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Cargando... Reynard the Fox (1919)por John Masefield
   Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. 4   reading_fox | May 25, 2009 |  sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
A phenomenal bestseller after its publication in 1919, this work was widely seen as a masterful poetic response to the horrors of World War I. A long narrative poem about a foxhunt, the work also evokes the beauty of English countryside and considers the meaning of courage. The poem was recorded by the author and adapted as a radio play much-beloved by the British public, and although the poem does not overtly criticize foxhunting, it prompted national debate on the subject. Out of print for years, the poem is now newly corrected from the original manuscript and presented alongside other pastoral writing by Masefield, including the essay "Fox-Hunting." No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)821Literature English English poetryClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.67)
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1
Turn of the last century poetry in rhyming couplets and uneven meter, varying between 8 and 9 syllables a line without an obvious pattern. The jumps are very disconcerting. The author's habit of mostly ending a verse in a hanging rhyme is also quite annoying, especially because it is only most of the verses not all of them. Some of the rhymes are a bit forced as are the attempts to keep meter. Once (and only once which makes it worse) he resorts to starting a new sentence mid line, and there are a few bracketed expressions which only make sense in terms of trying to abide by the meter. Some of the language is archaic or rural dialect (what sort of pet is a pyat?) which adds to the difficulties of the modern reader.
Content wise it isn't much better. It is a short tale set in verse without allegory or illusion, of a grouping of village worthies gathering and then departing on a hunt for the fox of the title. Who isn't in anyway related to any of the famous Reynards, it appears in this case to be a generic name for a generic fox. Pages and pages detail briefly the persons of the hunt and especially their wives and daughters who then don't appear anywhere else in the text.
The actual hunt is told from the fox's point of view, which means that having introduced all the riders we don't actually get to hear anything about any of their exploits. The fox being a dumb brute, doesn't think of very much other than the panic of the chase and isn't exactly clever or full of that renowned foxy cunning. Rather inexplicably it also turns out that all the fox earths in a 10 mile radius appear to have been blocked up! This is just lazy writing. I'm sure that it was normal practise to block those known about from local foxes. But 10miles! that's a vast area of land, with no assurance that the actual fox you are chasing will head in that direction. It does manage to add a little dramatic tension to the story though which raises it from half to one single full star in rating. I won't spoil the ending, suffice to say it's an extremely weak cop-out.
Don't bother ploughing through this drivel.
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