Experts in rare books and manuscripts expressed relief that none of the most treasured possessions appeared to be damaged. These include thousands of items in the recently acquired John Murray Archive, which contains more than 1,200 hand-written pieces by Lord Byron, and works by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen, and a manuscript of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. (Mike Wade)Peter Wise considers that the northern region of Portugal is very similar to Brontë country. In Financial Times:
Emily Brontë would have felt at home in the Alto Minho. The wuthering heights of Portugal’s northernmost region are as wild and exhilarating as the Yorkshire moors, a landscape of “intractable mountains, dark woods, deep valleys and dangerous ravines”, according to a monk who reached the area in the 17th century. The weather rarely strays from what Brontë called “atmospheric tumult” and the people, like her tempestuous characters, see themselves as fearless, headstrong and rebelliousLucy Mangon confesses her lack of Dickens literary background in this article in The Guardian. Fortunately her Brontës are strong:
When I was 13, we all had to do a school project on the Brontës, and once you've given teenage girls a taste of their alienated, agonised, windswept history ("God, they're just like me but without central heating!") the mental and temporal distances between you telescope nicely and the hitherto imposing books on the shelf suddenly transform from menacing to manageable.More Dickens. Los Angeles Times discusses a couple of Dickens sequels ('Drood' by Dan Simmons and 'The Last Dickens' by Matthew Pearl) and mentions a couple of Brontë ones:
So, I think a project on Dickens might have saved me. But even in the relatively halcyon days (can you believe it?) of the 1980s curriculum, there was only time to get to grips with one literary colossus per state school career - I don't know if you've ever tried reading Jane Eyre three to a book: it takes a while - so Dickens sat, fatly, frighteningly on the bookcase at home and in the library, undisturbed by me.
The timing seems right for someone to take Dickens on again. Prequels and sequels have long been part of the publishing landscape. Do you remember "H."? Lin Haire-Sargeant's 1992 novel imagined Heathcliff's life before his return in "Wuthering Heights." At the time, people admired her ingenuity (did they forget about Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea"?) in filling the gaps of a classic work of fiction -- now, the novelty has become a motley genre with a diverse membership. (Nick Owchar)Talking about Dickens: we would like to welcome to the literary corner of the blogosphere a new blog devoted to Charles Dickens: Dickensblog.
You could not help but be swayed by the romantic, almost Bronte-ian vision of beautiful young girls, their faces seemingly transfixed by tragedy, peeping out from beneath the small brims of black felt hats, as they swayed past in taupe suede trenches over white cotton, Victorian-style, simple dresses; white 'governess' shirts allied to floating, below-the-knee, black chiffon skirts; and almost-homely, beige, long-line sweaters and black-and-white, tweed skirts with raised seam details. (Hilary Alexander)The Wesleyan Argus, the student newspaper of the Wesleyan University, talks to Professor Susanne Fusso, professor of Russian language and literature and chair of the Russian department who considers Charlotte Brontë:
I suppose my favorite non-Russian writer of all after Jane Austen is Charlotte Bronte, especially “Villette”. (Liz Wojnar)Chelsea Phipps in The Seattle Literary Examiner poses the following question:
If you had to recommend five books to someone who had just learned how to speak English, five books to introduce this person to the greatest of what English Literature has to offer, which would you choose? Answer this question in your mind, your own five favorites. What is on your list? Now make a list of the five books an English teacher or professor would make. Is Jane Eyre on that list? (...) As a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s English Department, I have definitely read all of these novels. In fact, I read all of these novels more than once while attempting to earn my English degree. Along with the usual suspects: Dickens, the Brontë sisters, and Austen, I also read James Joyce’s The Dubliners, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein multiple times throughout my collegiate career. (The worst offenders being Great Expectations and Jane Eyre, both of which I read four times during college).The Chicago Tribune has a Brontë-related reason for the closing of a Borders bookshop in the city:
It's not my favorite bookstore. Ever since they moved the fiction section into the dungeon—that may be a tad melodramatic, born of too many feverish readings of the Bronte sisters, but you do have to ride the down escalator to get there—I've been a little disgruntled with the Borders at 830 N. Michigan Ave. (Julia Keller)As we have reported before the Northern Ballet Theatre will celebrate its 40th birthday recovering their Wuthering Heights production (David Nixon & Claude-Michel Schönberg). The Yorkshire Post interviews David Nixon:
Then I wanted to show the company today so we're doing a scene from Bayadere and finally Angels in the Architecture, a contemporary piece which I've always loved. Later this year we'll revive Wuthering Heights, the first work I created for the company. Then the two signature works Romeo and Juliet and A Christmas Carol and we've decided to revive Peter Pan to improve the Christmas season. (Nick Ahad)Michale Bannister, president of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, is also interviewed by The Yorkshire Post:
If you had to name your Yorkshire hidden gem, what would it be?Cinco Días (Spain) talks about houses which have been turned into museums. A mention to the Parsonage is mandatory:
We've been very lucky because we have some moorland in what is known as Brontë country, and there's a place called Top Withens which is actually said to be the location of Wuthering Heights. We have a barn up there, which is now converted into a little lodge. It's truly idyllic with beautiful views, heather all around and grouse calling in the background. There's a certain Brontë romance about the place with its wildness and ruggedness.
Hay parajes inolvidables, como la rectoría de Yorkshire, en cuya cocina la silenciosa Emily Brontë cocía pan mientras memorizaba sus lecciones de alemán. (Marta Matute) (Google translation)ABC (Spain) publishes an article about Ernest Hemingway and recalls an anecdote of the author tangentially related to Emily Brontë. Specifically with this copy of Wuthering Heights:
Hemingway cubrió con los signos de su estilográfica una parte considerable de un ejemplar de Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë, publicado en Londres en 1935. Son tres columnas de cifras que aparecen en la cubierta, solapas, primeras páginas e incluso sobre el título de la obra clásica inglesa. Hemingway se preocupa por la marcha de su salud. La primera columna señala la hora; la segunda, la temperatura; la tercera, las pulsaciones.Die Herzogin (Germany) reviews the film The Duchess and describes it as a bad Brontë lookalike:
0745 35.9 60
1200 37 66
1600 36,7 66
1800 36,6 54
Las observaciones abarcan desde el 25 de noviembre hasta el 6 de diciembre. El año no está consignado. Tiene explicaciones breves de los movimientos que pueden influir en el comportamiento de su organismo. «Up to dinner», levantarse para comer, escribe en una ocasión. «Up to telephone», levantarse a por el teléfono, en otra. Pero se registran pocas afectaciones. La temperatura y el pulso se mantienen en su nivel.
Hemingway, hipertenso, y también impaciente, tomaba su pulso sólo durante medio minuto.
Hay otra inscripción, de índole diferente, en la última página de Cumbres borrascosas. Es la anotación inicial del libro de remembranzas parisinas de Hemingway, que tiene el título aquí de The Lean and Lovely Years. Se convertiría años después en París era una fiesta. (Norberto Fuentes) (Google translation)
Liest sich die Inhaltsangabe des Films wie die Zusammenfassung einer schlechten Verfilmung des Werke Jane Austens oder der Geschwister Brontë, so merkt der Zuschauer doch recht schnell, dass hinter Der Herzogin mehr steckt als bloß ein weiteres pompös aufgeblasenes Kostümspiel. (Tobias Haupts) (Google translation)Tidningen Kulturen (Sweden) talks to the Swedish writer and illustrator Amanda Hellberg, who seems to be a Brontëite
Det heter ju också att man kan bli slav under sina drifter och begär. Jag är ingen expert på beroenden, men ämnet fascinerar mig uppenbarligen eftersom min D-uppsats i litteraturvetenskap till viss del rörde vid liknande tankegångar (den handlade om självsvältsmotivet i Brontêsystrarnas verk Jane Eyre och Svindlande höjder). Ofta tror jag att ett beroende kan komma till som en plåsterfunktion, en form av bedövning på en värkande längtan efter något annat. Eller som ett slags trots, ett långfinger mitt i ansiktet på livet, en "devil-may-care"-attityd. Men jag vet faktiskt inte om man kan ta sig ur ett beroende eller en beroendeställning helt orispad. (Bo Jörgen Sandberg) (Google translation)Anything and Everything posts about Jane Eyre, Textualities posts a review of Janet Gezari's Last Things:
Her useful and highly readable study charts the development of Emily Brontë’s work in poetry, providing analyses of individual poems and discussing her writing practice. The book devotes chapters to the ‘Fragments’ and, as one would hope and expect, to the theme of death that pervades the poems. The chapter entitled ‘Posthumous Brontë’ is particularly fascinating, detailing Charlotte Brontë’s ‘aggressive editing’ of her sister’s poems for publication in the 1850 edition; her self-appointed role as keeper of her sisters’ reputations; and Charlotte Brontë ‘writing as her sister and then attributing what she had written to her.’ (Michael Lister)Categories: Books, Brontëites, Dance, Haworth, Jane Eyre, References, Movies-DVD-TV, Poetry, Sequels, Wuthering Heights
de Volkskrant interviews Dutch author Mensje van Keulen whose latest book, Een goed verhaal, contains a story, Bedevaart, with plenty of Brontë background, including a trip to Haworth:Een goed verhaalAnother non-English book with Brontë content is La Lettre et le Fantôme:
Mensje van Keulen
Uitgeverij Atlas
Pagina's: 160
ISBN: 9789045014692
Verschenen: Februari 2009
Catalogus: Voorjaar 2009 (groen)
Hoe begint ze een verhaal? ‘Ik wist een paar jaar geleden dat ik iets wilde schrijven over een man die een portemonneetje op straat vond – een keurige man die door die vondst in een ander milieu terecht komt, als hij op zoek gaat naar de eigenares.’ Vervolgens ontstaat er een verhaal over een man die van de ene verbazing in de andere valt, je weet niet of hij bestolen gaat worden of vermoord, of juist verliefd wordt, alles lijkt te kunnen. Zo bekeken toont Van Keulen in Een goed verhaal alle ingrediënten die een verhaal goed kunnen maken, op smaak brengen, geestig met een latente gruwel en spanning, haar signatuur.
‘Ja, je weet niet eens of dat hele verhaal is bedacht door de vrouw bij wie het portemonneetje terecht komt. Ik weet dat ook niet als ik het verhaal schrijf. Dat is het heerlijke aan fictie. Al deze verhalen zijn verzonnen. Behalve dat ik, net als de lerares, ook een bedevaartsreis naar Haworth heb gemaakt, naar de pastorie waar de zusjes Brontë hebben geleefd en geschreven. Die reis maakte ik drie jaar geleden om een boekhandel te bezoeken, om daar verslag van te doen voor een boek van de Boekverkopersbond, Uit liefde in boeken. Een realistisch reisverslag, dan zit je vast aan wat er is voorgevallen.
‘Maar toen ik daar was, wist ik al dat ik er nog liever fictie over wilde schrijven – en dat is ‘Bedevaart’ geworden, een verhaal over een wat dweperige vrouw die op een schip naar Engeland gaat, en in Haworth ’s nachts op het kerkhof doolt, die in een eng en benauwd pension logeert, en dronken omvalt in de pisgoot van een pub. Uit het niets een verhaal te voorschijn trekken, vind ik het prettigst om te doen. Als ik daar mee bezig ben, valt de buitenwereld aangenaam weg.
Uit ‘Bedevaart’: ‘Ook bij de King’s Arms hangt een bierlucht. Wanneer er in het mortuarium geen plaats was, bewaarde de begrafenisondernemer de lijken hier in de kelder. Van de naburige brouwerij en slachterij sijpelden bierafval en bloed naar binnen. Daarover schreef Charlotte Brontë in haar brieven niet.’
Het kan niet goed aflopen, dat voel je. ‘Nou’, zegt Mensje van Keulen opgewekt, ‘ik wilde haar eerst inderdaad de hersens laten inslaan, op dat zompige kerkhof. Nadat ze uit de pisbak was opgekrabbeld. Uiteindelijk paste het beter om haar te laten leven –het was anders in een pure gothic novel geëindigd, en nu correspondeert het in sfeer beter met wat bijvoorbeeld Wuthering heights van Emily Brontë aan heftigheid en droombeelden oproept.’ (Arjan Peters) (Google translation)
La lettre et le fantômeThe contents can be read on Sillages Critiques. Particularly, the chapter which mentions Emily Brontë is:
Le spectral dans la littérature et les arts (Angleterre, Etats-Unis)
(dir.) Élisabeth Angel-Perez et Pierre Iselin
28/10/2006
208 p.
ill. couleurs et n. & bl.
ISBN : 2-84050-475-8
De Shakespeare à Emily Brontë, de James à Andy Warhol, le fantôme, le spectre, la hantise : autant de manifestations paranormales qui habitent la littérature et les arts anglophones. Tout texte littéraire, ventriloque par définition, fait « entendre des voix ». Autant dire que l’imaginaire de l’angliciste est peuplé de ces créatures qui continuellement font retour. Au spectral s’attachent, en forme d’oxymore, à la fois le ludique et le morbide, la certitude que l’oeuvre ne peut être que le reste, la trace, le négatif. Le spectral, c’est donc le vide, le deuil, l’absence qui se donnent en spectacle comme devenus lisibles. C’est à cette lisibilité-là ou à cette visibilité-là que les études de ce volume s’intéressent. De l’archéologie du texte à la psychanalyse, de la génétique à la stylistique, de l’esthétique à la musique, les articles de ce volume tentent tous de cerner les différentes modalités de la hantise et de cerner au plus près le concept de spectralité. (Google translation)
Alter Ego Artist's WorkshopCategories: Arts-Exhibition, Brontë Parsonage Museum
This workshop, led by Victor Buta, will use the Alter Ego exhibition as inspiration for both beginner and experienced artists to create new works based on the Brontës' signatures, by enlarging the Brontës' handwriting to create abstract compoisitions. The day include a visit to the museum collections to see examples of original Brontë signatures and correspondence.
