Our most old secret

Let's begin with an alert for today, November 10, on what is a very busy Brontë day. In Rome, Italy:

Brontë: i nostri più antichi segreti
Creator: Giuseppe Giulio
Directed by Paolo Mellucci.
With Sarah Matalloni and Lavinia Lalle
Music: Francesco Paniccia
With the collaboration of Prof. Tania Zulli

November 10, 18.00
Centro Giovanile Giovanni Paolo II, Roma

Lo spettacolo teatrale, ideato da Giuseppe Giulio, con la regia di Paolo Mellucci, vuole avvicinare il pubblico alla produzione poetica delle sorelle Brontë, protagoniste indiscusse delle letteratura britannica di epoca vittoriana. Meno celebri delle poesie delle due sorelle maggiori, ma non di certo meno belle e importanti, anche quelle di Anna Brontë sono caratterizzate da una forte intimità e da una profonda emotività, che le rendono semplici, ma allo stesso tempo tematicamente vicine a giovani di oggi. Le due attrici, Sarah Mataloni e Lavinia Lalle, sveleranno al pubblico i misteriosi segreti di queste tre sorelle, che hanno e continuano ad emozionare il mondo. Un progetto che, per la primissima volta porta in Italia, propone un’unione del tutto speciale, non solo tra poesia e teatro, ma anche tra storia e realtà. Infatti l’intervento della prof.ssa Tania Zulli (docente di Lingua, Cultura e Istituzioni dei paesi di lingua inglese presso la facoltà di Scienze Politiche dell’Ateneo Roma Tre) fornirà al pubblico gli strumenti giusti per comprendere meglio l’epoca nella quale sono state prodotte le poesie dal punto di vista storico, culturale e letterario. Al termine dello spettacolo verrà proiettato il film “Cime Tempestose”. 

More information on Oubliette Magazine.

The Classics Revisited section of DAWN (Pakistan) is devoted today to Jane Eyre:

It is a gripping story of how Jane Eyre survives through inhospitable conditions in her early childhood and goes on to become a woman of high moral character, always struggling to do what is right even though at times she feels inclined to give in to her own passion and listen to her heart.
Overall, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is one of the greatest classic novels of all times, set in the English countryside, and continues to attract readers to this day. (...)
Jane Eyre is an interesting story that keeps the reader involved as he/she follows the twists and turns in Jane’s life. Even though the reader may feel that the attention to detail may become too elaborate at times, the seamless flow in the language of Charlotte Brontë keeps the reader involved till the end of the book. (Javeria Khalid)

The New York Times' Sunday Book Review briefly mentions Catherine Reef's new book, The Brontë Sisters. The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne:

Romance and heartache and doom, oh my! This beautifully written and researched account offers plenty to interest prosy girls who aren’t quite ready for Plath. Reef’s multiple biography (centered on Charlotte) reads like a novel, with rich and evocative language. There’s more woe than happiness to be found here, but there’s literary inspiration aplenty. (Pamela Paul)

Canoe reviews another recent Brontë-related book for children: Jane, le renard et moi:

Tout est fébrile dans Jane, le renard, et moi, même le lecteur. Je l'ai lu trois fois, c'est bouleversant. Parce qu'on est à la place de la fillette. Parce qu'on est sensible à ses mots et à ses réflexions d'enfant. Parce que l'on ressent de plein fouet son malaise, son mal-être, ses complexes de vivre. Parce qu'on est témoin de son exclusion. Parce que c'est écrit avec subtilité, pudeur et humilité. Parce que c'est dessiné avec un trait enfantin, à l'état brut. Parce que ça ressemble à un conte pour enfant, mais que c'est une claque pour adulte. Parce que c'est court et d'une efficacité redoutable. Parce que ça sent le vécu. C'est bouleversant, donc, mais sans larme. Tout se passe au niveau des boyaux.
Ce bouquin de Fanny Britt, illustré par Isabelle Arsenault, revêt quelque chose d'essentiel. Il suscite la réflexion sur la violence de l'intimidation et du harcèlement, évidemment, mais il souligne aussi les vertus de la lecture et le formidable pouvoir de l'imaginaire. (Nicolas Fréret) (Translation)

The Salt Lake City Weekly reviews Wuthering Heights 2011 (3 stars out of 5):

At times, it feels as though Arnold is fighting against the temptation to slather on the literary symbolism. Images of feathers and birds are strewn throughout the film—including a significantly placed caged bird—as are inserted images of crawling bugs and rotting fruit. While the location photography by Robbie Ryan of rolling hills and cloud-patched skies is often gorgeous, the cutaways from the characters to the thematic hints seem more like shooting pages from the CliffsNotes than the actual source. (...)
By honing in on the early chapters and making this tragic romance one complicated by race, Wuthering Heights cuts to the heart of the matter. (Scott Renshaw)

Another review can be found on Gannett Media:

