Today's alerts

Several alerts for today, 28 November:

From the Brontë Parsonage Museum

Romance Revisited - Margaret Drabble

Novelist, biographer and critic, Margaret Drabble, will be speaking about and reading from her work and discussing the influence of the Brontës.
2.30pm - £3.75 (booking not required)
For futher information contact andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640194

Another alert comes from the University of Dublin, Trinity College:

As the TCD School of English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series continues, we are pleased to announce that the speakers for the final seminar of Michaelmas term are Dr. Melanie Otto and Antoinette Curtin. Details of both papers are as follows:

Dr. Melanie Otto, ‘White Creole or Rebel Slave? The Discourse of Slavery in Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark’

Antoinette Curtin, ‘“Too Alluring to be Strictly Decent”: Physical Beauty in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Literature’

In this paper I limit my discussion to a few of the major currents operative in eighteenth and nineteenth-century representations of beauty. I begin with a brief summary of recent sociological theories that support my claim that perceptions of the body and beauty alter throughout time. As the era that saw the birth of aesthetics and the foundations of the novel, the eighteenth century is crucial to my purposes. Supporting my argument with quotations from influential theorists such as William Hogarth and Edmund Burke, and the seminal novels of Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722) and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), I discuss some of the most significant similarities between eighteenth-century philosophical and novelistic representations of beauty. These I list as a shared belief in beauty as an objective quality, which can be universally recognised, and a mutual tendency to divide female beauty into a positive and a negative form. I argue that both elements are deeply influential upon the depiction of female beauty throughout the history of the novel. Next, I discuss some of the most significant changes in the representation of beauty in the nineteenth century. Stating my agreement with the arguments of critic Sally Shuttleworth and social historian Roy Porter, I relate the increase of physical description in the Victorian novel to social change. I argue that theorists, such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, used a self-consciously scientific vocabulary and methodology to support a conception of beauty that remained largely grounded in eighteenth-century philosophical ideals. I discuss the impact of the conventional bifurcation of beauty into positive and negative forms upon the work of female novelists, such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot. I present Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) as a pivotal moment in the representation of the literary heroine and argue that her attempt to portray beauty as subjective reaches an apotheosis in George Eliot’s depiction of Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda (1876).

From Bensenville, Illinois:

Bensenville Community Public Library
Book Brunch: Wide Sargasso Sea
Date: Wednesday, November 28
Time: 10:00 a.m.

Description: Join the staff of the Library for Book Brunch on Wednesday, November 28, at 10:00 a.m. to discuss Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Book Brunch meets the fourth Wednesday of the month at 10:00 a.m. Books are available at the library’s circulation desk. For more information, call the Library at (630) 766-4642.

And finally, from Garden City, New York:

The literary groups are still going strong. Sally Richmond 's group will tackle Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" on November 28 th for the G.C. Branch of A.A.U.W. Amy Small will be hostess and Alberta Maggio will be co-hostess.

Categories: Alert,Jane Eyre,Scholar,Talks,Wide Sargasso Sea