You have still four days to contribute to the crowdfunding campaign to finish Finding Gondal - L'histoire des Sœurs Brontë, a work in progress documentary directed, written and produced by Morgan Rauscent:Finding Gondal - L'histoire des Sœurs Brontëtoniolibero interviews the alma mater of the project, Morgan Rauscent:
En 2003, alors que j'étais étudiant à l'université de Londres, j'ai entrepris un voyage dans le Yorkshire sur les traces des Hauts de Hurlevent. Une œuvre qui m'avait tant marqué adolescent. J'y ai découvert des paysages somptueux, emprunts d'un romantisme fort et sombre que les sœurs Charlotte, Emily et Anne Brontë ont su saisir au fil de leurs poèmes et leurs romans. Je me suis promis d'y revenir un jour pour y tourner un documentaire.
Dix ans plus tard, cette promesse n'a jamais été aussi proche d'être tenue. J'espère que cette page saura vous convaincre de participer à la réussite de cette aventure.
L'histoire des Brontë se suffit à elle-même, nul besoin de la mystifier. Beaucoup de mythes ont entouré leur vie, entretenant la légende d'une fratrie malheureuse et repliée dans une vie monacale. Mais en se plongeant plus profondément dans leur histoire, on se rend compte qu'elles avaient une réelle connexion avec le monde. L'universitaire Sally Shutterworth , l'une des intervenantes du film, érige même Charlotte comme une représentante de la pensée et des mœurs de son époque. C'est de ce point de vue que j'ai pensé et construit ce film, en parcourant bon nombre d'ouvrages et d'essais, et en choisissant méticuleusement les intervenants. (Read more)
Comment en arrive-t-on à aborder les sœurs Brontë comme sujet de documentaire ?
J’ai toujours été fan de leur travail. La première fois que j’ai découvert des œuvres comme Les hauts de Hurlevent ou The Tenant of Wildfell-Hall, j’ai eu l’impression de trouver exactement le style de littérature qui me transportait. En 2003, alors que j’étais étudiant à Londres, j’ai voyagé dans le Yorkshire et j’ai découvert Haworth, leur village natal. Je m’étais promis d’y revenir un jour pour y tourner un documentaire. C’est fait, avec Finding Gondal, l’histoire des soeurs Brontë. Peut-être même que je vais retourner là-bas pour une fiction. Une chose est certaine, je n’en ai pas fini avec le Yorkshire ! (...)
Le tournage est partiellement réalisé, qu’est-ce qui est en boite ?
L’essentiel du film a été tourné, il manque surtout les séquences illustrant certaines scènes des romans. Pour cela, je veux construire un théâtre d’ombres chinoises, donc cela nécessite encore beaucoup de travail. (Translation)
Emily, written and directed by Frances O’Connor, is a ‘speculative biopic’: a heavily altered version of Emily Brontë’s life, centred on an imaginary relationship with William Weightman, her father’s curate at Haworth from 1839 until his death from cholera in 1842. There is some historical evidence to suggest that Weightman had a relationship with the youngest Brontë sister, Anne; but O’Connor’s film goes with feeling – some people find it difficult to believe that a virgin could have written Wuthering Heights – rather than fact. In interviews, O’Connor has defended her decision, which I think is interesting, through the lens of popular feminism, which I think is not: ‘There’s always a gap between who women really are and who they’re supposed to be.’nterest in the lives of the Brontë sisters – in who they ‘really’ were – is seemingly inexhaustible, fuelled in part by frequent adaptations of their most popular works. O’Connor’s movie, which contains multiple references to the visual motifs of Wuthering Heights (a face at the window, a white nightdress, an impassioned ghost in the night), is beautifully filmed, with a compelling central performance from Emma Mackey; still, it’s difficult to watch without a sense of déjà vu. It’s hard to take seriously a scene in which a woman in a corset sits down at a desk, takes up her quill, and spells out the title of one of the most famous novels in the world.Admittedly, I may be too easily inclined to feeling like a cog in the Brontë machine. Over the past six years, I’ve taught various Victorian literature modules at many different British universities, always on short-term or hourly-paid ‘teaching track’ contracts (i.e. no research). It doesn’t matter what your specialisms are: if you’re a Victorianist with a heavy teaching load, especially if your work relates even tangentially to gender, you’ll spend a lot of time marking essays on Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and ‘strong female characters’. This is frequently a pleasure: discussing the novels with students often reveals something real among the overdetermination, helps me see the texts clearly again. The fact remains, however, that I neither chose nor expected to devote quite so much of my working life to the Brontës, and yet here I am. They got me. [...]In the movie’s version of Charlotte, so entirely in the thrall of convention, I can’t recognise the writer of Jane Eyre and Villette: O’Connor alters the chronology to suggest that Charlotte only began to write novels after Emily’s death. (In fact, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were published the same year.) [...]It wasn’t teaching that was the enemy of freedom or thought for Emily, but rather the institutions in which she had to work, an experience shared by her sisters, even if they were more resilient. Still, the appeal of feeling persists. The stifling school corridors of Emily are an easy image to set up as the opposite to what counts, in O’Connor’s terms, as Emily’s ‘real’ life: the freedom of the moors, writing late into the night, sex. These are the images that have compressed the Brontës into a recognisable and strangely impenetrable commodity. (Helen Charman)
Frances O’ Conners’ [sic] “Emily” was a powerful display of the harrowing love that Emily Brontë herself wrote and fantasised about. My mother having read the books in her youth claimed the film to be “a beautiful imagining of what their lives could have really been like”, highlighting the depth of writing and cinematography that went behind shooting this drama. The writing has been complimented with beautiful shots of the Haworth moors in Yorkshire, giving the actors and directors just over six weeks of shooting time whilst they were there in April 2021. Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” breaks the binaries of love, deconstructing the normalised perceptions we have surrounding it and instead replacing it with something much more grotesque and unsettling. The beautiful language is something that links the Brontë’s, which is certainly seen in Emily’s famous line “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same”. To read, watch or listen to the Brontë’s is to communicate with the past, the present and the future. (Megan Lovell)
Jusqu’à inspirer un tube à la chanteuse Kate Bush. Mais comme le remarque Lucasta Miller, biographe des Brontë, le film de Wyler fait l’impasse sur les aspects les plus perturbants du livre : la violence de classe, le sadisme, que souligne le cinéaste japonais Kijû Yoshida en citant Georges Bataille, et l’origine de Heathcliff, ce personnage « noir comme le jais et le feu ». Il est ainsi rappelé que Liverpool fut un port négrier et que les débats sur l’abolition de l’esclavage faisaient rage quand Emily Brontë écrivait son roman. Bien plus qu’une histoire d’amour, conclut avec justesse le documentaire, « les Hauts de Hurlevent » contient tout ce qui minait la société victorienne. Et c’est ce qui en fait un vrai et grand roman du scandale. (Elisabeth Philippe) (Translation)
[Sidney Babcock, the longtime curator of ancient Near Eastern antiquities] sees “She Who Wrote” — which assembles objects from nine institutions around the world — as part of the Morgan’s long history of exhibitions on women writers like Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë and Emily Dickinson. (Jennifer Schuessler)
Hardwick is most famous for the essays collected in Seduction and Betrayal (1974), a series of pieces on women in literature first published in the NYRB (a magazine she helped found) in the early 1970s. Her topics included writers and fictional characters: the Brontës, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Wordsworth, Hedda Gabler and Hester Prynne (hence ‘Xavier’). Hardwick’s great subject was women – their subjection, their stoicism, their self-reliance – but she wrote about them with a sort of fatalism, a fatalism that characterised her treatment of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. . . (Joanne O’Leary)
