The Observer describes some of the events of the
London 2012 Festival (part of the Cultural Olympiad) which will be almost monopolised by Shakespeare. The leading article says:
Some scholars are concerned that other great British writers are being neglected. Jane Austen is a globally revered author too. And what about Dickens? The Brontës? Chaucer? Such grumbling is inevitable, but then scholars are no more immune than anyone else to indulging in the "factious bandying of their favourites… when envy breeds unkind division" (as a well-known Elizabethan playwright once wrote).
But
the newspaper also asks other scholars if the Bard is the only British exportable sure thing:
This country may be the birthplace of Chaucer, Milton, Austen, the Brontë sisters and Dickens, but Britain has only one dominant calling card on the global cultural scene: William Shakespeare.(...)
Patricia Ingham, an expert in 19th century fiction and former Oxford don, said she wondered whether Shakespeare was really our only exportable brand. Pointing out that last year a Japanese university translated academic books on the Brontës and on Dickens, and that in the US Jane Eyre has been a feminist totem since the 1970s, Ingham said: "You only have to look at the number of films and television adaptations of Dickens's stories to see evidence of his huge appeal for the average person; the trouble with Shakespeare is that he is still only enjoyed by an elite. His global appeal is really a bit of a myth because very few people can actually read him. You have to have acquired a particular kind of skill or learning to enjoy Shakespeare."
Bonnie Greer, an academic and newly appointed head of the Brontë Society, said she felt the Brontë sisters represented "at a deep and profound level all that is seen as Englishness. Growing up as I did on the south side of Chicago in a black neighbourhood I knew about the Brontës before I knew about Shakespeare, partly through the films but the books too. And they still have enormous reach," she added. (Vanessa Thorpe)
In the
Anchorage Daily News they don't really have a clear picture of what exactly is the landscape of Wuthering Heights:
Rising 700 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, the Cliffs of Moher are a breathtaking backdrop for many movies, including "The Princess Bride," where they were referred to as the "Cliffs of Insanity." One can envision Heathcliff and Catherine embracing on the edge, as the turbulent sea crashes against the rocks.
Who or what has influenced you as a reader?
My family didn’t have a television. Some of my friends had them, but we never did. That’s what you did at night; you read if you were done with your homework.
We had a library. I would just go down the shelf and take something off. That’s how I read “Jane Eyre.” Then I read it again and read it again.
A letter to the
Nebraska Journal Star asks their congressman to stop a pipeline project in the following terms:
Adrian Smith needs to take a stand, for once, against big business. He needs to speak out and oppose TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline and its proposed route through the Sandhills.
The Sandhills are unique; there is nothing like them in the entire world. I was born in Burwell and love them like Catherine and Heathcliff loved the moors of England in "Wuthering Heights." (Jeremiah J. Luebbe)
A student and Brontëite in the
Allentown Morning Call;
On Reading and Writing (Open Salon) has loved
Jane Eyre after hating
Wuthering Heights; a novel that is nevertheless loved by
Humisevalla harjulla (in Finnish) and
Cattabella (in French);
Mona's Musings illustrates fragments of
Wuthering Heights with images from the Scottish moors;
Bitácora Literaria posts about its author (in Spanish) and
A Night's Dream of Love does it about Charlotte;
Good Life... reviews
Jane Eyre and
plum.crazy.jingles posts about its latest film adaptation.
Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights
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