Old School Room - £25.00/ £15.00 concession (includes admission to the Museum and refreshments).
His love for the subject was displayed with charm, wit and the timing of a natural storyteller.Bella Online posts about the history of women's literature. Including the Brontës, of course:
Assistance came from the veteran actor Gabriel Woolf, who read extracts with controlled passion from Gray's Elegy, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, AE Housman's A Shropshire Lad and Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
Mr Dexter described the latter as "our greatest novelist and this his greatest book". (Philip Welch)
Emily Bronte was one of three sisters who became famous authors. She wrote only one novel, the classic, “Wuthering Heights.” But she wrote moreAcaciaMovies has uploaded to YouTube a trailer for Villette:
poetry, one of her more famous works was titled, “Love and Friendship.”
Her sister Charlotte penned “Jane Eyre,” the epic love story between the dark, mysterious Mr. Rochester at Thornfield Hall and the simple orphan, Jane.
An advert for the 2009 film, Villette by Charlotte Bronte starring Rosie Fletcher as Lucy Snowe, Ollie Wiggins as John Graham Bretton and Scott MacFadyen as M. Paul. Filmed at Heslington Hall, University of York. Featuring 'A New Hope', 'Lesser Evil' and 'Atrox Fatalis' by X-Ray Dog and 'I try' by Macy Gray.Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Scholar, Talks, Theatre, Villette
A new chance to see Kazuko Hohki's Wuthering Heights. Today, February 27 at the SHUNT Lounge (London):Kazuko Hohki's Wuthering HeightsEDIT: Apparently this event has been filmed for Japanese TV.
Fri 27 8pm
Stemming from a childhood fascination with an epic classic, Kazuko Hohki invites you to join her and Colin Carmichael of BRIAN (‘the boy band of British Theatre’) as they take a journey across the dark North Yorkshire moors to Wuthering Heights.
Inspired by Emily Bronte’s seminal novel, Kazuko & Colin revisit this classic tale to present their very own take on love, delusion, passion, death and 70’s disco as seen through the eyes of a Japanese tourist and some very curious sheep.
Brontë Goes To Bollywood is the Production's Diary of the upcoming Tamasha Theatre à la Bollywood adaptation of Wuthering Heights. These are the latest entries:“Wuthering Heights” Rehearsals - Week 3 (19 February 2009)It includes several pictures and videos of the rehearsals (Picture: Gary Pillai and Youkti Patel rehearsing their dance. Source)
Our director Kristine Landon-Smith told me how excited she is with the creative team members and the new additions in the rehearsal room:
“Week 3 and things are moving very fast. I have laid down the whole work in detail and I ran the show last Friday and again this morning (Monday). Nikki, our choreographer joined us today and I handed things over to her. This is always an interesting transition point - its wonderful to begin to get another significant input on the rehearsal floor - already Nikki has picked up on things that needed some attention and she has begun to tease out movement detail (which impacts on the whole) in the large choreographic sequences and also in smaller moments. So now we are working together with a shared vision and the actors need to adjust to having both me and Nikki guiding them through the work. Deepak, book writer and Sudha who wrote additional text were also in rehearsal today and I discussed textual details and Hindi pronunciations. (Read more)
Keighley News talks about a very sweet event taken place in Haworth this weekend (as we informed previously):People will be able to sample fairtrade chocolate at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and Brontë Weaving Shed, in Haworth, later this month.The Haywood County News announces the next season of the Haywood Arts Regional Theater season (Waynesville, North Carolina):
The chocolate tasting on Saturday, February 28, is part of Haworth’s Fairtrade Fortnight celebrations. There will be a quiz about fairtrade and Haworth, with entry forms available for collection at the Tourist Information Centre, in Main Street. The winner will receive a Fairtrade goods hamper, donated by the Oakworth Co-op store.
Also, cafés in Haworth will be serving refreshments made from ethically purchased ingredients.
And the day will culminate with a Fairtrade “Chuffin Fair” at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway’s Oxenhope engine shed, in Mill Lane. The 6.30pm fair will be attended by Bruce Crowther, who was responsible for launching the nationwide movement of Fairtrade towns.
Rita Verity, of Haworth Fairtrade group, said there were only a limited number of places available for the fair. Contact her on 01535 647776.
The old friend is Haywood Arts Regional Theater, the county's thriving community theater organization. And the party is HART's 25th anniversary season.The auditions are scheduled for next August:
What a season it will be, with seven big shows hitting the boards beginning with the award-winning comedy “The Drawer Boy” in April and winding down with Shakespeare's classic “Hamlet” in November, funded by a grant from the N.C. Arts Council.
The playbill includes “Honk!,” a musical based on “The Ugly Duckling”; “The Immigrant,” a tale of two Eastern European Jews who immigrate in 1909 to a small Texas town; the wildly popular Mel Brooks musical “The Producers”; and “Jane Eyre: The Musical.” (Bill Studenc)
"Jane Eyre: The Musical"Teen Tix reviews the ongoing Seattle production of this musical:
Directed by Art O'Neil with Music Direction by Melodie Galloway
August 9 & 10 at 6:30 pm
Multiple Roles for Men and Women of Various Ages and Young Girls
This is a dramatic musical that requires singing but does not have choreography.
Every song was beautifully accompanied by Paul Linnes and his five piece band. They really made the music come to life magnificently, whether it is sombre or upbeat. Another impressive aspect of the show was the amazing use of space accomplished by Carl Bronsdon. There were no major set changes, yet it was always clearly defined were each person was. Instead of hiding one bed onstage and having people shuffling around it, or having them pushed on stage, they were all expertly hidden.What's On Stage reviews the current performances of Charles Ludlum's The Mystery of Irma Vep in the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh:
The cast was full of wonderful talent, though some needed to be slightly tweaked to perform at their fullest capacity. The leads Danielle Barnum as Jane Eyre and James Padilla as Edward Rochester were both extremely talented singers and had compelling stage chemistry. The only faults were that Danielle’s monologues seemed a tad rushed, and James seemed to lack a focal point, making it hard for the audience to connect.
The audience was full of laughter whenever the housekeeper, played by Balayn Sharlples, surrendered her cheerful renditions that kept the performance upbeat. Her performance was the perfect contrast to the more sombre side of the musical. Another shining member of the cast was the competitive lover Ms. Ingram, played by Jenny Shotwell. Her zooming low and high notes rendered Ingram a perfect rendition of a painted peacock.