Wevill was in despair; according to her journals of March 20, 1969, she asked Hughes why he couldn’t commit to a life with her, to marriage and their family. In the years since Plath’s 1963 suicide, Assia and Shura had often lived with Hughes, while she cared for his children with Sylvia, Frieda and Nicholas. But it always ended badly. “‘It’s Sylvia—it’s because of her,’” Wevill records him telling her: “Ted drunk—stroking my shoulder. The terrible talk in the ‘lounge’ of the Elm Hotel.” [1] The next day, Wevill went to Haworth, the village up the road where the Brontës lived and wrote and died, and bought Seconal sleeping pills from the druggist. Two days later, she dragged a mattress into the kitchen and killed herself and Shura in London flat. (Emily Van Duyne)
Their love was like Heathcliff and Cathy’s, if Heathcliff and Cathy had moved on and suffered awkward reunions at cocktail parties.Janine Beacham
Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering HeightsHeathcliff is the absolute worst. Yes, he has an intense relationship with Cathy but, after overhearing Catherine tell Nelly that she plans to marry their rich neighbour, Edgar Linton, Heathcliff runs away instead of speaking with Catherine. Upon his return several years later, he dedicates his life to destroying the lives of those around him primarily because he didn’t get the girl. And for those who still think that he’s just misunderstood, never forget that his wedding present to his wife Isabella was to murder her dog.Edward Rochester in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane EyreWhen they first meet, Rochester pointedly treats Jane as an equal rather than her employer. However, this is undermined by his behaviour towards Jane when his aristocratic houseguests come to visit. After intentionally hurting Jane by feigning an interest in marrying Blanche Ingram, Rochester eventually declares his love and proposes to Jane. The problem? He’s already married, and his wife is locked up in his attic.To make matters worse, when his lies become apparent, he tries to convince Jane to abscond to Europe with him knowing that this would destroy Jane’s reputation thereby preventing her from ever finding employment or a respectable husband. In this era, the loss of both of these options would leave Jane destitute if dumped by Rochester. (Maria Butler)
It's easy to imagine oneself the Creator when one seems to wring human beings and landscapes from mere pen and ink, but I wonder if writers aren't tapping into something that already exists, like our dream world seems to exist. At any rate, that's what writing for me has always been like. And when I began writing Solsbury Hill, when I sat down to that first empty page, Eleanor Abbott (the heroine of the novel) was already there, sitting in a Manhattan cafe sipping coffee.À voir à lire (France) reviews the also recently-released DVD of Jane Eyre 1944 and gives it 2 out of 4 stars.
I knew I was writing a book connected to Wuthering Heights. My editor had proposed the idea: the notion of a contemporary novel with a connection to this classic novel we keep reading. I'd just finished writing two novels about troubled young people in deeply troubled families and, as I finished reading Emily Brontë's novel again, I felt an unmistakable kinship with the author. When, as a teenager, I had read Wuthering Heights, I had the feeling I was missing something, or seeing something no one else was seeing. Teacher and students alike had seen the love between Catherine and Heathcliff as a great love, some exalted meeting of souls, while I saw it as a childhood love gone terribly wrong. I saw sibling loyalty, then jealousy and pettiness, then viciousness and cruelty in a story that became increasingly mired in its gothic sensibility.
Wuthering Heights is a labyrinth of Emily's preoccupations. One can trace the threads, though they're buried in twists of contradictions and emotional confusion, through the endless repetition of themes. She's preoccupied with obsessive and possessive love, with filial loyalty, with laws for passing wealth and land, with an isolating family life, with violence and cruelty, and with a concern that what happened to the mother might continue in the daughter.
Emily Brontë was a passionate writer all her life, but left none of her compulsive writing, no journals, no poetry, from the last few years of her life. And no one will ever know the extent of complication in the relationship between Emily and the drug-addled brother she cared for those last years, but Branwell and Heathcliff share qualities, this much is sure. What is less certain is what Edgar Linton stood for. The outsider, the stranger living in a well-lit house, the kind and refined young man who invited Catherine Earnshaw to join him at Thrushcross Grange and settle into adulthood there.
For at the heart of Wuthering Heights - topographically and emotionally - was a brightly lit home with gentleness and decency inside. I imagined or maybe intuited that there was a secret hidden inside the novel - that in it Emily had left a clue to something in her life - that she had had a chance to know a kind and gentle love, something separate from her family, something completely her own, before she died. (Read more)
Voilà une sortie DVD qui ne risque pas de passer inaperçue dans le monde des cinéphiles épris de classiques : Jane Eyre tourné en 1944 avec Orson Welles et Joan Fontaine dans les rôles titres. Ce film adapté du roman de Charlotte Brontë, paraît en DVD pour la première fois en France, grâce à Rimini Éditions. Une œuvre plus que déjà représentée dans le septième art, mais qui bénéficie ici de la prestance du prodigieux Orson Welles et qui par la même occasion nous offre une interprétation à sa juste mesure. Il est accompagné de la belle et délicate Joan Fontaine, disparue en décembre dernier, et actuellement sous les feux de la rampe avec la sortie en blu-ray de l’un des chefs-d’œuvre de Max Ophuls : Lettre d’une inconnue.The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an article of a performance of Jane Eyre The Musical at Nerinx Hall High School.
Bien avant l’excellent Edward Rochester du ténébreux et séduisant Michael Fassbender dans le récent Jane Eyre de Cary Fukunaga, Orson Welles s’est glissé dans le rôle, qu’il a voulu théâtral aux accents shakespeariens. Il lui donne une apparence rugueuse et misanthrope à souhait, comme le veut le personnage du roman, et en fait l’un des éléments clefs du succès de ce film. Pourtant, contrairement à Fassbender pour lequel les femmes se damneraient, Welles ne réussit pas à nous faire pâmer et échoue dans sa partie « séduction ». On se demande alors comment Jane Eyre peut en tomber amoureuse ? Une héroïne, que Charlotte Gainsbourg a interprété sous la direction de Franco Zeffirelli, qui se veut être une femme douce, fragile, mais non moins certaine de ce qu’elle désire. Ici, Jane Eyre prend les traits de la douce Joan Fontaine, mais peut-être est-elle justement trop douce et un peu trop langoureuse ? Qui plus est, ses expressions de jeu restent classiques et ne déclenchent pas les émotions nécessaires pour rendre son personnage attachant. Cependant, il faut se remettre dans le contexte d’une époque où les sentiments ne se dévoilent pas ou alors avec parcimonie. Aussi, nous ne retiendrons pas le manque de romantisme, essentiel à toute fleur bleue qui se respecte, et apprécierons de manière plus large le récit de ce mélodrame.
Jane Eyre filmé en studio, tire avantage d’une technique photographique qui rend certains plans ou séquences, poétiques. On apprend ainsi dans les bonus, qu’Orson Welles a contribué à la réalisation et que certaines scènes lui sont attribuées. Pourtant, le jeu de lumière sur le visage de Welles, qui le noirci afin d’insister visuellement sur sa part sombre n’est pas satisfaisant. Car le fait de vouloir trop marquer le protagoniste et d’appuyer aussi lourdement, lui fait perdre toute subtilité et crédibilité. Aussi, comme nous l’avons souligné précédemment, c’est bien grâce à l’aura et la qualité d’acteur d’Orson Welles que ce Jane Eyre reste un film à (re)découvrir.
(read more) (Translation)
From the moment "Jane Eyre" started singing the audience’s attention was captured. This show really caused people to understand what things in people’s lives can cause them to act the way they do. It taught the audience to not to judge people on first meetings.Elle has '12 great female authors recommend their 40 favourite female authors'. Jeanette Winterson, a well-known Brontëite, mentions the Brontës though rather in passing:
Natalie Hunt did an absolutely stunning job as Jane Eyre. She captured everyone’s attention and never let it go for the entirety of the show. Michael Schimmele did a spectacular job as Rochester. He was able to command the stage and change people’s affections toward him throughout the show. The chemistry between the two of them was spectacular. Everyone could really believe they were falling in love with each other.
