Re: water systems - Re: Beckfoot


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Posted by Guy C. on March 13, 2006 at 05:54:15 from 67.78.96.82 user Astronomer_Guy.

In Reply to: Re: water systems - Re: Beckfoot posted by Peter Ceresole on March 13, 2006 at 00:55:52:

Actually, this sort of discussion is excellent for another, very apropos reason. These books were written some 70 years ago for English children who presumably knew what sorts of houses, plumbing, food, etc. was common and so the slight allusions to them that Ransome made were perfectly adequate. For us today, living in a world that would have been nothing but science-fictional to those readers, that kind of knowledge can no longer be assumed. Thus these very learned discussions of plumbing or popular breakfast foods fill a needed gap to help us understand the stories better.

A perfect example from this very thread is the cryptic line "water in the bathroom" cited from PM. Would the meaning have been obvious to Ransome and his readers, or was the ambiguity intentional? We can't understand the scene without knowing something about what Ransome and his readers would have been able to assume about the plumbing at Beckfoot.


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