The young orphan girls both seem to be budding stars. It was amazing to see such an astounding voice on such a young girl as Olivia Spokiny, whose character Helen dies. Though she did seem to be a bit lively for her death scene, the rest of the time her acting was well performed and accomplished. Also, young Keaton performs her role wonderfully drawing the audience into the story.
The whole cast worked well as a team and played off each other marvellously. The interesting use of the whole cast was well accomplished by the ensemble. They were all accomplished in acting and in voice. Their timing never missed a beat. The singing and most of the performance was consistent and well performed. Though the transitions needed to be more built up or sharper in their execution. Every time there was a change of events it brought you out of the story. Instead of feeling “How could this happen”, it tended to turn into a “Wait, what just happened?” feel. Similarly, other parts of the performance seemed to be less true to the severe nature of the situation intended by the original author.
Overall the theatre was lovely and made you feel very much at home. With a lot of community help in the lobby it had a very comfortable feel. The show is defiantly worth seeing because of its life lessons and the considerable talent in the cast. Though it needed some slight changes over all, Jane Eyre was well performed and made for a truly enjoyable night out. (Pete R.)
Set in a perpetually creaking country house, complete with Wuthering Heights moor (and compulsory fog), newly weds Lord Edgar and Lady Enid fall prey to the tribulations of any good gothic romance. (Rebecca Pottinger)Michael Fassbender's possible Heathcliff role in the Wuthering Heights film projected (now apparently directed by Peter Webber) is mentioned in The Times:
In recent months he has been mentioned as Heathcliffe (sic) in a new film of Wuthering Heights and in the Dennis Waterman role, opposite Ray Winstone, in a movie version of The Sweeney. (Ed Potton)The Telegraph lists several British holiday accommodations:
Yorkshire Cottages has about 260 properties in the Dales, York and on the coast. Higher Scholes Cottage, near Haworth and Brontë Country, sleeps four and costs £530 for a week in May. (Nick Trend)A book a day, or the year of reading dangerously mentions a forgotten biography of the Brontës, Flora Masson's The Brontës (1912):
This is a biography of the Bronte family. It's only 92 pages long so leaves you wanting to know more about some of the incidents mentioned, but overall it is a very good introduction. The story of the Brontes is so well known of course that you will find yourself recognising each of the scenes as they take place.Today, we have contrasting views on the blogosphere: What KT Reads doesn't like Wuthering Heights but Le Parole Dipinte posts a positive review (in Italian); K.C. from K.C . and Michelle Family Blog has read Jane Eyre but he seems to miss entirely the point. You can compare his views with Thursday Night Cafe's who has a very different perspective.
The book itself is an old one, published in 1914. It's funny that the author thinks the Brontes will come to be underrated. She writes "Charlotte Bronte and her family have taken their place, once for all, among the literary enthusiasms of a bygone age". Of course she has been proved very wrong! (Fifecat)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte The Great Books ClubCategories:Alert, Biography, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights
Thursday, Feb 26 at 7:30 PM
Emily Bronte wrote but one novel in her brief life, and for many years it was thought to be inferior to her sister Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. However, though both works by these Bronte women are now considered classic works of English Literature, many critics today believe that Emily's Wuthering Heights is the superior work, because of its display of original compositional approaches with interlaced plotting, and its highly engrossed depictions of disturbed psychologies and psychologically fractured relationships. What is more, Emily creates something new from old cloth, by complicating traditional Gothic devices of the supernatural and moods of dread to give them deeper metaphorical and metaphysical meanings linked to family psychodrama. It is a tale of tortured love, social incongruity, sibling rivalry taken to pathological levels of intergenerational vengeance, divided souls, passionate asexual love, a Pandora's Box of woeful inter-class impermeability, madness born of compounded tragedy, and compassionate servants swept up into the fevered agonies of their pitiable yet heroic and anti-heroic masters and mistresses. Yet overall, the story is about two intertwined issues: a mutual love of dual personalities that must not be requited, and the mysterious nature of a physically foreign yet psychically kindred foundling, who grows up to be the undoing of an entire family. In short, compassion becomes curse, when one generation's nurturing declines into another generation's ultimate rejection of the adopted child, a being at once too familiar and too strange for comfort, and with the power to destroy. Please join Dr. Joe Reese of Ohio University's Department of English Language and Literature for a lively lecture and discussion of this great Nineteenth Century British novel.
Non Solo Cinema reviews the production of the comic opera Le Sorelle Brontë by Bernard de Zogheb at the Biennale di Venezia:Lo spettacolo di Davide Livermore, con la collaborazione drammaturgica di Stefano Valanzuolo, ripercorre in modo divertente il libretto, ma non rende appieno la componente linguistica che si percepisce solamente con intercalari e cadenze delle badanti che si occupano delle tre sorelle. Sarebbe stata utile la presenza dei sopratitoli o fornire una spiegazione del lavoro di adattamento. La vicenda, assolutamente demenziale, procede bene tra costruzioni musicali che richiamano generi completamente diversi tra loro, e momenti allegri e giocosi, come non mancano spunti di riflessione e di satira di costume anche su temi attuali. Perspicaci le stoccate alle suore tiranne delle case di riposo, o alla tratta delle badanti dell’est Europa, così come è spiritosa la chiacchierata tra Emiglia e Dio. Molto meno risulta l’infelice richiamo ad una realtà attuale e problematica come la fine della vita, troppo seria per essere usata a misero espediente di richiamo. Una caduta di stile che lo spettacolo tuttavia regge perché la storia è portata avanti dai bravi attori-cantanti, capitanati da uno spiritoso e disinvolto Alfonso Antoniozzi nei panni di Carlotta, la perfida delle tre sorelle. (Sebastiano Bollato) (Google translation)Another review can be found on Cazzeggi litterari :
Dal solo titolo, tuttavia, pochi avrebbero potuto sospettare che si trattava, in realtà, di un musical e per giunta tutto da ridere. È una sorta di rivisitazione alla Paolo Poli della biografia delle ardenti sorelle scrittrici, a partire dal seguente pretesto: all'interno della clinica e casa di riposo per artisti "CIME TEMPESTOSE", gremita di infermiere e badanti d'ogni parte d'Europa (ma soprattutto dell'Est), la madre superiora impone che si rappresenti la dimenticabile pièce in lingua franca "Le sorelle Brontë", già cavallo di battaglia di un'anziana ospite, la "Signora". Il tutto per compiacere, appunto, i parenti della catalettica ex attrice, principali sostenitori della struttura. Ed ecco che, in un giorno di visite, la sgangherata compagnia composta da vecchi e malmessi ospiti della casa, da un multietnico staff di badanti, da una suora e da un infermiere propone il risultato dei loro comici sforzi: siamo nel salotto di casa Brontë, il capofamiglia è morto lasciando nella disperazione le tre figlie Anna, Carlotta, Emiglia (sic!) ed il fratello etilista Branwell... (Lucio Angelini) (Google translation)The Festival Internazionale di Teatro's blog also posts a review of the show (with some pictures):
Vaudeville, cabaret, operetta: difficile dare una definizione a Le sorelle Brontë in scena al Teatro Goldoni per la regia di Davide Livermore. Parti recitate si alternano ad altre cantate sulle arie più disparate e note, da Verdi a famosissime canzonette, in una scena semplice che, con pochi elementi, ricostruisce un ospizio di qualche decennio fa. Infermiere e suore di tutte le nazionalità rendono viva e assolutamente plausibile l’astrusa lingua franca in cui è composto il libretto di de Zogheb.Categories: Music, Opera
Il gioco musicale è dichiarato fin dalle prime battute, aggiunte al testo originale da Stefano Valanzuolo per creare un’introduzione ed una giustificazione alla messa in scena dell’operetta all’interno della casa di cura – che diviene una recita per i parenti degli anziani ospiti, a tratti fin troppo coerente con questa trovata drammaturgica, con gag un po’ ingenue. Il preambolo è anche occasione per creare, sfruttando la multietnicità del cast, un momento di palese satira sulla condizione dei moltissimi lavoratori extracomunitari nel nostro Paese ai quali decreti-“sicurezza” impediscono diritti umani basilari.