This isn’t your high school English teacher’s “Wuthering Heights.” It’s scarcely even Emily Brontë’s, despite the film’s fealty to the source material. It’s entirely director Andrea Arnold’s, whose radical interpretation of this well-worn classic makes something wholly new out of something so familiar. (...)
It’s an aggressively unromantic and savagely beautiful moment played perfectly. But at other times, the actors’ inexperience can rankle. Neither of the Heathcliffs possess the adequate force of spirit required of the character; the pair blank-faced actors are inscrutable to a fault.
But a handful of flatly delivered lines and wan verbal exchanges are quickly papered over with stunning camerawork, creating an experience that is at once narratively ascetic and sensorially lush. Shot in a cramped 1.37:1 aspect ratio, the landscapes aren’t sweeping romantic vistas of the English countryside; they’re claustrophobic, mud-spattered and mist-fogged, like soft-focus projections made by camera obscura.
For less patient viewers, the film might play out like an endurance test, a two-hour documentary on wind. But as unforgiving as the glacially paced film is, it’s nonetheless utterly absorbing -- a cool pink tongue flicking against an open wound. (Barbara VanDenburgh)

The Daily Mail includes Eve Sinclair's Jane Eyre Laid Bare on an erotic literature top thirty.

The Gloucestershire Citizen interviews a local Parish Church Clerk who chooses Wuthering Heights as her favourite book:

What book are you reading at the moment or tell us your favourite?
Dreams of Joy by Lisa See. I love the old Chinese culture (and food)! Favourite is Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë - an amazingly dark and passionate book.

Financial Times reviews The Small Hours by Susie Boyt:

Harriet [Mansfield] herself stands in a venerable line of fictional teachers. She is reminiscent of Lucy Snowe, Charlotte Brontë’s heroine in Villette (1853),in her exquisite sensitivity and self-deprecation, but contains more than a hint of Muriel Spark’s Miss Jean Brodie in her magisterial handling of those individuals foolish enough to cross her path.  (Rebecca Adams)

The Irish Times publishes the obituary of Edith Evlin, professor at Queen's University whose

enthusiasm for such writers as Dickens, Tolstoy, Chekhov and the Brontë sisters was infectious and, due to popular demand, she proceeded to give a different series every year for 43 years, retiring just weeks before her death. 

A Brontë mention in a Globe and Mail review of Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver:

Virginia Woolf once tut-tutted Charlotte Brontë for having, as Woolf saw it, let anger occlude her cool artist’s vision and mar the fiery Jane Eyre. I thought it nonsense when I read it and think it nonsense now, but she has a point. Characters had better be big enough to swallow an author’s emotion – to serve her theme – or what you have is not a novel but a policy paper. (Kathleen Byrne)

More reviews as The Guardian publishes one of Inconvenient People by Sarah Wise:

The great gift of Sarah Wise's excellent Inconvenient People is to blow apart the myth that the most likely victim of the lunacy laws was a married woman. In the 1970s feminist rereadings of Victorian novels, including Jane Eyre and The Woman in White, created a remarkably enduring template of the madwoman in the attic. (Kathryn Hughes)

And T.C. Boyle's San Miguel in The Scotsman:

Besides the inhospitable weather, Marantha’s early clue that she has been misled – or rather totally disregarded – is the shabbiness of their house. Fanciful, novel-reading, artistic Edith, who misses her piano and dance lessons and pines for her friends back in San Francisco, compares the island to Wuthering Heights. “Only where’s my Heathcliff?” (Tatjana Soli)

The Independent interviews the writer Edwina Currie:

A book that changed me… Jane Eyre when I was eight. My aunty was a deputy headmistress and gave me proper books early on. (Holly Williams)

Hackey Citizen interviews the theatre director Nadia Latif who is directing but i cd only whisper by Kristiana Colón:

“The original poem was about being a black woman during that period in America,” says Latif. “But for me there was a feeling that the story wasn’t complete – I mean, what was the other side of the coin and what made Beau do what he did? It’s like the Wide Sargasso Sea thing of the crazy lady in the attic – exploring what brings people to make certain choices rather than just look at the result of that choice.” (Russell Parton)

Sarah Madison interviews the writer Claire Russett:

I do also love Sebastian Faulks’ work – with ‘Birdsong’ being one of my regular re-reads along with ‘Jane Eyre’.

Corujal das Letras (in Portuguese) posts about Wuthering Heights;  The Walrus Said... being a bookish blog reviews Death of a Schoolgirl by Joanna Campbell Slan; VinceHasMadelt has some pictures of Brontë country and zawtowers the Brontë Parsonage, both on Flickr; The Blodg Blog reviews Charlotte Brontë's juvenilia piece The Foundling in the Hesperus Press edition; Sigma-chan has a tumblr entry devoted to Jane Eyre quoting from the Quarterly Review infamous 1848 review.