Morgan Einwalter kept the audience laughing the entire show with the quirkiness of Mrs. Fairfax. She was able to keep her energy up for the entire show. Gabe Miller did a wonderful job as Mason. He really helped move the story along. Sam Krausz also did a fantastic job moving the story along as St. John Rivers. Annelise Moloney, who played Bertha Rochester, did a lovely job playing up the madness of her character.
The technical aspects of this show were wonderful. Everyone was able to work around the set pieces really well. The costuming was very accurate to the time period portrayed in the show. The use of younger children was nice because it really helped make the show.
There were only a few missteps in the show. There were times when the ensemble was narrating and you could not here what was being said. There were other times when there was not enough light during a scene to see the facial expressions of the people on stage.
This performance of "Jane Eyre" was truly outstanding. The audience was entranced for the entire show. It is a show that should not be missed. (Kayla Schieffer Francis Howell High School)
Read Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own (1929). Ask yourself how much, really, has changed. When I did my degree at Oxford University in the 1980’s, Woolf was not taught—on quality grounds—and we were told that in the nineteenth century there had been only four great women novelists: Jane Austen, George Eliot, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë. (all childless, i.e., weird). As a woman who was determined to be a world-class writer I had to learn that subjectivity = objectivity if you are a man, and lack of rigor if you are a woman. Thank God for feminism.Buzzfeed talks to three writers, Durga Chew-Bose among them, who says
Though I cringe when women go nuts about Jane Austen. I’ve always been more prone to Brontë: dark, disobeying women who are so-called “out of control.” (Ayesha Siddiqi)The Times has an article on child abuse and comments on how young fictional victims usually tend to have a happy ending:
Cinderella had a happy ending, don’t forget. The Brothers Grimm may have had her sweeping floors, sleeping by the hearth and wearing wooden clogs, but she developed an amazing work ethic, acquired a love of shoes, became determined to make something of her life and married a prince. Snow White triumphed over her stepmother. Harry Potter managed to flourish despite being brought up by the Dursleys. The orphaned Jane Eyre found her Mr Rochester. (Alice Thomson)Now that there are 100 days left until the Tour de France Grand Départ, The Telegraph and Argus lists the 100 best things about Yorkshire.
18. Haworth and Brontë Country: Historic Haworth appears very much as it was when its most famous residents, the Brontë sisters, lived there in the 19th century. The cobbled Main Street still winds its way through the village where admittedly more modern shops, cafes and pubs welcome the throngs of visitors who soak up the history throughout the year.Actualidad Literatura (Spain) recalls that even Emily Brontë got very bad reviews with Wuthering Heights. The Northern Echo carries the story of a vintage charity shop who is trying to solve the mystery behind a World War Two letter which was found tucked inside a copy of Villette. Obsessive Mom posts about Charlotte Brontë. There's a lovely tour of Charlotte Brontë's Brussels to be found on Dr Charlotte Mathieson's blog. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook page showed yesterday the image of the sampler that Charlotte Brontë finished at the age of 11 on April 1st, 1828. Mallory Ortberg on The Toast is thrilled to see one of the first copies of her book Texts from Jane Eyre (that will be published in November). laurenlooksatbrilliantbooks reviews Jane Eyre. obsessivemom posts about the Brontës.
68. Brontë Parsonage, Haworth: The Parsonage, built in 1778-9, was the lifelong home of the Brontë family. It was opened as a museum in 1928. Now it is one of the major focuses of the brisk tourist trade to Haworth. (...)
82. Penistone Hill Country Park, near Haworth: Set among the rolling hills and undulating moorland above Haworth. You can take a gentle walk along the footpaths and take in some marvellous views of Brontë Country as well as learning a little about the area’s industrial past – the area was widely quarried for stone and you can still see evidence of the old workings. (...)
85. Top Withens: Top Withens Farm (above) was the supposed location for Wuthering Heights in Emily Brontë’s famous novel, and you can visit the ruins of the old place but only on foot, although you can park at the West End car park a little way out of Haworth. A real taste of literary history come to life.
The first part of a new comic adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been published in France by Éditions Delcourt:Les Hauts de Hurlevent, d'Emily Brontë. Volume 1Click in the images to enlarge them:
Date de parution : 08/04/2009 |
ISBN : 978-2-7560-1380-0
Adaptation : YANN
Illustrations : ÉDITH
Colours : ÉDITH
Collection : EX-LIBRIS
Sur les terres balayées par les vents du nord, le malheur s'abat lorsque Mr Earnshaw recueille Heathcliff, un va-nu-pieds, qu'il élève comme ses propres enfants. Dès lors se déchaînera sur la lande isolée une violente tempête d'amours et de haines... Dès lors chacun ne gagnera le repos de son âme qu'au terme d'une douloureuse errance... Dès lors la paix reviendra peut-être sur les Hauts de Hurlevent ? (Google translation)
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Yann et Edith ont déjà livré l’extraordinaire Basil et Victoria dans une ambiance victorienne exquise, et s’imposait donc comme le duo de la situation. Le roman n’est pas réputé pour sa jovialité (les sœurs Brontë ne sont guère connues pour leurs comédies) et encore, le pire est à venir… L’austérité naturelle qui en émane trouve toutefois un traitement lumineux et limpide à travers le dessin sensible d’Edith, qui fait contrepoids avec la sinistrose ambiante des mœurs et du Yorkshire fin XVIIIe. Les expressions des enfants demeurent rieuses et/ou sensibles, quand bien même ils sont en colères ou adultes. Et si la colorisation respecte le lugubre des lieux, par l’emploi récurrent de teintes ocre ou glauque, elle laisse passer beaucoup de lumière (rasante). Le travail d’adaptation de Yann n’est pas reste non plus. Le scénariste, dont on ne présente plus la bibliographie luxuriante, a le mérite d’adapter le roman sans le dénaturer, tout en respectant les contraintes de la « narration graphique moderne ». Les dialogues ne sont jamais pesants, ajustés au langage contemporain (« Touche moi pas ! ») et finalement, cette première moitié de diptyque se lit d’une traite. Super boulot ! (Benoît Cassel)Chez Emy:
J'ai pu cette semaine découvrir avec un immense plaisir le tome 1 des Hauts de Hurlevents. J'ai été conquise par cet album (dont le scénario est de Yann et les dessins d'Edith). Pourtant, ce n'était pas gagné, j'ai eu des à-prioris négatifs en feuilletant quelques pages. Le style du dessinateur ne me plaisait pas trop au premier abord et puis au final, je dois dire qu'il m'a absolument convaincue !Sceneario:
C'est vrai que l'artiste a un trait un peu particulier mais je trouve qu'il sert plutôt bien l'ambiance ténébreuse du récit.
J'ai été ravie de constater que les personnalités du roman ont été respectées. Ce qui n'est pas toujours le cas des adaptations ciné ou tv ... Je pense notamment à la récente mini-série dans laquelle Catherine semble bien plus sympathique que dans le roman !
Dans la BD, elle est égale à elle-même, caractérielle, passionnée, emportée et méchante aussi, par moments (n'ayons pas peur des mots ! ).
J'ai aussi beaucoup apprécié la palette des couleurs, qui une fois encore, restitue très bien l'aura lugubre et sombre du roman.
Par contre, une petite chose risque de déranger les fans du livre (dont je ne fais pas vraiment partie, je dois
admettre que je préfère Charlotte à Emily) ... Le changement narratif me semble un peu étrange. C'est Catherine qui raconte son histoire et non Nelly, la servante et gouvernante. Je ne demande qu'à lire la suite, et découvrir les raisons de ce choix mais je trouve tout de même que c'est un peu surprenant !