Satira che tornerà con forza nel finale, dove una presa che tiene in vita la moribonda Emilia Brontë viene staccata, richiamando inevitabilmente alla mente recenti fatti di accanimento terapeutico, religioso e mediatico. Carlotta Brontë ridarà vita alla sorella per qualche minuto ancora, riattaccando la spina, ma citando e beffeggiando la recente pubblicità progresso: “il teatro allunga la vita”.
Forse il Consiglio dei Ministri pretende un po’ troppo dal teatro, ma se non allunga la vita, sicuramente uno spettacolo come Le Sorelle Brontë farà passare agli spettatori due piacevoli ore, grazie soprattutto ai mattatori Davide Livermore e Alfonso Antoniozzi, che divertono e si divertono in scena senza mai risparmiarsi. Il resto del cast, interamente femminile e composto dalle giovani allieve della scuola di Alto Perfezionamento dello Stabile di Torino, affronta con bravura e convinzione la versatilità richiesta da una partitura canora così multiforme, senza lasciare in secondo piano la recitazione ed i balletti a cui sono chiamate per questa messa in scena. Il risultato di questo grande impegno è un gioco spassoso, volutamente senza alte pretese, che a volte insiste forse troppo a lungo su alcuni momenti, ma che, nel complesso, apre le porte a un divertismant raro da vedere di questi tempi. (Silvia Gatto) (Google translation)
NEMLA
Northeast Modern Language Association
40th Anniversary Convention February 26-March 1, 2009 Boston, MA
February 26
Panel: The Victorians in the New Millennium
Dana Shiller, Washington & Jefferson College
'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor and plain': The Return of Jane Eyre in Nanny Fiction and Film"
February 27
Panel: Where Do We go from Here? Brontë Studies in the Twenty-First Century
Chair: Kristin Le Veness, Nassau Community College
"The Sexual Politics of Meat in the Brontës' Lives and Works"
Maggie Berg, Queen's University
"Another Jane Eyre?!: Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale and the Pleasures of Intertexuality"
Beth Torgerson, Eastern Washington University
"Redefining Masculinity in the Brontës: A Case Study of Fathers, Sons and Husbands in Wuthering Heights"
Judith Pike, Salisbury University
"Reforming Motherhood: Anne Brontë's Radical Vision"
Kristin Le Veness, Nassau Community College
February 28
Panel: Taking $tock of Women and Commodities in British and American Literature
"Commodity Girls and Working Women: Contrasts and Connections in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre"
Meta Plotnik, SUNY Nassau Community College
February 29
Victorians and Their Relation to the Unconscious
'Things, Within the Cold Rock Found': Suspended Animation in Charlotte Brontë's Villette"
Elisha Cohn, Johns Hopkins University
MISSISSIPPI PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
2009 Conference Schedule
January 30-31, 2009
Panel: British Literature III
“Men in Black: The ‘Christian Slaveholder’ in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.”
Heather Hoyle Peerboom, University of Southern Mississippi
W.I.P. Conference 2009
Birbeck, University of London
February 7, 2009
Panel: “Psychoanalytic Approaches to 19th and 20th Century Literature”
Lucy Scholes: “Sister Texts: Wuthering Heights and The Parasites”
Université Paris X, Nanterre
Journée Jane Eyre
(organisée par Claire Bazin avec l'aide du CREA)
January 9, 2009
Ouverture de la journée par Mme Emily Eells, Directrice du CREA
Laurence Talairach-Vielmas (Toulouse Le Mirail): "Female beauty and visual culture in Jane Eyre"
Claire Bazin (Nanterre): "Maîtres et Esclaves dans Jane Eyre"
Isabelle Van Peteghem:(Angers):"Captation spéculaire et mise en abyme dans le film de Zeffirelli"
Dominique Sipière (Nanterre): "Voix, séduction et Vocation dans le film"
Laurent Bury (Lyon 2): "Creative (mis)readings in Paula Rego's Jane Eyre
Catherine Lanone: "Secret passages in Jane Eyre"
Patsy Stoneman (Hull University): "Jane Eyre and Franco Zeffirelli"
Journée d'étude spéciale ConcoursCategories: Scholar, Talks
organisée par le département d'Anglais de l'Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand
January 30, 2009
Claire BAZIN, (Université Paris X Nanterre), « Maîtres et esclaves dans Jane Eyre »
Isabelle HERVOUET-FARRAR (Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand 2), « Hantise de la mort dans Jane Eyre »
Christophe GELLY (Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand 2), « Le réalisme dans Jane Eyre de Zeffirelli : un 'cas d'école' de l'adaptation »
Élise OUVRARD (Université de Caen), « Lumière et obscurité dans Jane Eyre »
Laure FAUCON (Université de Limoges), « Emphasis in Jane Eyre »
Bernadette BERTRANDIAS (Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand 2), « Zeffirelli, cinéaste lecteur »
Claire MÉRIAS (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3), « Images de l'enfance dans Jane Eyre »
Béatrice FLAMMEMBAUM (Université de Londres), « Jane Eyre, de Franco Zeffirelli: le hors-champ ou la limite entre la dissémination et l'éternité »
Jean-Charles PERQUIN (Université Lumière Lyon 2), « Le gothique dans Jane Eyre, formes et enjeux »
Included in the exhibit are both familiar names, such as Beatrix Potter, author of beloved children's tales about the mischievous Peter Rabbit, and less familiar ones, such as Margaret Cavendish, whose book "The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World," is both a proto-feminist text and one of the earliest examples of the science-fiction genre. Other authors featured include Mary Shelley ("Frankenstien"), Jane Austen ("Pride and Prejudice"), Anna Sewell ("Black Beauty"), and Charlotte Brontë ("Jane Eyre").The Old Capitol Museum website provides us with further information:
“Fresh Threads of Connection,” whose title is taken from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, features ten women writers and their unique relationships with “nature”—and with each other. The exhibit, opened in conjunction with the 2009 British Women Writers Conference, weaves together unexpected connections between the authors themselves: it questions the art (and the nature) of science in the works of Mary Shelley and Margaret Cavendish—it considers visions of human nature in Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen—it celebrates the imaginative animal worlds of Anna Sewell and Beatrix Potter—it examines cross-cultural and cross disciplinary treatment of art and nature in Christiana [sic] Rossetti and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu—it explores nature as artistic metaphor in Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot. Exploring these unexpected connections between authors while exploring changes in the treatment of nature in literature over time sheds light on the complex yet intimate bond between the changing reality of nature and developing realism of art in 18th and 19th century England, and the parallel bond between mother nature and female artists during this period.Sounds quite interesting, doesn't it?
Almost as if leading parallel careers with the 19th-century Brontë sisters are the 21st-century Ephron sisters.So, the bit about 'almost leading parallel careers' really boils down to they're sisters and they write.
While Charlotte Brontë wrote “Jane Eyre,” Emily wrote “Wuthering Heights” and Anne wrote “Agnes Grey.”
In the Ephron family, Nora wrote “Silkwood,” “Heartburn,” “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” while Delia wrote “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and co-wrote “Michael” and “You’ve Got Mail” with Nora — all while Amy wrote six acclaimed novels. Amy Ephron’s latest novel, “One Sunday Morning,” is a bestseller, and film producer Jerry Bruckheimer recently bought her national bestseller, “A Cup of Tea.”
And then there’s Hallie, who grew up in Beverly Hills, the third by age in the pecking order of the Ephron sisters, daughters of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, who wrote the classic movies “The Desk Set” and “Carousel.” (Charlene Peters)
Perhaps because the criticism has gotten so shrill. Last month, The Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s Web site, joined in on taking Paltrow down for her Marie-Antoinette-like tone-deafness to the times. The Huffington Post likened her literary recommendations (Charlotte Bronte, Dostoyevsky) to a high school reading list. (Bob Morris)We really don't know about Gwyneth Paltrow's particular choices but choosing classics as favourites is not such a bad thing. High school reading lists are made up of them precisely because they are good books, you know.
Some stellar individuals may be able to read Northanger Abbey, Oliver Twist, Heart of Darkness, Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, Tennant of Wildfell Hall and a bunch of poetry while folding clothes and designing the layout for the opinion section some 55 hours a week — but I am a student of more nebulous qualities. (Matthew Jackson)Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
A couple of scholar books with some Brontë content:Moving SubjectsContains the article: Intimacy of the Envelope: Fiction, Commerce, and Empire in the Correspondence of Friends Mary Taylor and Charlotte Bronte, c. 1845-55 by Charlotte Macdonald.
Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire
Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton
ISBN: 9780252033759
Format: Hardback
Publication Date: January 2009
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
"Moving Subjects" is the first of its kind to make a case not simply for the necessity of a spatial analysis of imperial formations, but for the indispensability of an investigative approach that links space and movement with the domain of the intimate. Through a combination of careful archival research and a commitment to excavating the variety of 'mobile intimacies' at the heart of imperial power, its agents, and its interlocutors, this volume offers new evidence and approaches for scholars engaged in capturing the historical nuances of imperial domination. This book's contributors investigate how intimacy was constructed across the restless world of empire, a world that depended on the circulation of capital and commodities, the exchange of systems of governance and surveillance, and the movement of labourers, slaves, soldiers, and settlers.It's contributors include Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton, Adrian Carton, David Haines, Katherine Ellinghaus, Charlotte Macdonald, Michael A. McDonnell, Kirsten McKenzie, Michelle Moran, Fiona Paisley, Adele Perry, Dana Rabin, Christine M. Skwiot, Rachel Standfield, Frances Steel, Elizabeth Vibert, and Kerry Wynn.
Globalization and The Great Exhibition The Victorian New World OrderCategories: Books, Scholar
Paul Young
ISBN: 9780230520752
Publication date: January 2009
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Series: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture
This book foregrounds a capitalist vision of peace and progress which took hold of British society in 1851, emphasizing that this Victorian understanding of global order legitimized imperial ambition. Interdisciplinary in its scope and method, the book draws upon literary studies, economic history, cultural geography, and political theory in order to illuminate the event and the texts it considers. It provides an historical context for ongoing and important debates about globalization and imperialism.The book analyzes various textual forms, including Exhibition literature and ephemera (board games, cartoons, lectures, poems, short stories, speeches, etc), analytical prose (writings by Darwin, Thomas Carlyle, Marz, Ruskin) and canonical fiction (by Barrett Browning, Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, Dickens, Eliot and Trollope, amongst others).This book examines the Great Exhibition as a decisive moment in the formation of a capitalist world picture. In so doing it foregrounds a vision of peace and progress which took hold of British society, within the Crystal Palace and beyond. It emphasizes too that this Victorian understanding of global order legitimized imperial ambition.
As well as the Darwin giveaway, the classics publisher received a boost when its edition of D H Lawrence’s infamous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover appeared on "Eastenders". Bleak House, Cranford and Little Dorrit are also doing well on the back of recent adaptations, and Wordsworth is anticipating adapations [sic] of Frankenstein and Emma later this year, as well as a film about the Bronte sisters. (Catherine Neilan)We sincerely hope that they are also pinning their hopes on the new Wuthering Heights, as the Brontë biopic, from where we stand, looks as remote as ever.
