Brussels Brontë Weekend

The Brontë Brussels Group has organised its annual Brontë weekend:

Saturday 2 April

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

10.00: Fatherhood and the Brontës.

Talk by Prof. Valerie Sanders
As well as considering Patrick Brontë’s style of fatherhood, Valerie Sanders will discuss the way fatherhood is represented in the Brontë novels, given Patrick’s controversial and distinctive way of raising his children. She will focus on the recurrent absences and ambiguous behaviour of father-figures in the Bronte novels: namely Arthur Huntingdon, Mr Home, Mr Rochester, Heathcliff, Mr Earnshaw, Edgar Linton, Mr Yorke, Mr Grey, and the dead fathers we know very little about – especially Jane Eyre’s, Lucy Snowe’s, Shirley’s and Caroline’s. She will consider why the failure of fatherhood seems to be such a recurrent theme in the Bronte novels.

Professor Valerie Sanders is Professor of English of the University of Hull, author of The Tragi-Comedy of Victorian Fatherhood and The Brother-Sister Culture in Nineteenth-Century Literature.
She has written a life of Elizabeth Gaskell and is currently editing a volume of Margaret Oliphant's writings.

Break for lunch

14.00: Not just a pretty face: physiognomy, phrenology and the novels of the Brontë sisters.

Talk by Prof. Philip Riley
The immensely popular pseudo-sciences of physiognomy and phrenology exercised a profound influence on the style and narrative of the Brontë sisters' novels, providing them with a detailed vocabulary for the description and analysis of their characters' looks and personalities. This illustrated talk will explore physiognomical and phrenological ideas in the context of nineteenth-century thought and discuss a number of passages in which those ideas play a key role in the Brontës' writings.

Philip Riley is Emeritus Professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Nancy and a former Director of the Centre de Recherches et d’Applications Pédagogiques en Langues. He has written and edited various books including Language, Culture and Identity.

Sunday 3 April

10.00: A guided walk around Brontë places in Brussels. Please register as soon as possible if you are interested.

12.00: Meeting of the Brussels Brontë Group.
Taking advantage of the presence of UK and Netherlands members at the weekend's events, the usual annual informal meeting will be held to exchange ideas and information and discuss future projects for Brussels Group.

13.30: Lunch.

As a matter of fact, the activities began yesterday April 1 with

18.30: Readings from Brontë novels by members of the Brussels Shakespeare Society. (Room P61, Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, Bld. du Jardin Botanique/Kruidtuinlaan 43, 1000 Brussels)

Categories: Brussels, Talks