La version en bandes dessinées que propose le scénariste Yann est très intéressante parce qu’elle va à l’essentiel et parce que, par exemple, si des descriptions et des ambiances ne peuvent être très détaillées que dans les textes, le dessin et les couleurs que l’on doit ici à Edith s’y substituent remarquablement bien.ActuaBD:
Comme beaucoup d’adaptations de classiques en bandes dessinées, et cela quelque soit le style graphique, cette série Les Hauts de Hurlevent réconcilie le lecteur avec les souvenirs de lecture qu’il peut avoir. C’est un des pouvoirs du 9ème art : remettre à la portée des gens (et même des plus exigeants) des œuvres qui sinon resteraient pour eux synonymes de laborieuses lectures. C’est aussi pour cela qu’on aime la BD ! Merci donc aux auteurs, et en route vers la suite ! (Sbuoro)
Yann et Edith (pour la petite histoire, beau-frère et belle-sœur dans le civil) confirment leur attrait pour la culture britannique. Après avoir raconté l’histoire de deux orphelins londoniens dans Basil & Victoria (le tome 2 reçut l’Alph’Art du meilleur album au festival d’Angoulême en 1993), Yann et Edith adaptent Les Hauts de Hurlevent, un classique de la littérature anglaise écrit par Emily Brontë en 1847.Categories: Comics, Wuthering Heights
Il y avait du Dickens dans Basil & Victoria, la première réalisation commune du duo. On est donc pas surpris que leur choix se soit aujourd’hui porté sur Les Hauts de Hurlevent. Ce grand récit, romantique et à contre-courant de la retenue victorienne, est émaillé de tragédies, d’amours empêchés et de personnages d’une grande noirceur.
On oublie souvent que Yann, sous le pseudonyme de Balac, avait jeté les bases de la saga Sambre continuée ensuite en solo par Yslaire.
Avec cette adaptation de fort belle tenue, le scénariste centenaire en albums, rappelle son goût prononcé pour les histoires romantiques. Pour sa part, la trop rare Edith livre ici parmi les plus belles planches de sa carrière en bande dessinée. Tout simplement brillant. (Morgan Di Salvia)
They say when trouble comes, close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The negroes hated us, too. "You ain't nothing but white cockroach niggers," the young Tia said, stealing my dress as I bathed alone in the lush sensuality of the biblical garden pond.Also in The Guardian we read an article by Elizabeth Gaskell's biographer Jenny Uglow about the English Heritage grant for the rehabilitation of the writer's house in Manchester:
They were all the people in my life - my mother, my brother Pierre and my nurse Christophine - since old Cosway, my father, died five years back when all the old slave-owners left. Some said it was drink, some said madness, but emancipation surely did us no good.
I was a bridesmaid when my mother married Mr Mason, but though he restored us from the steamy undergrowth of our sweaty impoverishment, we could not escape the madness of the post-colonial reinterpretation of Jane Eyre
"Why must I flit from one half-remembered scene to another," I asked, "each more laden than the last with the heavy, humid symbolism of female oppression and neo-Marxist alienation?"
"Because you are a creole, Antoinette," Christophine said, "and I am an old Jamaican negro, steeped in the old ways of obeah." (Read more)
Some good news in glum times. A grant from English Heritage of £260,000 has come just in time to save Elizabeth Gaskell's house in Manchester, which was collapsing with cracked walls, rotten windows and general rot and age. This is just the beginning: the hope is to restore it completely, open it to visitors and recreate the ground-floor rooms as they were in Gaskell's time - there are plenty of photographs - as well as providing space for the local community to use. Gaskell was thrilled when the family moved to 84 Plymouth Grove, Ardwick, Manchester in 1850. "And we've got a house," she wrote to a friend. "Yes! We really have. And if I had neither conscience nor prudence I should be delighted, for it certainly is a beauty." The house was large enough for bedrooms for her four daughters, a study - not a room of her own for Mrs G, but a den for William, Unitarian minister of Cross Street Chapel - and two large downstairs rooms for parties, charades, reading, sewing and, of course, writing. It had attics, kitchens, a scullery, pantry, outhouses and a large garden, where Gaskell planted cabbages as well as flowers. Although she often escaped the Manchester smoke, most of her novels were written here, and her many visitors included Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, who stayed three times in the "large and cheerful, airy house".Northern Rail has finally clarified its position concerning his refusal to partipate in the Brontë Country Partnership advertising campaign. As read in the Keighley News:
The Italianate house, which is owned by the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust, was built around 1838. It is one of the few survivors of early Victorian villas in Manchester, but for years has been threatened by dry rot and water seeping through the roof, and it has been on English Heritage's at-risk register since 1998. Dame Judi Dench, whose touching portrayal of Miss Matty in the BBC's adaptation of Cranford won a host of new readers for this often underrated classic, cheered the grant for Plymouth Grove: "I am delighted that English Heritage is offering a grant to carry out the work that is needed on Elizabeth Gaskell's house. This is a major historical building and it will be wonderful to see it restored to its former glory."
Northern Rail has expressed regret for any “confusion” over a decision to turn down an advertising design for Brontë Country.The Times talks about possible sequels to the just-published zombie version of Pride and Prejudice:
Members of the Brontë Country Partnership (BCP) reacted angrily last month to news that their proposed design — meant to appear on a pair of railway carriages — had been rejected.
The BCP markets Keighley and Brontë Country as a tourist destination.
It was told last year that Northern Rail was making the passenger carriages available to have images of local tourist attractions emblazoned on them.
The scheme is being funded by the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, the Keighley Town Centre Association, Keighley Town Council and the BCP.
At last month’s BCP meeting, group members said Northern Rail had behaved unprofessionally by not clarifying what type of design it was willing to accept.
Responding this week, a company spokesman said: “We are working with the KTCA to finalise the images and look of the train to promote Keighley and the surrounding area.
“We are sorry for any confusion over the initial design but are confident that the finished train will be a fantastic advert for the town.”
And it won’t be the last: later this year Elton John’s Rocket Pictures begins shooting Pride and Predator, and both Wuthering Heights (Catherine’s ghost gets proactive) and Jane Eyre (not just a madwoman in the attic) are being measured for mash-up potential. (Tom Gatti)Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga continues to appear in the daily newsround: in an article published in Le Point and in a press release promoting Shmoop:
Shmoop (http://www.shmoop.com), a new educational website that aims to make learning fun and relevant for today’s students, christened its new “Book Club” section with the best-selling novel Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. The immensely popular book series spawned a blockbuster motion picture in 2008. Shmoop challenges students, teachers, and librarians to answer the question, “is Twilight great literature, or simply entertainment?” (...)The Washington Post reviews Joe Queenan's Closing Time. A memoir. Remembering his father, the author recalls:
Shmoop also helps students connect Twilight with other great classics, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. “We want to encourage young fans of Twilight to explore other great works of literature that they didn’t even realize they might love,” said Ana [Rowena] McCullough[, VP of Content at Shmoop].
