I keep thinking that I will eventually like a book in this class other than Fantomina and Pamela…but so far I haven’t. I just don’t think that I will like many books from this period. Although, the books that I have read, while not to my taste, have provided me with a necessary background of literary knowledge from the period. From my opening sentences you can guess how I feel about Rasselas. The beginning of Rasselas (which actually had any plot) was interesting and I hoped it would continue; however, once it became a dialogue of different views of philosophy and politics, I became discouraged. It reminds me of Plato’s The Republic. In that he carried on a dialogue in which he described various theories about the ‘Real’ and art. It has interesting parts, but after a while it becomes sort of drab. I have yet to finish Rasselas, but haven’t heard any good things about the end that make me want to read it. On the reading schedule, Rasselas is put under “anti-novel” and I agree completely. It is definitely the “anti” of the novels we have read so far. It is different from novels that I have ever read, excluding Plato’s The Republic. I will try to finish Rasselas before the end of term…but I have much higher hopes for the other novels we are to read in class–especially the Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho.