Yet at precisely the same time that layoffs are afflicting the region, when consumer spending is down, and the economy is mired in a recession, used book stores are failing? It doesn't make any sense. Paying a buck for a dog-eared Penguin edition of Jane Eyre is an entertainment bargain. It used to be that used book stores sprouted like mushrooms at every major Metro stop in the city. They were the distressed building owner's best friend: If you couldn't rent a vacant storefront space to, say, the Gap, a used book store could move in its entire inventory, plus cat, and start attracting customers. Secondhand retailers may not pay top-dollar rents, but they keep shoppers on the sidewalk, which helps raise all boats. (Brian Miller)Salon reviews the new book by Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers. American Women Writers. From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx:
Why, for example, did Britain produce several women novelists of genius during the 19th century -- Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontës, as well as accomplished lesser artists like Elizabeth Gaskell -- while America did not? That question could (and sometimes does) lead to a lot of speculation on the national characters of the English-speaking peoples, but Showalter mentions an equally plausible, practical cause: "While English women novelists, even those as poor as the Brontës, had servants, American women were expected to clean, cook and sew; even in the South, white women in slaveholding families were trained in domestic arts." Quite a few of the short biographical sketches she offers feature women complaining about being compelled by parents to learn to make pies or mend when they would rather write. In 1877, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps made the heroine of her novel, "The Story of Avis," fume, "I hate to make my bed, and I hate, hate to sew chemises, and I hate, hate, hate to go cooking round the kitchen."While we are unable to discuss the matter properly, not knowing much about the Brontës' American counterparts, two things must be said here. The Brontës were poorer than the other women writers mentioned here but they weren't workhouse-poor. They were middle-class. And again while unsure as to how their house chores workloads compare to the American women of the time's, the Brontës were by no means free of responsibilities. They may not have gone down on their knees and scrubbed the floor everyday but they had gentlewomen's tasks as sewing, running the household, the typical parish duties of a parson's daughters, etc. Emily Brontë famously baked bread while studying German and Charlotte Brontë openly declared:
Housework in America has never been an uncomplicated matter. The class system in Britain consigned a certain set of people to this humble labor, while America promised the enterprising among them an opportunity to make something more of their lives. Nevertheless, the cooking and cleaning still had to be done -- especially on the small family farms that were the economic engines of early America -- and so the responsibility for it was transferred from a servant class to the female relatives of the new republic's self-made men. (Laura Miller)
By the way, I have lately discovered I have quite a talent for cleaning, sweeping up hearths, dusting rooms, making beds, etc.; so, if everything else fails, I can turn my hand to that, if anybody will give me good wages for little labour. I won't be a cook; I hate cooking. I won't be a nurserymaid, nor a lady's maid, far less a lady's companion, or a mantua-maker, or a straw-bonnet maker, or a taker-in of plain work. I won't be anything but a housemaid. (15 April 1839)Later in December of that same year:
We are at present, and have been during the last month, rather busy, as, for that space of time, we have been without a servant, except a little girl to run errands. Poor Tabby became so lame that she was at length obliged to leave us. She is residing with her sister, in a little house of her own, which she bought with her savings a year or two since. She is very comfortable, and wants nothing; as she is near we see her very often. In the meantime, Emily and I are sufficiently busy, as you may suppose: I manage the ironing, and keep the rooms clean; Emily does the baking, and attends to the kitchen. We are such odd animals, that we prefer this mode of contrivance to having a new face amongst us. Besides, we do not despair of Tabby's return, and she shall not be supplanted by a stranger in her absence. I excited aunt's wrath very much by burning the clothes, the first time I attempted to iron; but I do better now. Human feelings are queer things; I am much happier black-leading the stoves, making the beds, and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else.So, even if it was temporarily, the Brontës could do - and did - household works as well.
The scholarships are the Sarah Guttesman Lubin Memorial Scholarship and the Donald J. Loff Scholarship for Excellence in English. While both scholarships are for those with an interest in English, each caters to a specific topic in English.And the latest Wuthering Heights is 'working' for the Kansas City Star:
The Sarah Guttesman Lubin Memorial Scholarship is awarded every spring to an undergraduate studying 19th century British and/or American literature. Baruch alumnus Melvin Lubin (’48) created the scholarship to honor his late wife Sarah who passed away in December 2007.
Sarah was very involved in getting young people to enjoy literature, Lubin said. "She was always trying to get young people to read Trollope or Dickens, or the Brontes or Walter Scott, or Mark Twain and Melville, or whatever she was reading at the moment," said Lubin. (Ning Mao)
3. "Masterpiece Classic." I'm not a fan of PBS's long-in-the-tooth British import series, but its current reimaginings of such classics as "Wuthering Heights" and "Little Dorrit" are fresh and even exciting.The novel seems to have worked on the blogosphere as well: Precipice Express writes about it, LitCritique gives it a 3/5 and Babbles of the Critically Sane discusses 'Heathcliff - Monster or Misunderstood?'.
We already posted about this a few months ago. The press release can also be read on the Brontë Parsonage Blog.BRONTË PARSONAGE MUSEUM TREASURES NOW AT YOUR FINGERTIPS!
The Brontë Parsonage Museum’s collection is now accessible electronically via www.bronte.org.uk. The on-line catalogue includes images and information on over 7000 items held at the home of the Brontës in Haworth. The catalogue, made possible by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant and a generous donation from a member of the Brontë Society, is a landmark achievement in the history of the museum, allowing global access to its remarkable collection.
Every January, the museum is closed for cleaning and conservation work, with object displays changed and different Brontë treasures introduced to ensure that items displayed through the previous year are protected and preserved and that there are new Brontë treasures for visitors to admire and appreciate. The museum is only able to display around 10% of its collection and it would be impossible for the whole of that collection to be exhibited at once. The new on-line catalogue will give visitors a chance to browse through the collection at their leisure and will give an indication as to its size and diversity.The museum has recently undergone a major refurbishment allowing us to display more of our collections and improving the way objects are presented; making the museum much more interesting for visitors. The new on-line catalogue is also about making more of the treasures of our collections available for people to see, but in this case they can do so from anywhere in the world. So anyone with a passion for the Brontës’ shoes, china, jewellery or furniture, or wanting to read their letters, or just curious about them, can search the catalogue to learn more about them and see what’s kept in the museum’s stores as well as on public display (Sarah Laycock – Collections & Library Officer)In conjunction with the museum catalogue, there is also an extensive research library catalogue listing thousands of entries including critical works, biographies, articles, film and drama archive material, journals and much much more. Simple and more advanced search options allow users to be as general or as precise as they need to be and for those who are planning a visit to the museum’s library, the online catalogue will enable them to plan what material they might like to see prior to a visit.
To search the catalogue simply visit the museum’s website www.bronte.org.uk and follow the link on the homepage.
The Telegraph & Argus talks about the current exhibition of Victor Buta at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:For two unusual art exhibitions, it’s going to be worth travelling out to Haworth and Thornton over the next few weeks.The Chicago Herald-News has an article about the website Positively Good Reads:
Haworth-based artist Victor Buta’s eight abstract canvases, based on the handwriting of the three Bronte sisters, are currently on show at the Parsonage Museum, until the end of March.
This Saturday, he will be taking part in a workshop for artists of all ability. There is a fee of £25 (£15 concessions). For a place, ring Jenna Holmes on (01535) 640188.
And then on March 14, handwriting expert Diane Simpson will be at the museum to analyse some of the handwriting the Brontes used for their own signatures and their literary aliases – Acton (Anne), Currer (Charlotte) and Ellis (Emily) Bell.
Victor, whose previous show in Leeds was based on the signatures of doctors and patients’ sick notes, said he thought Anne Bronte wrote her alias with less conviction than her sisters, as though unwilling to pretend.
He said: “I was looking at their writing too, in some of their small books – the imaginary worlds of Angria and Gondal. So the show ended up being about identity and how certain historical characters like Nelson had influenced them.”