Sober, he could speak with eloquence, and when he wrote the occasional letter to the editor, it sparkled: He "had a touch of the poet; his turn of phrase and choice of words were things of beauty. He had read Charles Dickens, Jack London, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, the Brontës. . . . His jeremiads were, accordingly, laced with poignant imagery, edifying turns of phrase, and a lofty tongue-in-cheek style he may have appropriated from Mark Twain." (Jonathan Yardley)Another review with Brontë mentions can be read in the Los Angeles Times. The novel is All the Living by C.E. Morgan:
This is a book about life force, the precious will to live and all the things that can suck it right out of a person. It is a first novel, and the writing is simply astonishing: The way small movements betray a character, the effects of hard labor, the damaging power of communication withheld. It is the writing of a much older (at times, even world-weary) author. Descriptions of the landscape of the rural South remind a reader of Willa Cather. The characters' utter lack of a sense of entitlement calls to mind Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre." (Susan Salter Reynolds)The Spanish magazine Qué Leer compares the controversial heroine of Sherry Jones's novel The Jewel of Medina to Jane Eyre:
Otra cosa muy distinta es que esa supuesta falta de rigor sea relevante a la hora de juzgar una novela cuyo mayor mérito reside en la invención de una Aisha fascinante, mitad heroína de las Brontë y mitad femme fatale de cine negro, tan deudora de Germaine Greer como de la sensualidad exuberante de Las mil y una noches. (Google Translation)The Argentinian cultural magazine Página 12 reviews a collective exhibition of local photographers at the Museo Sarmiento (Buenos Aires). Talking about the work of Laura Glusman:
Laura Glusman, en esta muestra, por fin ha sido comprendida como lo que es: una fotógrafa con sensibilidad pictórica ante el paisaje, una creadora de ficciones más que de meros registros de lo real. Tanto los reflejos de luz como el particular punto de vista de sus tomas la instalan de lleno en el terreno del paisaje visionario, cargado de un misticismo panteísta cercano al de Emily Brontë en "Cumbres Borrascosas": una espiritualidad secular, inmanentista, a la que Martínez Quijano asocia con la novela gótica. (Beatriz Vignoli) (Google translation)Le Figaro Magazine presents the French translation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (also translated to Dutch as published in 8Weekly) and Le Point does the same with Mark Crich's Sartre's Sink (which in France is retitled as... ahem... La baignoire de Goethe).
J'ai pu cette semaine découvrir avec un immense plaisir le tome 1 des Hauts de Hurlevents. J'ai été conquise par cet album (dont le scénario est de Yann et les dessins d'Edith). Pourtant, ce n'était pas gagné, j'ai eu des à-prioris négatifs en feuilletant quelques pages. Le style du dessinateur ne me plaisait pas trop au premier abord et puis au final, je dois dire qu'il m'a absolument convaincue !Finally, an alert for tomorrow April 19 in Tampa, Florida:
C'est vrai que l'artiste a un trait un peu particulier mais je trouve qu'il sert plutôt bien l'ambiance ténébreuse du récit.
J'ai été ravie de constater que les personnalités du roman ont été respectées. Ce qui n'est pas toujours le cas des adaptations ciné ou tv ... Je pense notamment à la récente mini-série dans laquelle Catherine semble bien plus sympathique que dans le roman !
Dans la BD, elle est égale à elle-même, caractérielle, passionnée, emportée et méchante aussi, par moments (n'ayons pas peur des mots ! ).
J'ai aussi beaucoup apprécié la palette des couleurs, qui une fois encore, restitue très bien l'aura lugubre et sombre du roman.
Par contre, une petite chose risque de déranger les fans du livre (dont je ne fais pas vraiment partie, je dois admettre que je préfère Charlotte à Emily) ... Le changement narratif me semble un peu étrange. C'est Catherine qui raconte son histoire et non Nelly, la servante et gouvernante. Je ne demande qu'à lire la suite, et découvrir les raisons de ce choix mais je trouve tout de même que c'est un peu surprenant ! (Google translation)
The Upper Tampa Bay Regional Library presents Victorian literature scholar William Scheuerle speaking at a celebration of the 193rd birthday of Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre). Victorian costumes are encouraged; the party is at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the library, 11211 Countryway Blvd., Tampa. (Colette Bancroft in St. Petersburg Times)Categories: Agnes Grey, Alert, Art-Exhibitions, Comics, Elizabeth Gaskell, Haworth, Jane Eyre, References, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights
First one to the marketplace might score a hit, but if all of these projects as well as the crazy "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" mash-ups all try to claw their way onto the screen, I think it's going to be a long, long, redundant, redundant couple of years, and it'll create some genuine antipathy towards the also-rans as they stack up, one after another after another. (Drew McWeeny)Not to mention that there is also a remake of I Walked with a Zombie in the works.
The exhibit, Vanessa Wright’s The Literary Horse: When Legends Come to Life, pairs up to 100 photos of today's horses and riders with family-friendly, secular, and cited public domain quotations from the world's great books. [...]The exhibition's website has a blog which has an entry with a Jane Eyre reference.
Showcasing first-time riders through Special Olympic and Olympic champions, and equestrian disciplines ranging from carriage driving and show-jumping to jousting and vaulting (gymnastics on horseback), The Literary Horse provides visitors with a real-life tour of world classics, such as the Iliad, Richard III, and Jane Eyre, as well as beloved children's tales, such as Black Beauty, Cinderella, and King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. [...]
The Literary Horse: When Legends Come to Life will be touring public and school libraries worldwide through 2012. For more information, a tour schedule, activities, and a booklist, visit http://www.theliteraryhorse.com/.
Aloma is alone. At least, she feels alone. Her aunt and uncle, with whom she lives, are always “fine to her,” but when she is about to turn twelve, in a moment reminiscent of Jane Eyre, they send her to a mission school in the Kentucky mountains. (Daryl Sneath)Jane Eyre is also mentioned in an article about the much-awaited Hobbit film which has just gone into production on The Observer Online:
Five years ago, I sat weeping in front of the television watching Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh kiss as they both held their Oscars aloft, having finally achieved the greatest honor filmmakers can receive, at the 76th Academy Awards. It was the culmination of a three year journey for me, going from complete Tolkien ignorance in the seventh grade to full-blown obsession in the ninth. At that point in time I was a movie-quoting, elvish-speaking Ringer with a full class presentation on the history of Arda under my belt. (Convincing my Honors Brit Lit teacher that the formation of Middle-earth was relevant to "Jane Eyre" was an achievement unto itself.) (Stephanie DePrez)TravelMuse reminds its readers that they are still on time to book your trip to Brontë Country with The Wayfarers.
Wuthering Heights is the inspiration for a novel that explores darkness and dislocation in a 20th-century family.Radio Times lists the films on (British) TV today:
Wuthering Heights has inspired countless sublime and ridiculous spin-offs, ranging from poetry by Ted Hughes to the Cliff Richard vehicle Heathcliff: The Musical. Caryl Phillips’s new novel takes its cue from Emily Brontë’s original, but only at a slant. For him, it functions as a symbolic conduit for ideas of alienation, orphanhood and family dislocation.
The Lost Child is bookended by two scenes that feature the seven-year-old Heathcliff. Left purposefully mysterious by Emily Brontë, his origins are here fleshed out by Phillips, who makes him the illegitimate son of Mr Earnshaw by an African former slave. In the early scene, the boy’s mother is dying of disease in Liverpool; the novel ends with her son being led over the moors by Mr Earnshaw to Wuthering Heights. A central section imagines Brontë on her deathbed, a woman alienated from quotidian reality. Charlotte described her sister being “torn panting out of a happy life”; but this is the Emily of myth, who “lives in two worlds” and yearns for “the bosom of eternity”. If the idea of a black Heathcliff appears to have been inspired by Andrea Arnold’s film of 2011 starring James Howson, Emily’s mystical death-dreams recall her portrayal in the 1946 biopic Devotion. (Read more)
Jane Eyre ★★★Herts & Essex Observer gives more details:
8.30-10.20pm BBC2
Charlotte Brontë's classic gets another screen makeover with Michael Fassbender and winsome Mia Wasikowska. Swoon... (Rose Thompson)
Is It Any Good? Charlotte Brontë's novel is brought to Gothic life by Cary Fukunaga, a second-choice director after Lynne Ramsay turned the film down.And The Carlow Nationalist adds:
Mia Wasikowska, fresh from her breakout turn in Alice in Wonderland, is excellent in the title role, with Michael Fassbender and Jamie Bell also performing well.
