An Introduction to Reading Wuthering Heights in the Netherlands

A Brontë alert in Bussum, Netherlands

An Introduction to Reading Wuthering Heights 

26th of May 2018 at 2 pm (14.00 h, venue opens at 13.45 h).
Dr. B.P. (Ben) Moore, Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of Amsterdam.
Community centre ‘Spieghelwijck’, Iepenlaan 354a, 1406 RG Bussum.
Ticket price: 10 euros per person, including tea/coffee.
Spoken language: Easy English.

This talk opens by discussing the context for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), before moving to consider how we might begin to interpret this complex and contradictory novel. One of the first reviewers wrote ‘Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book – baffling all regular criticism’, a feeling which has been shared by many readers since. I discuss the importance of the narrative form and style of the novel and ask how we should think about it in relation to genre, since the novel has aspects of realism, Gothic fiction, Christian allegory, and myth, but does not seem to fit simply into any single category. I also address the importance of secrets and mysteries in the novel, many of which remain unresolved. While the talk does not seek to provide an ‘answer’ to the problems of the novel, it does at least hope to raise some interesting questions for readers to consider!