Podcasts

  • With... Bethany Turner-Pemberton - Sassy and Sam chat to researcher and curator Bethany Turner-Pemberton. Bethany is PhD candidate in Textiles and Museum Studies at Manchester Metropolitan...
    1 day ago

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Saturday, January 28, 2017 1:22 pm by M. in , , , , , ,    No comments
Kathryn Hughes presents her book Victorians Undone in The Guardian:
It’s an absence that has carried over into our own modes of writing about the mid-distance past. That’s why even the most attentive reader may finish a biography of a Victorian subject feeling that they’d be hard-pressed to pick them out in an identity parade. (Biographies typically contain visual likenesses, to be sure, but those quarter page black-and-white images don’t show the body in motion, and can’t give you much idea of its habitual off-duty slouch, let alone its sound or smell.) So while a life of Charlotte Brontë might supply chapter and verse on the novelist’s rich interior life, it won’t prepare you for the fact that when she opens her mouth an Irish accent comes out (you were expecting genteel Yorkshire). 
Louise O'Neill in The Irish Examiner makes a case for positive discrimination in literature:
It’s hardly surprising that the Brontë sisters wrote under male pseudonyms or that Jane Austen published her novels anonymously. Women who did publish under their own name saw their work dismissed as trivial, and described as “silly novels by lady novelists”.
Michael Chabon in The Guardian talks about the post-truth (aka fictional truth without readers' knowledge) era:
Accordingly, Moonglow also represents a sort of “reaching back”, he says, to a time when it was routine for novelists to pretend their works were a form of document: Robinson Crusoe, Wuthering Heights, travellers’ tales; “it’s someone’s diary, it’s someone’s journal, it’s being written by firelight in the aftermath of the escape”. Fictional truth, he says, “is under siege by spurious fact in so many ways”, pointing out that what the novelist always has up his or her sleeve is the reader’s consent and, in fact, encouragement: “You turn to the storyteller, to the novelist, filmmaker, whatever it is, to say, ‘Please lie to me. I want to be lied to. Make it a good one.’”
The Times talks about Caitlin Moran's choices on BBC's Desert Island Discs:
The music told its own story — or rather told hers, in stereo. There was Madonna’s Vogue (“the first time I’d seen a woman be successful and mainstream”); Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights (inspiring mainly because she was “wearing a nightie and spinning round and round on the spot” and “that to me was an achievable look”)[.] (Catherine Nixey)
Also in The Times' pick of paperbacks: Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey by Frances Wilson
Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821), or as it should be more accurately called “Confessions of a Laudanum Drinker” was a huge success as a book and as cheerleader for the transformative effects of opium. The poet Robert Southey tried it “for the sake of experiencing the sensation that had made De Quincey a slave to it”. Branwell Brontë did the same, even Dorothy Wordsworth became an addict (her dosage was 35-40 drops a day; at one point, De Quincey was consuming 10,000 drops a day).
Loughborough Echo has some suggestions for Valentine's Day:
Discover a darker side of love with a wild ‘Wuthering Heights’ walk, Haworth, West Yorkshire
In Emma Brontë’s infamous tale of love and revenge, Wuthering Heights, Cathy and Heathcliff first discover love on the wild and desolate moors, said to be around the village of Haworth. Recreate famous scenes on a walk around the Brontë waterfalls, described by Charlotte Brontë as “fine indeed; a perfect torrent racing over the rocks, white and beautiful,” then up again to Top Withens, the supposed setting of Wuthering Heights. Whilst in the area, don’t miss The Brontë Collections at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Once the unique family home, it now contains the world’s most comprehensive collection of Brontë manuscripts, letters, early editions of the novels and poetry, and secondary material on the famous family and their work. (David Godsall)
The Telegraph has some New Year resolutions for retirees:
Find a passion…
All of us need a hobby to get our teeth into and whether it’s golf, yoga, classical music or working through a bucket list of exotic holiday destinations, there is something out there with your name on it.
…and indulge it
You’ve loved Charlotte Brontë ever since reading Jane Eyre at school but you still haven’t found time to visit the Parsonage Museum at Haworth, West Yorkshire. So what are you waiting for? (Churchill Retirement Living)
The Lancashire Post has encountered moths:
My life is being plagued by a problem from the Victorian era. I don’t mean I’ve been gripped with consumption like the Brontës nor am I trying to bag myself a Mr Rochester. I’m also not having trouble breathing because I’m trussed up too tight in a corset – much as I would love a tiny waist like Victorian women had. (Aasma Day)
The York Daily Record examines the good points of a classical education:
When her world has come unhinged and a student is tempted to end it all, she may believe, with Jane Eyre, that the world is “wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.” (Nancy Snyder)
Bustle lists not-so-well-known romantic quotes, but doesn't forget the well-known ones:
And who could forget Catherine’s heart-wrenching declaration about Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights?: “Whatever our souls are made of,his and mine are the same.” (Julia Seales)
Le Devoir (in French) reviews Sara Tilley's Skin Room:
Trop blonde, trop blanche, celle-ci est victime des pires cruautés de la part de ses camarades de classe aux cheveux noirs et à la peau brune. Dès le premier jour d’école, Willassie lui lance un crayon dont la mine lui laissera une cicatrice sur la joue.
Or, la rêveuse lectrice des Hauts de Hurlevent d’Emily Brontë a le coup de foudre pour ce sculpteur de pierre à savon doué et peu bavard : « Heathcliff est censé être basané, sombre, pas tout à fait blanc. Heathcliff est dangereux et physiquement imposant. Willassie est le garçon le plus fort de l’école. Il m’aime comme Heathcliff aime Catherine. Il ferait n’importe quoi pour moi. S’il apprenait que quelqu’un m’a fait du mal, il le tuerait. » (Manon Dumais) (Translation)
La Libre (Belgique) interviews August Trapenard:
Le roman "Les Hauts de Hurlevent" de la Britannique Emily Brontë, le hante depuis l'adolescence. "J'ai commencé vraiment à lire avec lui. A sa découverte, j'en ai éprouvé une incroyable obsession, comme une litanie, je l'ai lu et relu, au point d'en faire mon sujet de maîtrise, puis de DEA et de thèse." (Laurence Thomann) (Translation)
Also in La Libre we read bout the death of the actor Jacques Penot (1959-2017) who played young Hindley in the 1979 production of Wuthering Heights written by Guy Dumur and directed by Robert Hossein

Easy Viaggio (in Italian) describes like this the Castello di Sammezzano:
Sembrerà di trovarvi in uno di quei racconti ottocenteschi delle sorelle Brontë; il Castello di Sammezzano sovrasta la campagna toscana in provincia di Firenze, e regala agli amanti dei viaggi storici, una delle esperienze eclettiche più affascinanti mai vissute. (Paola Kim Simonelli) (Translation)
Lecturas Aeterna (in Spanish) reviews Agnes GreyWybrany świat historii posts about the Polish translation of Catherine Lowell's The Madwoman Upstairs.

0 comments:

Post a Comment