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Quote by Mary Stewart

“It was as if the past, till then so longed-after, so lived-over, had slipped off my shoulders like a burden. The future was still hidden, somewhere in the lights that made a yellow blur in the sky beyond the end of the dark street. Here between the two I waited, and for the first time saw both clearly. ...I had made myself a stranger in England, not only bereaved, but miserably dépaysée, drifting with no clear aim, resenting the life I had been thrust into with such tragic brutality; I had refused to adapt myself to it and make myself a place there, behaving like the spoilt child who, because he cannot have the best cake, refuses to eat at all. I had waited for life to offer itself back to me on the old terms. Well, it wasn’t going to. Because of my childhood I had rejected what England had for me, and now the Paris of my childhood had rejected me. Here, too, I had been dispossessed. And if I was ever to have a place, in whatever country – well, nobody ever wanted you anyway unless you damned well made them. And that was what I would have to do. I had my chance in front of me now...”

Quote by Mary Stewart

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Mary Stewart
Mary Stewart

Mary Stewart, a British novelist, was born on September 17, 1916, and passed away on May 9, 2014. Known for her suspense, historical, and romance novels, her works have enjoyed great popularity among readers. more

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“I have dwelt at length with this poem because it epitomizes and transforms much eighteenth-century criticism of Spenser and because, like any other imitation, it acts as an implicit criticism of the original. The Minstrel takes up major themes in mid-century poetics and criticism - speculative interest in origins, natural descriptions, humble life, the supernatural, education, political corruption - and merges them, awkwardly it must be said - into something recalling a Spenserian romance. The celebrity of Beattie's poem has more to do with its intellectual than its poetic achievements. The Minstrel demonstated that romance could take on the serious social business hitherto treated in epic and georgic, epistle and satire; it proved to an age obsessed with originality that a poet might imitate wihout copying, and emulate Spenser in a way that avoided objections to archaism, allegory, and the use of stanzas in a long poem. Beattie did all these things but did them imperfectly. For the next fifty years, romantic Spenserians would retain beattie's doctrines while refining his poetics.”

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Book:Edmund Spenser: A Reception History
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