work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3278,"","Reading. Discussed in Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957), 191. But see Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook's Epistolary Bodies: Gender and Genre in the Eighteenth-Century Republic of Letters (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996), 86. See also Joe Bray's The Epistolary Novel: Representations of Consciousness (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 8.",2005-03-25 00:00:00 UTC,"In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
(II, pp. 14-15 in Thrale)",2009-03-04,8539,"•REVISIT. The letter is metaphorized not what's within the breast! INTEREST. A metaphor of mind metaphorized.
•I've included twice: Body and Mirror
•Note, E. Cook thinks Watt has this exactly wrong: ""Johnson is ironically citing an 'idée reçue' here in order to undermine it""
•Was citing p. 519? (of what?)
","""In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process.""",Mirror,2013-10-12 03:56:47 UTC,To Hester Thrale
7207,"","Reading Anne K. Mellor’s “The Rights of Woman and the Woman Writers of Wollstonecraft’s Day” in Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Claudia L. Johnson (Cambridge UP, 2002), 143.",2012-03-29 19:39:16 UTC,"Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have increased the general tide of effeminacy and corruption. To conform to the perpetual fluctuation of fashion (and few have the courage to dare the ""slow and moving finger of scorn,"" which is pointed at every external singularity) requires almost their whole time and attention, and leaves little leisure for intellectual improvement.
(III, 19-20)",,19659,"","""Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have increased the general tide of effeminacy and corruption.""",Fetters,2012-03-29 19:39:25 UTC,No. III. On the Influence of Authority and Custom on the Female Mind and Manners
7542,"",Reading; text from Google Books,2013-07-12 14:57:56 UTC,"You, my dear friend, who have felt the tender attachments of love and friendship, and the painful anxieties which absence occasions, even amidst scenes of variety and pleasure; who understand the value at which tidings from those we love is computed in the arithmetic of the heart; who have heard with almost uncontroulable emotion the postman's rap at the door; have trembling seen the well-known hand which excited sensations that almost deprived you of power to break the seal which seemed the talisman of happiness; you can judge of the feelings of Mons. du F when he received, by means of the same friend who had conveyed his letter, an answer from his wife. But the person who brought the letter to his dungeon, dreading the risk of a discovery, insisted, that, after having read it, he should return it to him immediately. Mons. du F-- pressed the letter to his heart, bathed it with his tears, and implored the indulgence of keeping it at least till the next morning. He was allowed to do so, and read it till every word was imprinted on his memory; and after enjoying the sad luxury of holding it that night on his bosom, was forced the next morning to relinquish his treasure.
(Letter XX, p. 163-4; p. 129 in Broadview ed.)",,21700,"","""You, my dear friend, who have felt the tender attachments of love and friendship, and the painful anxieties which absence occasions, even amidst scenes of variety and pleasure; who understand the value at which tidings from those we love is computed in the arithmetic of the heart.""","",2013-07-12 14:57:56 UTC,Letter 20
7542,"",Reading; text from Google Books,2013-07-12 14:59:04 UTC,"You, my dear friend, who have felt the tender attachments of love and friendship, and the painful anxieties which absence occasions, even amidst scenes of variety and pleasure; who understand the value at which tidings from those we love is computed in the arithmetic of the heart; who have heard with almost uncontroulable emotion the postman's rap at the door; have trembling seen the well-known hand which excited sensations that almost deprived you of power to break the seal which seemed the talisman of happiness; you can judge of the feelings of Mons. du F when he received, by means of the same friend who had conveyed his letter, an answer from his wife. But the person who brought the letter to his dungeon, dreading the risk of a discovery, insisted, that, after having read it, he should return it to him immediately. Mons. du F-- pressed the letter to his heart, bathed it with his tears, and implored the indulgence of keeping it at least till the next morning. He was allowed to do so, and read it till every word was imprinted on his memory; and after enjoying the sad luxury of holding it that night on his bosom, was forced the next morning to relinquish his treasure.
(Letter XX, p. 163-4; p. 129 in Broadview ed.)",,21701,"","He was allowed to do so, and read it till every word was imprinted on his memory; and after enjoying the sad luxury of holding it that night on his bosom, was forced the next morning to relinquish his treasure.""",Impressions and Writing,2013-07-12 14:59:04 UTC,""
7542,"",Reading; text from Google Books,2013-07-12 15:00:17 UTC,"I am glad you think that a friend's having been persecuted, imprisoned, maimed, and almost murdered, under the ancient government of France, is a good excuse for loving the revolution. What, indeed, but friendship, could have led my attention from the annals of imagination to the records of politics; from the poetry to the prose of human life? In vain might Aristocrates have explained to me the rights of kings, and Democrates have descanted on the rights of the people. How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain! But, however dull the faculties of my head, I can assure you, that when a proposition is addressed to my heart, I have some quickness of perception. I can then decide, in one moment, points upon which philosophers and legislators have differed in all ages: nor could I be more convinced of the truth of any demonstration in Euclid, than I am, that, that system of politics must be the best, by which those I love are made happy.
(Letter XXIII, p. 195; p. 140 in Broadview ed.)",,21702,"","""How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!""",Rooms,2013-07-12 15:00:17 UTC,Letter XXIII
7542,"",Reading; text from Google Books. OCR typo caught and corrected by Andrew Dobson.,2013-07-12 15:01:03 UTC,"In every country it is social pleasure that sheds the most delicious flowers which grow on the path of life; but in France she covers the whole way with roses, and the traveller can scarcely mark its ruggedness. Happy are a people, so fond of talking as the French, in possessing a language modelled to all the charming purposes of conversation. Their turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech. Perhaps that brilliant phraseology which dazzles a foreigner, may be familiar and common to a French ear: but how much ingenuity must we allow to a people who have formed a language, of which the common-place phrases give you the idea of wit!
(Letter XXIII, pp. 197-8; p. 141 in Broadview ed.)",,21703,"","""Their turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech.""","",2016-01-25 18:45:45 UTC,Letter XXIII
7702,"","Searching ""mind"" in Google Books",2013-10-12 04:26:45 UTC,"I do not exhort you to reason yourself into tranquillity. We must first pray, and then
labour; first implore the blessing of God, and those means which he puts into our hands. Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret.
(p 192)
",,22935,"","""Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret.""","",2013-10-12 04:26:45 UTC,"Letter CCLVII. To Mrs. Thrale (April 5, 1781)
"