To guide readers to stories to help lift their spirits, Marianne Goss, 60, of Chicago, a former Herald News reporter, has compiled a list of more than 100 "upbeat" novels.Her review of Jane Eyre can be read here.
Goss, a senior editor at Northwestern University, started the Web site www.positivelygoodreads.com, which lists books she's read and reviewed to help quash readers' blues. (...)
Authors on Goss' list range from classic (Dickens, Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Willa Cather, E.M. Forster) to contemporary (Michael Chabon, Barbara Kingsolver, Any Tan, John Irving, Elinor Lipman). (Denise M. Baran-Unland)
This film is more of a kin to Rivette's flawed Merry-Go-Round, in which the alternate realities of fantasy and dream also provide the only escape for the characters from their damaging, manipulative relationships with one another. Hurlevent strips that film down even further, replacing its freewheeling improvisation and humor with a rigid, methodical structure to which the characters are pinned. This is, despite moments of beauty and grace, one of Rivette's bleakest films, an interesting, often enthralling, but ultimately dour formalist experiment. (Ed Howard)Beware of this and that reviews the Seattle performances of Jane Eyre. The Musical:
It was an admirable production in many ways, and definitely a fun way to spend my evening. I quite enjoyed it and I'd be interested to see how it would go with a full orchestra and more resources.Finally, we read in the Las Vegas Review Journal a very curious Jane Eyre mention on a piece of news concerning casinos and mobs:
She was befriended by Joseph Agosto, who officially was affiliated with the Folies Bergere but unofficially ran the casino skim for the Kansas City mob. With Briggs under Agosto’s charm, her fate was sealed as millions in bad gambling markers went uncollected. The casino’s credit book was filled with more fiction than “Jane Eyre.” (John L. Smith)Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights
Not really nominated but quoted. Tina Fey, who was presenting the Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) with Steve Martin, quoted the author of Jane Eyre:Tina Fey: It was the great writer, Charlotte Brontë who said: "The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master".You can watch the moment here.
Steve Martin: This year's honored nominee screenwriters have brilliantly mastered the art of adaptation.
Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master - something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent to 'harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow' - when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver' - when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you - the nominal artist - your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question - that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.Categories: References
Jack Gibbons' song 'Sleep Not', a setting of the words of Emily Brontë (1818-1848), sung here by the soprano Ann Mackay, accompanied by the composer (recorded in London in November 2003). The video also includes a selection of the remarkable and often disturbing photographic portraits taken by Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879).
Beloved Again (words by Emily Brontë) (c.4'30)Categories: Music, Poetry
I'll Not Weep (words by Emily Brontë) (c.4'30) (there's an audio sample on the composer's website, but at the moment of publishing this post, the quality of sound was very low)
Life (words by Charlotte Brontë) (c.2')
Shall Earth No More Inspire Three (words by Emily Brontë) (c.3')
Event Title: Classics Club Book GroupCategories: Alert, Jane Eyre
Where: Platinum Room
Monday, February 23, 2009
Time: 7:00 PM CST
Classics Club Book Group will discuss: Jane Eyre
JANE EYREThe Yorkshire Post interviews the so-called Priestess of Rhubarb (yes, you read that right) Janet Oldroyd Hulme:
Hathersage, Derbyshire
“I heard a bell chime — a church bell . . . A glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green.”
Here’s a surprise. You won’t find Jane Eyre wandering the wuthering wilds of Haworth Moor with Heathcliff and Cathy. Instead, the hunt for her begins 50 miles south, among the gritstone tors of the Peak District.
Charlotte Brontë dreamt up Jane while holidaying at Hathersage vicarage in 1845. Nearby North Lees Hall was her model for Thornfield, home of the enigmatic Mr Rochester; while Hathersage itself became Morton, Jane’s hamlet “set among romantic hills”.
The walk we’re re-creating comes at a turning point in the story, when our heroine, wedding plans scuttled by the madwoman in the attic, flees Thornfield at dawn and finds herself adrift in the wilderness at Whitcross, in “a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain”.
Whitcross was really Moscar Cross, five miles north of Hathersage — bypassed by today’s A57, the road is now a lonesome farm track. The hike south from here to Hathersage is lovely, along a path skirting the foot of bleakly beautiful Stanage Edge. It’s easy to imagine poor Jane making her rough bed here, under a “moss-blackened granite crag”.
Follow the path away from the Edge towards the church spire: curiously, the route now passes North Lees Hall — which Jane had only just escaped in the novel. Approaching Hathersage church, take a path up through woods to Moorseats, fictionalised as Moor House, to which Jane struggled in the darkness — and where she found sanctuary at last.
The details: Jane’s walk begins at grid reference SK224885; you’ll need OS Explorer map OL1. The classy Cavendish Hotel (01246 582311, cavendish-hotel.net ) at nearby Chatsworth has doubles from £155, room-only. (Vincent Crump)
Name your favourite Yorkshire book/author/artist/CD/performer.The Charlotte Gazette talks about the upcoming fictional account of Emily's life by Denise Giardina, Emily's Ghost:
Wuthering Heights. I love the imaginative Brontë sisters and their bizarrely off-centre brother. So much creativity from a little family living in a remote village in Yorkshire. The film, in black and white, with Olivier, is still a huge weepie for me, a sentimental favourite. I read the book over and over.
Giardina has a new one Charleston author Denise Giardina will soon have a new book out. "Emilys Ghost: A Novel of the Bronte Sisters," published by W.W. Norton & Co., is due out in July. According to a news release from the publishers:The Baltimore Sun discusses how the web 2.0 can change the book world and slips this question (with an obvious answer in our opinion):
Enigmatic, intelligent, and fiercely independent, Emily Brontë refuses to bow to the conventions of her day: she is distrustful of marriage, prefers freedom above all else, and walks alone at night on the moors above the isolated rural village of Haworth. But Emily’s life, along with the rest of the Brontë family, is turned upside down with the arrival of an idealistic clergyman named William Weightman. Weightman champions poor mill workers’ rights, mingles with radical labor agitators, and captivates Haworth—and the Brontës especially—with his energy and charm. An improbable friendship between Weightman and Emily develops into a fiery but unconsummated love affair—and when tragedy strikes, the relationship continues, like the love story at the heart of Wuthering Heights, beyond the grave.Denise Giardina, whose fiction has been described as “brilliant . . . heart-wrenching, tough and tender” (Los Angeles Times Book Review), writes a stirring story about faith, passion, longing, and romantic solitude.
Could Lord of the Flies, Jane Eyre or the Harry Potter books be written by committee? Does the "wisdom of the crowd" extend to the creative process? (Dave Rosenthal)On the blogosphere, The Pink Chandelier is re-reading Wuthering Heights although probably not in the 1943 edition that is being pictured on Roaring Design, I Read That Book recommends Jane Eyre and Break Free of the Box is trying hard, but not very succesfully, in reading Villette.
