Word: authoress
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Authoress Buck's magnum opus is not her own. She herself does not know who the author was, says it might have been Shih Nai-an but thinks it more likely that this massive (1,279-page) medieval novel, like the cathedrals of France, the epics of Homer, was the work of many forgotten hands. First written down some six centuries ago, it probably had wide if fragmentary currency 200 years before that. Says Translator Buck: "All Men Are Brothers is a great pageant of China. I think it is one of the most magnificent pageants ever made...
...translation is a simpler and better job of writing than Authoress Buck's other books. It is as literal, says she, as possible; tries to mirror faithfully the vernacular of the original; omits nothing. Readers will be glad to know, however, that Translator Buck has simplified proper names throughout. She carefully checked her translation word for original word with Chinese Scholar M. H. Lung; when it was finished went over it again with "another Chinese friend...
Historians rarely reconstruct a world convincingly: their models may be correct to the last detail but the clockwork that runs them is modern. Really moving pictures of the past are made not by scholarship but by imagination. Authoress Waddell has resurrected the famed love-affair of Heloise and Abelard not simply by the dusting and patching of documents but by putting together many a vanished two and two. The result, as any reader may verify without benefit of historical knowledge. seems historically true. And though its horizon is ringed with the theological thunder of that far-off day, its medieval...
...orthodox Catholic theology (once thought sufficient to contain the universe) Abelard was not only a brilliant scholar but a bold thinker. Envious' and less able enemies had maneuvered him out of one hall of learning after another, but wherever he was he drew throngs of worshipful listeners. Authoress Waddell's narrative finds him at the peak of his career, the shining star of the Paris Schools. When old Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, invited Abelard to share his house and tutor his beautiful niece Heloise, Abelard was living the unconsciously uncomfortable life of a natural bachelor. Under Fulbert...
...swore a terrible revenge. One night as Abelard slept hired bravos seized and gelded him. Now there was no longer any place for the arrogant Abelard; he who might have been a prince of the Church became its pauper. He and Heloise were separated forever. But when Authoress Waddell's story leaves him, an infinitely sadder, somewhat wiser man, his thatched hut in the country has become another lecture-hall, and once more he is emptying Paris of its scholars...