{"id":435,"date":"2005-05-13T02:02:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-13T02:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=435"},"modified":"2005-05-13T02:02:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-13T02:02:00","slug":"435","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=435","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Eighteenth Century goes to the movies<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Candidus,” the Colonial movie critic, takes on Hollywood’s treatment of the 18th century<\/a>. Here he is on The Patriot<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

“In the real war, loyalist civilians were treated as horribly as any patriot civilians. But, you don’t hear about that. No, no. Can’t have that!”<\/p>\n

When it comes to The Last of the Mohicans<\/em><\/a> (1992), it is hard, however, to say much about James Fenimore Cooper that Mark Twain has not already said in his essay “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.”<\/a> <\/p>\n

The only reason that Cooper must have made it into the American literary canon<\/a> was that the competition was, somehow, worse.<\/p>\n

Twain does not tackle The Prairie<\/em>, but there is a completely silly book. Evidently JFC never saw a prairie. His characters–so-called pioneers–wander in circles. They are 200 miles from civilization, then 400 miles, then 200 miles. The plot repeats itself: captured by Indians, prairie fire, escape from Indians, captured by Indians.<\/p>\n

Any literature student asked by a teacher to read Cooper should demand extra credit.<\/p>\n

In the movie of Last of the Mohicans<\/em>, I thought I detected a continuity lapse in a scene where there were X people in a large canoe in one scene, and then X -1 in the next scene. But I was watching in a theatre, so I could not back up and look again. Such a lapse would have been true to Cooper’s spirit, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Eighteenth Century goes to the movies “Candidus,” the Colonial movie critic, takes on Hollywood’s treatment of the 18th century. Here he is on The Patriot: “In the real war, loyalist civilians were treated as horribly as any patriot civilians. But, you don’t hear about that. No, no. Can’t have that!” When it comes to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-435","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6549,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6549","url_meta":{"origin":435,"position":0},"title":"Literary British Paganism and an Unusual Thor’s Hammer","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Ethan Doyle White reviews Ronald Hutton's Pagan Britain and Marion Gibson's Imagining the Pagan Past (free PDF download). The first I have, but the second might actually be more valuable to anyone studying contemporary Paganism, for it looks not at \"not at paganism [sic] itself, but instead explores how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pasthorizonspr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/hammertop.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2646,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2646","url_meta":{"origin":435,"position":1},"title":"Walt Whitman and His Sock Puppet","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been collecting links on writing and plan to toss them out piecemeal over the next week. Here is a New York Times piece on literary self-promotion from times past: The most revered of French novelists recognized the need for P.R. \u201cFor artists, the great problem to solve is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":247,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=247","url_meta":{"origin":435,"position":2},"title":"Another Pagan Classic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been re-reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History, the leading entry in the literary genre of \"when Classics majors go bad.\" It was first published in 1992, and I did my part for her royalty payments by sending at least three hardcover copies as Christmas presents in 1993. Sales\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":153,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=153","url_meta":{"origin":435,"position":3},"title":"Mutilation bad, murder ... well,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 2, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Mutilation bad, murder ... well, OK I thought that the right-wing bloggers might have made this one up, but it's true. The Council on American Islamic Relations, a self-described civil-rights organization, issued a press release condemning the mutilation of the bodies of the four American civilians killed in Falujah, Iraq,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1035,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1035","url_meta":{"origin":435,"position":4},"title":"On the Road in Virginia: Looking for Gleb Botkin","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Gleb Botkin's Church of Aphrodite lasted from the 1930s to 1969. (He formally incorporated it in 1939, but I don't know just when it started.) The church was more Goddess-monotheistic than polytheistic: Aphrodite, the flower-faced, the sweetly smiling, the laughter-loving Goddess of Love and Beauty, is the self-existent, eternal and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Home of Gleb Botkin in the late 1960s. Photo by Chas S. Clifton","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chasclifton.com\/graphics\/botkinhouse_sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3847,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3847","url_meta":{"origin":435,"position":5},"title":"Wicca Work?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"M. drew my attention today to the fact that Rocky Mountain PBS (Motto: \"All Antiques Roadshow all the time.\") was offering another BBC-produced copy show, Wicca Work. Typical of RMPBS, they seem to be starting with the third season. CORRECTION: The series is New Tricks, the episode is \"Wicca Work.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}