Jane Eyre travels to North Korea

The North County Times has a warning for the locals:

A novel visitor: If you happen to bump into Jane Eyre while wandering around Sunday's Escondido Street Faire, don't fear you've stumbled into a time warp. Portraying the 19th-century classic novel character will be Christina Cheadle, Miss Teen Escondido 2009. She'll be helping to promote the upcoming musical adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel by the Fullerton Civic Light Opera beginning Nov. 5 at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. The theater company will also have a booth at the street fair, which runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Jeff Frank)

More information on that production can be found here.

An article on the cultural life of North Korea in the Guardian proves once more that the Brontës know no barriers.

More surprisingly, The Da Vinci Code was a big hit here, though it seems unlikely that Dan Brown's publishers are aware of the fact – or are benefiting much. So, too, was Harry Potter. Young women love Jane Eyre and Anne of Green Gables – a translation of the third volume in the series is due out shortly. (Tania Branigan)

Speaking of Jane Eyre, this is how NewsTime (Zimbabwe) concisely describes the film The Sound of Music:

Christopher Plummer, for all that he detested the movie and the role, has the right saturnine good looks to make this Jane-Eyre-and-the-Anschluss saga work. (Digby Ricci)

However, an article on first-person narrative from Death + Taxes Magazine is not so spot-on.

The 1st person device in literature has had a long, fascinating, oftentimes turbulent history. It allowed us to indulge in the voyeuristic smuttiness of naughty Roman writings like The Satyricon; it whined us through the female gothic epics of Austen and Brontë. (Henry Giardina)

Brontë is a bad generalisation here, as Jane Eyre is famously narrated in the first person but that is not the case with, say, Shirley or Wuthering Heights. And though not our field, Austen only ever wrote a 'gothic epic' (which was actually a parody of gothic epics), not to mention the fact that all her novels are written in the third person.

An article on Gold Derby - an L.A. Times blog - on the National Board of Review uses Wuthering Heights 1939 as an example:

Up until the late 1940s, movies could not be shown in many U.S. cities without that NBR seal of approval. Its legend "Passed by the National Board of Review" can still be seen in the opening credits of such classic films as "Wuthering Heights" (1939). (Tom O'Neil)

Techland reviews the latest issue of Strange Tales II. Talking about one of the authors, Kate Beaton, a mention is made to her well-known Dude Watchin' with the Brontës comic strip:

The Kate Beaton piece, for instance, is a perfectly fine Hark! A Vagrant strip whose topic is Kraven the Hunter rather than, you know, "Wuthering Heights" or 17th-century Portugese politics. (Douglas Wolk)

A.V. Club as some (American) readers tell what their first 'encounters' with foreign countries were like. The Brontës are mentioned as being English 'cultural signs'.

The Tansy Patch and Nan and B.A.G.S. both love Jane Eyre. The Book Book has read and liked Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë.  Stephanie Vowell discusses Brian James's The Heights.

Categories: Alert, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights