The OUP Blog discusses Marie-Laure Ryan's
Principle of Minimal Departure (PMD) in fiction:
A historical influence on PMD’s popularity has been the article “Truth in Fiction” by Australian philosopher David Lewis. Simplifying a bit, Lewis proposes two rival principles, which he refuses to choose. The first, roughly speaking, is PMD. The second says, again roughly, that we should import into a fiction, any states of affairs widely believed to be the case at the time of the book’s writing. But both principles face problems, as Lewis himself notes. For one, in the context of the horror genre, a pale faced man with pointy teeth who hates garlic and sunlight is usually a vampire, even if the author doesn’t say so; yet were we to “import” facts (or widely held beliefs) about the actual world into the story, where there are no vampires, we should classify him only as an anaemic with dental problems. Equally, in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, the motif of boxes and enclosures tells us something about Lucy Snowe’s repressed sexuality. Yet there is no room for this interpretation according to Lewis’s principles: in the actual world (or what is widely believed about it), the presence of boxes in someone’s life doesn’t indicate they’re sexually repressed. (Kathleen Stock)
The Atlantic reviews the book
A Secret Sisterhood:
For Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, the support of actual sisters was essential, of course. But A Secret Sisterhood is curious about the creative impetus each novelist got from a woman writer beyond her immediate family. Obstacles to intimacy for every pair proved constant—sporadic letters, foiled rendezvous, painful illnesses, misunderstandings. So did an urgent feeling of connection, as this medley of vivid narratives reveals. (Ann Hulbert)
Refinery29 discusses the new BBC adaptation of E.M. Forster's
Howards End (the writer is not a fan of Rochester's):
What's more remarkable (arguably) than coral wallpaper, however, is how this Edwardian drama's take on privilege is so on the money for what's happening in the world right now: Brexit, Trump, problematic white feminism, the whole lot.
This boils down to a story about class, represented by three groups. The Wilcoxes, headed by Matthew Macfadyen's patronising patriarch Henry, are the wealthiest of the bunch. The most repellant literary romantic lead since Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester — reader, I don't know why she married him — Henry Wilcox is an anti-Europe, anti-suffragette bore with dodgy colonialist ties, a smug insistence on self-sufficiency, and a Mike Pence-like piety towards his ailing wife, Ruth (Julia Ormond). The odds of a modern-day Wilcox bankrolling the Leave campaign are so good, William Hill wouldn't go near it. And who is his son Charles but an entitled placeholder for Donald Trump, Jr.? (Erin Donnelly)
The Times Daily Quiz includes a Brontë question:
7. Villette (1853) was the last novel that which writer published during her lifetime? (Olav Bjortomt)
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