Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Note on Cymbeline

Quick note on a speech of Iachimo to Imogen (Innogen), which I think most editors have got wrong. Iachimo is trying to imply that Imogen's beloved Posthumus has been unfaithful to her.
What! are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes
To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop
Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt
The fiery orbs above, and the twinn'd stones
Upon the numbered beach, and can we not
Partition make with spectacles so precious
'Twixt foul, and fair?
"Twinn'd" might not mean what you think it is (more on that in a moment). There is also a textual crux to note: "th'unnumbered beach" or "the number'd" beach? (See Note 1).

A plausible enough reading would be something like, "Wow, how is it that certain men (not naming any names or anything) can distinguish really fine details, e.g. distinguish which star is which, or distinguish between two grains of sands that look identical from a distance ... and yet can fail to tell the difference between a foul woman and a fair one?"

Nosworthy's Arden Cymbeline seems a bit confused in this scene overall. Like most editors, Nosworth interprets "distinguish" as "distinguish orb from orb, and stone from stone." (See Note 2). The more recent Wayne Arden edition is way better and hugely useful, but it also goes with "the countless stones that the human eye can differentiate from one another." 

But there's another strong reading here. It's not altogether different: the two readings are as different as two grains of sand, maybe?

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

SFF and Psychology

I asked on Twitter for recommendations of SF writers interested in psychology, maybe with a slant toward hard sf (whatever that means). The thread still grows even though I have long since ceased feeding it heart. Here are some:

Alfred Bester (The Demolished Man)
Angela Carter (The Passion of New Eve)
Ann Leckie
Anne McCaffrey (Crystal Singers)
Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
B.A. Chepaiti (Fear books)
Brian Aldiss (The Primal Urge)
C.R. Dudley
Chris Beckett
Connie Willis (Crosstalk)
Cory Doctorow (Walkaway, 'Chicken Little')
Diana Wynne Jones ('Carol Oneir's Hundredth Dream')
Doris Lessing (Canopus in Argos)
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth Moon (Speed of Dark)
Emma Newman
George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Greg Bear (</Slant>)
Greg Egan
Gregory Benford (The Stars in Shroud)
Ian Watson (The Embedding)
Isaac Asimov (Foundation)
Jack Vance (Languages of Pao)
James Tiptree Jnr
Karen Ripley (Slow World)
Kingsley Amis ('Something Strange')
Linda Nagata
Matthew de Abaitua (The Red Men, etc.)
Michael Crichton (The Terminal Man)
Michael Swanwick (Vacuum Flowers)
N.K. Jemisin (Broken Earth)
Nancy Kress (Beggars in Spain)
Nicola Griffiths (Cherryh's Cyteen, Ammonite)
Pat Cadigan (Mindplayers)
Pat Murphy ('Rachel in Love')
Peter Watts (Blindsight, Into the Rift)
Philip K. Dick (The Alphane Moon, etc.)
Raphael Carter ('Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation')
Samuel R. Delaney (Babel 17)
Theodore Sturgeon (More Than Human)
Ursula Le Guin (Left Hand of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven, etc.)
Vernor Vinge (A Deepness in the Sky)
Zenna Henderson ('The People')

There is also Psychology: A Literary Introduction (ed. Laura Corlew and Charles Waugh).

An essay by Tansy Rayner Roberts on neurodiversity and mental health treatment in TV SFF.

Gavin Miller has an academic book on SF and pyschology in the works.