Anything Else? The location of Jane's cottage was so remote there was no mobile phone signal. The crew stationed someone at a nearby phone box and equipped him with a walkie-talkie just in case anyone needed anything.
Locals took pity on the man and brought him tea and biscuits throughout the day.
Star Rating: **** (2011)
Charlotte Brontë's novel is brought to Gothic life by Cary Fukunaga, a second-choice director after Lynne Ramsay turned the film down.The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Motherhood & Creativity: The Divided Heart by various authors:
Mia Wasikowska, fresh from her breakout turn in Alice in Wonderland, is excellent in the title role, with Michael Fassbender and Jamie Bell also performing well.
Novelist and columnist Nikki Gemmell observed that as a young woman she realised that none of her favourite female writers such as Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters had children. "I thought that was the path I would choose for myself." However once she had her babies Gemmell also realised that motherhood imposed its own discipline on the writer. "I wasn't faffing around making endless cups of tea." (Rachel Power)Also in the same newspaper an article about the Bausch brothers (Richard and Robert):
Discovering that a beloved author has a sibling writer prompts a similar thrill of pleasure. We race through the houses of Brontë or Mitford, gathering clues that will tell us more about the individual writers and also about the entire family. (Kevin Rabalais)An Emily Brontë poem will be recited in the Poetry in Voice national finals (Canada)
Jeremy Mallette's skills with prose have earned him a trip to Montreal on April 20 to compete in a national championship.More poetry at The Fort Morgan Times:
Mallete, a Grade 12 student at St. Joseph's Catholic Secondary School, is one of 12 students from across Canada who've qualified for the Poetry in Voice National Finals in the bilingual stream. (...)
The two poems that Mallette will be reciting are, "Shall earth no more inspire thee" by Emily Bronte and "L'Automne" by Alphonse de Lamartine. (Sarra Lalonde in Cornwall Standard-Freeholder)
Last Friday night's Open Mic Poetry Night with the River City Nomads was full of laughter and large doses of quiet profundity and raucously irreverent wisdom. Over 35 people filled Bloedorn as 13 poets and readers from Morgan Community College, both faculty and students, and the larger community shared fine, original work — some in free verse, some in formal rhyme — as well as the work of greats like Emily Brontë, Dr. Seuss, and Seamus Heaney. (Rachel Kellum)The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel interviews a local teacher:
I grew up reading 'Little Women' and 'The Secret Garden' and 'The Little Princess.' Then came 'Jane Eyre' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder. (Betty E. Stein)Kwasi Kwarteng remember when he was on University Challenge some years ago in The London Evening Standard:
Then we got a starter for ten right, and then another. We answered the bonus questions quite well, and then pulled level. I think we won the round on the last question, when one of our team buzzed and just said, “Wuthering Heights”. I can’t even remember the exact details of the question but the answer is seared into my memory.Huddersfield heritage is celebrated in The Huddersfield Daily Examiner:
Dewsbury, Batley and the Spen Valley are not the most fashionable places today but they are steeped in the rich history of the Brontës, Luddites and Chartists, while the Spen Valley’s woollen industry heritage is evident in the towns of Cleckheaton, Heckmondwike and Gomersal. (Robert Sutcliffe)and here
[Joanne Harris] said: “Yorkshire is amazingly diverse, rich in heritage and culture.Marcus Berkman in The Australian is categorical here:
“My neighbours, among many, are the Brontës; Sylvia Plath; David Hockney; Ted Hughes; Alan Bennett; Bruce Chatwin; W.H. Auden; Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. (Chloe Glover)
Every song, of course, sounds a little like another song, except possibly for Wuthering Heights.This comment on Le Temps (Switzerland) about economic bubbles is quite exaggerated when says that two of the Brontës (why not the other ones?) were impoverished by the railway shares madness of 1840s:
Ainsi, l’émerveillement de la bonne société victorienne devant le chemin de fer et sa mobilité décuplée n’est pas étranger à l’envolée extraordinaire que les titres de ce secteur connaissent dans les années 1840, sans doute la plus grande bulle financière n’ayant jamais existé et dont l’éclatement fin 1845 appauvrira deux des sœurs Brontë avant d’ébranler l’Europe deux ans plus tard. (Jean-Pierre Béguelin) (Translation)Los Tiempos (México) lists the 17 books to read before you turn... 17:
“Cumbres borrascosas”The Hampshire Chronicle is eager to see the Northern Ballet's performances of Wuthering Heights in Southampton next week. RTCG (Montenegro) announces a screening of Wuthering Heighs 1992 next April 22 in the context of the "Svjetska književnost na filmu" festival. Cai tlin Moran complains about the austerity measures in libraries in The Times Magazine. The Sleepless Reader lists a series of Brontë-related favourite books. The Brussels Brontë Blog reviews a new edition of Path to the Silent Country by Lynne Reid Banks (originally published in 1977).
¿Te encanta el drama amoroso? ¡”Cumbres Borrascosas” de Emily Brontë es para ti! En este libro encontrarás el drama más auténtico y telenovelesco de amor que jamás habías imaginado. (Translation)
The Woman Question is the title of a special Brontë-themed evening marking the centenary of women gaining the vote.Sussex Express presents an event at the end of September at the Charleston's Small Wonders Festival:
The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth will host the September 28 event as the latest entry in its monthly Parsonage Unwrapped programme.
The 7.30pm event focuses on what it would be like to be a working woman in the 19th century when the Brontë sisters were writing.
A spokesman said: “The Brontë sisters knew from a young age that they would have to earn a living and were educated to become governesses and teachers.
“The Brontë servant Martha Brown had barely left her teens before she began working as a servant to the Brontë family.
“The evening will explore the working lives of the women of the Parsonage, and how they operated within the constraints and expectations of the age.”
The museum will hold its monthly Brontë Treasures night on the same day, at 2pm, when a curator will offer unique access to treasures from the Brontë Society collection.
The third monthly event, Late Night Thursday, will be on September 20 when the museum will open till 8pm so that visitors can avoid the crowds.
After 5.30pm, entry is free to local people providing proof of residence in the BD22, BD21 and BD20 postcode areas or living in Thornton.
All three events are held monthly, as part of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s year of celebrations for the 200th anniversary of Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë’s birth.
This month the museum is also hosting the Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing, which features workshops on writing crime and historical fiction, advice on writing online, and a performance by leading point Patience Agbabi.
The museum will host free talks on October 2 – at 11am and 2pm – entitled Critical Responses to Wuthering Heights.
Visit bronte.org.uk/what’s-on for information on all events. (David Knights)
I am Heathcliff takes place at Charleston on Friday, September 28 (4pm), as part of the Small Wonder short story festival.Vulture asks Jemima Kirke for her favourite books:
Heathcliff, the brooding anti-hero of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, has gone down in history as the epitome of romantic love – thanks in part to cinema and theatre .
Yet that is so far from what his creator intended, it is in fact a misreading of the book, as the foreword by author Kate Mosse to a new collection of short stories, explains.
I am Heathcliff, the opening event at this year’s Small Wonder festival, dissects the influence Heathcliff and Brontë’s novel has had on literature. This collection of specially commissioned stories inspired by Wuthering Heights and curated by Kate Mosse celebrates the bicentenary of Emily Bronte’s birth. It is a collection that takes a long, hard look at the reality that was Heathcliff through a range of mostly contemporary stories.
Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëBustle on new classics:
I’ve been looking for Heathcliff ever since. My copy is all warped and sticky from all the tears I’ve shed over it.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the classics. Give a novel written by Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, or the one of the Brontë sisters, and I’ll happily read it — and then talk anyone’s ear off who will listen to me talk about its many merits. But the truth is, sometimes I just want to read a book that feels more relatable, one in which the setting, the politics, the people, and even the fashion is more recognizable. (Sadie Trombetta)and books about books:
If you have a thing for literary's leading ladies, you'll fall head over heels for How to Be a Heroine [by Samantha Ellis], a tribute to the likes of Lizzy Bennet, Scarlett O'Hara, Jane Eyre, Franny Glass, and more. A captivating exploration of the book world's most iconic female characters, and the women who wrote them into being, this engaging analysis will make you think about the many ways your favorite literary heroines influenced, empowered, and inspired you. (Sadie Trombetta)Maya Salam's Gender Letters in the New York Times quotes an 1855 article on the NYT:
“The world would soon be depopulated if it were filled with persons of great intellectual stature,” warned a 1885 New York Times article that called out Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen as examples of “literary spinsters.” The good news for these “female brain workers,” according to the piece: They are more likely to live longer than married women with many kids.Not Emily, though.
Wycoller Country Park in Colne is famous for its association with the Brontë sisters who referred to many of the nearby landmarks in books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. It has many footpaths leading to local beauty spots which include Bank House and Wycoller Beck. The site also includes the Atom Panopticon and Wycoller Hall. (Natalie Parker)San Francisco Chronicle reviews the audiobook edition of The Victorian and the Romantic by Nell Stevens:
“The Victorian and the Romantic” is exactly that. Its strongest portions explore a trip Gaskell takes to Rome just as her biography of her deceased friend, Charlotte Brontë, is published. The love between Gaskell and Norton, which begins in Italy and lasts a lifetime without ever being marked with as much as a kiss, leaves us longing for the story of it never to end. (Meg Waite Clayton)Houstonia Magazine recommends the local performances of The Moors:
Take touchstones of English literature such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and layer on plenty of dark comedy trappings, and you’ll get Jen Silverman’s The Moors. Says MU Artistic Director Jennifer Decker: “I was sold as soon as I realized there was a side story with an ill-fated love affair between a pet Mastiff and a lost moor hen, a rock power ballad, a murder plan involving an ax, and a brother who may or may not be imprisoned in the attic. That kind of weirdness is right up Mildred’s Umbrella’s alley.” (Morgan Kinney)Bookriot says goodbye to summer with a Jane Eyre quote:
“It was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good: I thought she loved me.” (Emily Westrom)
Un chef d’œuvre franchit les frontières et touche des sensibilités et imaginaires que rien ne disposait à la rencontre. Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent, par son tragique et son absolu, fait partie de ces créations qui nous investissent à chaque lecture. Pourquoi ce retour vers ce classique anglais ? L’occasion d’y revenir, bien sûr mais aussi de faire connaître le beau roman de Maryse Condé, La Migration des cœurs (1995) qui, sans masque, le dédie à son illustre devancière :Letralia (in Spanish) about women as authors:
« A Emily BrontëQui, je l’espère, agréera cette lecture de son chef d’œuvre.Honneur et respect ! »A l’occasion du bicentenaire de la naissance d’Emily Brontë (1818-1848), les éditions Robert Laffont dans leur collection « Pavillons Poche » ont réédité son unique roman dans la traduction de Frédéric Delebecque, avec une préface inédite de Lydie Salvayre (Prix Goncourt 2014). C’est l’occasion de (re)lire le roman anglais et de faire, peut-être, découvrir celui de Maryse Condé. Deux romans dont la lecture emporte loin du quotidien pour nous plonger dans des univers mêlant passion et connaissance. (Read more) (Translation)
Nombres de la talla de Virginia Wolf o las hermanas Brontë han permitido que el camino que les toca emprender hoy a otras escritoras no sea un campo de minas, como lo fue a lo largo de la historia. (Rafael Bailón Ruiz) (Translation)El Sur de Acapulco (in Spanish) quotes W. Somerset Maugham:
El escritor británico W. Somerset Maugham, malhumorado y escéptico como buen inglés de entre guerras, escribió algunos ensayos, en realidad prólogos compilados de manera posterior, en donde explica la novela de una forma que me parece precisa: considera que las más grandes no lo son por perfectas, Moby Dick, El jugador o Cumbres borrascosas; obras que son clásicas no por sus virtudes, sino por sus defectos. (Adán Ramírez Serret) (Translation)Vogue (France) mentions the Loewe edition of Wuthering Heights; Owlcation suggests a Jane Eyre discussion with extra cupcakes; The Eyre Guide visits Haddon Hall and The Brontë Babe Blog reviews Rita María Martínez's book of poetry The Jane and Bertha in Me.
Wuthering Heights ***The writer of this production, Deepak Verma is interviewed on Kirk Originals Eyewear:
Following the success of Bride and Prejudice, loosely adapted from Jane Austen's novel, it was only a matter of time before one of the Brontë sisters was given the Bollywood treatment.
Tamasha, a theatre company which has already had success with productions like East is East, decided on Wuthering Heights, taking the action from the Yorkshire moors to the desert of Rajastan, swapping the snobbery of Victorian England for the caste system of India and including a few songs and dance numbers on the way.
The result is very much a Brontë-lite production. Cathy is the headstrong Shakuntala, Heathcliff the street urchin Krishan, but both lack the original intensity and as their love story turns to tragedy, there's a distinct lack of emotional impact.
Certainly there is a lot of room from improvement. The score is occasionally woeful, the acting at times a little wooden and the lack of a big Bollywood number at the end is unforgivable
However, it's a production which is also easy on the eye. The choreography is seamless, the set, if someone has managed to fix an erratic door, simple and beautiful and the story, which makes no claims to be a faithful adaptation, entertains from start to finish.
For all the minor flaws, the real problem for Tamasha may well be the theatre in which they decided to premiere their new show.
In a town as wealthy as Harrogate, there's really no excuse that its only theatre has been allowed to become an unloved museum piece.
Buildings like it are costly to maintain, but even when it has had the cash, it seems to have spent it unwisely. Whichever bright spark decided turquoise velvet seats were just the thing to sit against the traditional plush red colour scheme has hopefully now exited stage left. Sadly, against this backdrop of chipped plaster and an auditorium which is as hot as Mumbai, a sumptuous Bollywood production can only ever sit uncomfortably. (Sarah Freeman)
Did you just wake up one morning and decide to write and direct a Bollywood style musical?Opera News reviews the recent Midsummer Night by Kate Royal and makes the following statement (with which this half of BrontëBlog cannot agree more):
No! I’ve always been fascinated by the character of Heathcliff. He was the “outsider” who had to work ten times as hard as all those around him – like me in a way.
Why did you pick Emily Brontes ‘Wuthering Heights?’ instead of, lets say, Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’?
Mainly for the Heathcliff’s character. Also, Jane Austen is not passionate of dark enough for me.
Have you ever been to Yorkshire Moors?
No – but doing Bronte Goes to Bollywood has given me a real yurning to go and explore the Moors.
Are you a romantic at heart?
Yes. Very much!
Do you think Emily Bronte would give ‘Bronte Goes to Bollywood’ the thumbs up?
Yes. Its loyal to the characters and their journeys – and we are all very affectionate towards the story.
Bollywood film productions are usually BIG affairs. Did you find it easy to translate into a live stage performance?
No. It was a long process but with the collaboration of the Tamasha Theatre Company and lots of research we have a fabulous project on our hands.
The stage version is a great success. Is that why you headed off to the Oscars earlier this year? Is there a film version in the pipeline?
Yes there is. It’s only at the “talking about” stage at the moment so who knows!
