Any Anthology about the history of the English language is gonna start with Bede. His “Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum” is of ridiculously historic importance, giving us names, dates, and places that would have otherwise been lost to the ravages of time. It’s also one of the first major works by an English author.
It is, however, incredibly dull and is known to wax on about church-related stuff I could honestly care less about. The Norton Anthology does us all a favor and excerpts only “The Story of Caedmon,” a little ditty about a devout Christian that wants to rock and roll all night and party every day.
I tried to draw a comic about it (something involving him pitching his music to a record company) but kept coming up empty. As such, you just get this single introduction to “Lit Brick” as a whole, as well as its fictional author, Molly, with a little potshot at Bede thrown in for good measure, because you can never throw enough little potshots at Bede.
That zero was depressing me.
Me too! Luckily, I’m fairly certain I can transfer the old comments over to this site once I’m done setting up all 350+ strips.
Love this thing, which I haven’t mentioned.
As a side note, *man* I wish they’d produce the Norton Brick for Kindle or some other electronic format.
Thanks, Snarky!
And I too wouldn’t mind an easier to navigate (and SEARCHABLE) copy of the Norton, though if I wasn’t an actual brick anymore, I’d lose my ever-so-valuable brand recognition.
I really like Bede, actually.
Fabulous concept! Can’t wait for the Canterbury Tales. I don’t even remember which ones are in the Norton, now, so long has my nose been buried in the Riverside Chaucer.
HA, awesome! What a great idea. Oh god, I remember reading Bede and waiting and waiting for us to move on to Beowulf, and Chaucer, and Sir Gawain’s story. The waiting, it was so long……….
I want to steal this idea. “Motivate myself to read something by making a progressive creative project based on it.” My two problems: my only creative outlet I’m good with is writing, and the thing I currently want to read is the 2010 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market.
Writing about wanting to write. Yeah, if that’s not fan fiction of my life, I don’t know what is.
Yeah, Bede was third string at best; even the church could only promote him to Venerable. But as you say, without the History we’d be really in the Dark o_O
Sneaky! This comic doesn’t really exist yet!