Brontë Weekend in Brussels

The Brontë Brussels Group organises one of its Brontë Weekends:

Sunday 10 October 2010
10.00: Guided walk around Brontë places in Brussels (Check pictures and information on the Brussels Brontë Blog)

Saturday 23 October 2010
The Brontës in Brussels and Ireland

A day of talks
10.00: Charlotte and Emily Brontë: Two Contrasting Brussels Experiences.
Talk By Sue Lonoff

Sue Lonoff is the editor and translator of Charlotte and Emily Brontë's "Belgian essays" – their French "devoirs" written under the direction of their Brussels teacher M. Heger, who was to be so important to Charlotte's personal and literary development.
Charlotte and Emily reacted very differently to Heger's teaching. Sue Lonoff will compare some of their essays and consider the influence of their Brussels studies on their future writings.
Sue Lonoff is a member of Harvard University's continuing education division. Apart from the Belgian Essays, her Brontë publications include Approaches to Teaching Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (co-editor), and she has also written on Wilkie Collins and Marguerite Yourcenar.
14:00: Patrick Brontë in Ireland before Cambridge:
The Influence of Circumstances.
Talk by Brian Wilks

The father of the Brontës, Patrick, was born in Co. Down, Ireland, where he spent the first 25 years of his life before moving to England to study at Cambridge. These were years in which Europe and Ireland were convulsed by the effects of the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, the United Irishmen Rebellion and the French Invasion of Ireland. These ‘volcanic events’, as Thomas Carlyle termed them, form the background to Patrick Brontë’s development and maturing.
This talk will explore the nature of the circumstances of these formative years, often dealt with only briefly in biographies, and consider the possible effect they had on Patrick Brontë’s family and the implications for the remarkable novels created within the parsonage walls.

Room P61, Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, Bld. du Jardin Botanique/Kruidtuinlaan 43, 1000 Brussels

Categories: Brussels, Talks