Unlike some of the pictures on this blog copied from questionable web sources, this portrait of Alessandro Manzoni painted by Giuseppe Molteni is allegedly in the public domain. Manzoni wrote "The betrothed" in the 19th century although the action takes place in the 17th c. Eco discussed this novel in "Six walks in the fictional woods" (1998, Harvard University) which I mentioned in a couple of earlier posts . Eco actually included a long passage from "The bethrothed" as a sort of 'teaser' and he hooked me. I checked out the book from my university library and am about halfway through reading it. You may be wondering why, if this is my research journal, I am writing about reading (and writing, as you will see, if you keep reading). It is because I think, and others certainly agree, that a lot of qualitative inquiry has to do with writing (and reading). Frankly, being a decent writer may be one of the (more) important parts of being a researcher - if no one wants to read your stuff, then what difference will it ever make (like trees falling in the woods, etc.)? So as part of my ongoing efforts to become a better writer, I am reading as much as I can. There is also the fact that I do enjoy reading. At any given time, I am usually reading 2 or more text or academic books, so I like to mix it up with fiction or 'fun' books. Last summer, I worked through the "Tale of fire and ice" (i.e., "Game of Thrones") books published to date by George R. R. Martin and this year, I thoroughly enjoyed Lois McMaster Bujold's 'Vorkosigan' books (all but the one about Ivan which I have not yet got my hands on) along with Sherri S. Tepper's "True Game" and her 'Marianne' series, and a few other odds and ends.
I expected Manzoni (I have the Colquohoun translation) to read like Dickens - slow and enjoyable but dense. I find Dickens slow to read, by the way, because I do not want to risk missing anything; he had a great sense of wordplay and sarcasm and you may miss something if you are focused on just the action. But the Manzoni is going faster, more like a contemporary novel. Eco pointed this book out, I think, because of some of the creative elements of Manzoni's writing. The Eco "Six walks" book examines the concepts of 'model reader' and 'model writer' - who is being written for and by who. (If you read Eco, you will see that the answers to those questions are not so easy as you might think.) One example from Manzoni of moving back and forth within these concepts occurs as Fra Cristoforo, a Capuchin friar, is walking toward the home of some of the other characters. During this walk, Manzoni tells the story of how Fra Cristoforo became a friar - not necessarily surprisingly he had a somewhat different life before. Manzoni closes this description by noting that, while we have been hearing this story, Cristoforo finished his walk and here he is. So essentially we have the writer as narrator (character is walking) of the story, who then gives us a little back story in flashback, but, instead of just picking back up again, he refers to the fact that he told the story in an almost conversational way - like an actor breaking character with an aside - then he is back to the voice of the narrator. Now, this is not the first time I have ever seen this behavior on the part of an author - I can remember at this very minute a passage by C.S. Lewis in "The magician's nephew" which is similar. But it is the first time I have considered this as something that requires a certain type of thinking (and writing) on the part of an author.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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