Listening to Royal's fine performances of Britten's tower scene from The Turn of the Screw, the magnificent "At the haunted end of the day," from Walton's Troilus and Cressida, and "I have dreamt," Cathy's moving aria from Bernard Herrmann's woefully underperformed Wuthering Heights, one can't help but be reminded of a time when those who were in the business of presenting new opera put the music first. If the audiences weren't always there for them, if the academic establishment was too busy castigating them because they weren't serialists to notice that they were producing some really fine music — well, the composers shouldn't be blamed. (Brian Kellow)The Mirror interviews ITV boss Peter Fincham who says the following about the period drama ITV crisis:
In these tough financial times, drama is a harder genre to commit to at the levels we have been used to as it's so expensive to make (Heartbeat, The Royal and Primeval have been axed while a planned adaptation of A Passage to India was also canned). But we will do more period drama. Wuthering Heights will be shown later this year and I had a meeting yesterday about an important new period drama series. (Nicola Methven)As Kelly pointed out on a previous post it is rather strange that Wuthering Heights 2009 appearance on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK is apparently scheduled for next September 7th when everything seems to point to a later British airing.
There is verisimilitude in the book's form as well, with an intricacy and sentimentality worthy of Dickens; alternating narrators reminiscent of a Brontë; and a satirical eye as sharp as Thackeray's. (Melissa Katsoulis)The Basingstoke Gazette reviews the Basingstoke comedy night at Jan Jack’s latest Laughter House in The Red Lion Hotel, Basingstoke. One of the participants is the Irish Grainne McGuire whose routine includes an Emily Brontë impersonation:
The Irish Grainne McGuire had a chummy style and ironic wit, and created wonderful image of Emily Bronte writing letters in praise of people she hated when she was drunk.Christopher Caldwell talks about copyright issues and sequels (still following the recent Salinger affaire) in The Financial Times:
Many novels deploy other writers’ characters: John Gardner’s Grendel, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (a spin-off of Jane Eyre), the late George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series, which draws from Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays, and Charlie Higson’s Young Bond books, to name just a few.It seems that Kristina Foden-Vencil, from the Oregon Public Broadcasting News, cannot be considered a Brontëite as can be deduced from this comment on the English, Baby! website:
It’s different from the English lessons you might remember at school. But that’s the point. It’s meant to be fun and perhaps a little more engaging than Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre.’Exactly the opposite of Tara Entwistle-Clark from the Boston Books Examiner who chooses Wuthering Heights for her summer reading recommendation list:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: Twilight fans! This is for you. Here is the original story of the bad boy and the woman who loves him, despite all of the forces of the world around them working against them.And the author Hazel Statham, who is interviewed on Blogcritics Books:
What is your favorite book at the present?El Diario Vasco interviews author Tamara Cadena. Another Brontëite (romantic, no capital R, faction):
Can I cheat and tell you my three favorite books? At 16 I found Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and it has remained my absolute favorite throughout the years. Then came Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades, and more recently Laura Kinsale’s Flowers From The Storm. These three books are my main ‘comfort’ reads and have traveled all over the world with me as well as into hospital on several occasions. They’re very well traveled books and I have more than one copy of each of them. (Dorothy Thompson)
Y mira que si nos ponemos a hablar de 'Cumbres borrascosas'.In La Nación (Argentina), Juana Libedinsky comments on the recent edition of Wuthering Heights targeted to Twilight fans connecting it with the recent casting of Ed Westwick as Heathcliff:
- Por Dios, ¡me muero! De hecho, que sentí morir cuando un compañero de trabajo me dijo después de leer mi novela: «De ahora en adelante tú serás mi Emily Brönte». ¿Te lo puedes imaginar? ¡Me estaba comparando con la escritora de una historia de amor que atraviesa no sólo el tiempo sino la frontera entre la vida y la muerte.
- Heatchliff y Cathy... Son de los nuestros, ¿verdad?
- Para siempre. Te lo repito, me fascina esa capacidad de decidir que la pasión que te quemaba por dentro cuando estabas viva te seguirá quemando después de muerta. (Begoña Del Teso) (Google translation)
Si uno se acerca a la estantería de best sellers de literatura adolescente, entre los libros de la serie de vampiros Crepúsculo -el gran éxito de Stephenie Meyer, fenómeno cultural que fue comparado con el de Harry Potter-, aparece una novedad que realmente a muchos pone los pelos de punta: Cumbres borrascosas , presentado con un diseño gráfico en negro y colorado, con letras góticas para que parezca parte del conjunto de libros de Meyer cuyas tapas son en ese estilo.Nu.nl finds Brontë echoes in C.E. Morgan's All The Living:
Para que no haya ninguna duda sobre la estrecha relación, en la imagen de la portada se aclara: "¡El libro preferido de Edward y Bella!", en referencia a los protagonistas de Crepúsculo , que citan frases del clásico de Emily Brontë en la tercera entrega de la historia de amor entre el joven Nosferatu y la adolescente del noroeste norteamericano.
Si bien Meyer misma confesó inspirarse en el clásico, y Bella puede ser vista debatiéndose entre Edward y Jacob (el hombre lobo confiable) de la misma manera que Cathy se siente tironeada entre Edgar (el candidato que prefiere su familia) y Heathcliff (a quien consideran diabólico), puede ser difícil ver parecidos reales. Aun así la maniobra publicitaria, que comenzó en Francia y que ahora se ha trasladado del otro lado del Canal de la Mancha, ha resultado increíblemente efectiva. Según The Guardian, las ventas de Cumbres? ( Les Hauts de Hurlevent ) aumentaron en un 50% en el país galo desde que, el año pasado, se lo ubicó en las librerías junto a los libros de Crepúsculo y continúan en ascenso. En el país de origen de las hermanas Brontë, el efecto no fue tan marcado, pero los vendedores aseguran que Crepúsculo ha despertado un renovado interés por el gótico victoriano.
Todo esto se enmarca, naturalmente, dentro del debate de cómo acercar los clásicos a los adolescentes. Poco tiempo atrás, un autor contaba que su interés por la literatura había despuntado al encontrar un estante alto en el que sus padres habían intentado poner fuera de su alcance El amante de Lady Chatterley , Trópico de Cáncer y demás obras subidas de tono. Aseguraba que de haber estado La guerra y la paz allí lo hubiera leído también, porque nada despierta más el interés que lo que parece prohibido.
Sin embargo, la forma más tradicional de todas de acercar un clásico a los adolescentes (o las adolescentes) ya está también puesta en marcha respecto a Cumbres borrascosas . Hollywood ha anunciado una nueva versión en la pantalla grande con el galán de la serie televisiva "Gossip girl" (sobre un sofisticado secundario de chicos ricos neoyorquinos) en el papel del salvaje Heathcliff de los lúgubres páramos de Yorkshire. (Google translation)
En Aloma staat qua gevoelsleven beslist op één lijn met personages uit het werk van Jane Austen of de gezusters Brönte ― zij als een Jane Eyre en Orren als Rochester. (Google translation)The Frisky begins an article about YA novels and teen series like this:
There’s lots of literary esteem to be held for classic coming-of-age stories like Little Women or Jane Eyre. (Leonora Epstein)Jane Eyre is, of course, much more than a coming-of-age story, but we get the point.
In the spirit of wresting back control of her destiny, perhaps it's time she pitched some new Aniston projects to the studios:On blogs: Cup-Bound and Scalding (the blog of Sian Griffiths whose first novel Borrowed Horses, still unpublished, is a contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre) posts a poem inspired by Jane Eyre. Precisely, Simplicitas has read Charlotte Brontë's novel. Finally, Maud Newton reviews Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour on The Second Pass.
Jane Eyre in Malibu
Brad Rochester locks his raven-haired, tattooed and quite mad former lover in the attic and rekindles his romance with Jen Eyre, the governess with lovely hair whom he stupidly jilted in favour of the lady in the loft. (Julia Raeside)
Unless explicitly said
