The Republic of Heaven

Found in an Oxfam shop for 99p, I have to describe this picture.

Manifestly a copy, on the window-sill sits a half-burnt candle, and single apple. What d'you call a single glazed window, divided into different regular-sized panes by wood?

Outside, is a Oxfordshire-like scene: a parish church, and Tudor-style houses. In the distance I can see medieval fields and hedgeows, plus the begining of rolling hills.

Most strikingly, flying by are two gorgeous swans... or are they witches' daemons?

All in all, like LO this is a simple yet strangely beautiful picture.
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It may be as it is said in Lyra's Oxford

"Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it"

It may be as it is said in Lyra's Oxford

"Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it"

I do feel a bit queasy about this you know. There's one area where I take a quite different view from PP's. PP read literature at Oxford in the classical, Leavisite, canonical and text-oriented tradition. He's notably scornful of literary theory - and I think thjis is an expression of his scorn.

I came late to studying literature so I was steeped in the post-structuralism and learned from a theory-centred perspective. The prevailing philosophy of the latter part of the twentieth century maintained that nothing has intrinsic meaning, that the meaning of a text is not fixed but negotiated with each individual reader in the light of the reader's own ideology and experience of the world.

That, of course, is why we all have our own firm ideas about whether Lyra and Will were bonking each others brains out, or whether Baruch and Balthamos were doing the same.

I have to say, post-structuralism sounds to me to just be a good excuse for when you interpret things incorrectly.

*Smugly grins, abruptly ducks, and subsequently runs.*

I have to say, post-structuralism sounds to me to just be a good excuse for when you interpret things incorrectly.

Well young Max, we know you're a dyed-in-the-wool empiricist who ignores evidence that contradicts the surface meaning

I have to say, post-structuralism sounds to me to just be a good excuse for when you interpret things incorrectly.

*Smugly grins, abruptly ducks, and subsequently runs.*

<Grabs telescopic splatting-device>

<Squishes Max>