arbitrariness of what we remember versus what we don't?
ReplyDelete2. I think that part of this is to show how local superstitions also influence culture, in addition to all the stuff that Yambo reads.
4. Any ideas? Sorry, I'm just stumped.
6. I don't know. The story's incredibly brutal. I'm just surprised at the way Eco presents it. It's as though we're to applaud the father for the vengeance.
1. I think that's part of it. I think it will make more sense when we fall through the clouds over the gorge and into the whatever down there.
ReplyDelete4. Probably an even more unfair question than the first, especially since I can't remember how the folio fully fits in with the end result. I think it's important that it's a book (if this is really Clarabell's treasure) because, well, he's into books, but more so because this is a rare, valuable, and difficult (maybe even inexistent) to find book. And why the folio instead of the Gutenberg Bible? Maybe because the GB is too unlikely??
6. I don't know, either, except that the bottle in Wonderland both assists and foils Alice's progress. As far as the tone surrounding the brutal vengeance, I think its rhetoric is more due to how Yambo viewed it as a child. I expect that old Yambo doesn't really feel that way, but it was the mood of the past pressing through the fog, not to mention the potentially reverent tone Amalia would have narrated the tale with.
6. Yeah, I think that you're right on with the young/old Yambo comparison.
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