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Showing posts sorted by relevance for query showalter peers. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query showalter peers. Sort by date Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Saturday, May 16, 2009 4:07 pm by M. in , , , , , ,    No comments
Today we have a very French Brontë day:

Jane Campion is presenting her new film Bright Star at Cannes 2009. The film explores the love affair between 23 year old English poet, John Keats, and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of fashion. According to the director in Le Figaro, her heroine is more Brontë than Austen:
Pensez-vous que si Keats n'avait pas rencontré Fanny, son œuvre en aurait été changée ?

Quand on aime, on baisse les armes, on est complètement vulnérable. C'est une sorte de rite de passage. Il faut être ouvert à la souffrance comme à la grâce. Quand Keats rencontre Fanny, il est assez sarcastique à propos de l'amour. Il pense d'abord que Fanny, à cause de son obsession pour la couture et pour la mode, est frivole et ridicule. Mais il apprécie son esprit vif, frondeur. Lorsque Tom, le jeune frère de Keats, meurt, Fanny lui ouvrira alors vraiment son cœur. Fanny, à mes yeux, est un personnage qui se situe plutôt du côté des héroïnes d'Emily Brontë que de celles de Jane Austen. Les personnages de Jane Austen travaillent pour gagner leur vie et trouver de l'affection alors que ceux d'Emily Brontë font preuve, comme Fanny, de beaucoup plus de volonté et de caractère. Fanny, qui n'avait pas un sens pratique, avait une pensée plus magique. Elle était incapable d'embrasser la réalité. On se trompait sur son compte, dans son entourage, tout le monde pensait qu'elle était destinée à faire un riche mariage. Elle a préféré Keats qui était d'une pauvreté absolue. (Emmanuèle Frois) (cut and paste on Google translation )
The film itself is described on Écranlarge as:
[F]ilm au romantisme exacerbé que l'on dirait tout droit sortie d'une adaptation d'un des romans des Sœurs Brontë mais aussi et surtout dans la lignée de La leçon de piano Palme d'or ici en 1993. (Jean-Noël Nicolau) (Google translation)
Parutions reviews Édith & Yann's Les Hauts de Hurlevent comic:
La société victorienne, ses hiérarchies rigides, ses rudesses… Tout un monde, cruel pour les pauvres et les délaissés. L’histoire des Hauts de Hurlevent est un classique, le récit d’un enfant Heathcliff, adopté par un brave homme, Mr Earnshaw, qui l’a trouvé dans un caniveau et le ramène chez lui. Mais l’enfant de la rue, bohémien à la peau sombre, regard noir et caractère un peu sauvage à apprivoiser, se heurte à la haine d’une partie de sa nouvelle famille et des proches, à commencer par Hindley, le fils de Mr Earnshaw, peu enclin à le considérer comme un frère, et à peine comme un être humain. Entre les deux enfants, le duel ne fait que commencer, alors que Catherine, la soeur d’Hindley, s’amourache peu à peu du petit sauvageon, devenu un beau jeune homme. Mais la vie est cruelle et se charge d’éloigner, un temps, les deux jeunes gens. Catherine se marie “dans son monde” et Heathcliff, à bout d’humiliations, s’enfuit. La vie reprend sur la lande… jusqu’au retour de Heathcliff, assoiffé de justice…
Les Hauts de Hurlevent relèvent quasiment du huis clos : une demeure sombre perdue dans une lande, un face-à-face entre deux enfants que tout oppose, une “bonne” (sic.) société hostile à Heathcliff, perclue de préjugés, plus bête que méchante… mais si idiote ! L’adaptation de Yann est édulcorée, mais efficace : en quelques paroles et quelques images, il a su mettre en scène une ambiance, une atmosphère, une époque même. Le graphisme d’Edith peut, dans un premier temps, surprendre, plus enfantin qu’adulte… On se dit que l’ouvrage est quand même un classique, que c’est une histoire sérieuse… une réaction victorienne ? Puis, très vite, le graphisme convainc, par son attention aux détails, aux personnages, aux allures, aux regards échangés. Le style d’Edith ne dénature pas l’histoire, au contraire, il va à l’essentiel, à savoir l’égarement d’un enfant dans un monde brutal de grandes personnes, et confronté à d’autres petits adultes en réduction, déjà imbus de préjugés. Exploitant les aspects psychologiques du roman, Edith a su individualiser chaque personnage, conférer à chacun une épaisseur. Une belle adaptation, fidèle à l’esprit de la collection Ex-Libris. (Gilles Ferragu) (Google translation)
The Guardian reviews Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx mentioning of course the previous scholar milestone in her author's career:
In other words, the women Showalter surveys were all in need of a room of their own. In one sense, this is a familiar story, told not only by Virginia Woolf, but by Showalter herself 30 years ago, in A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing, her pioneering genealogy of British women's fiction within its social, cultural and political contexts. One of the founders of feminist literary theory, Showalter has long insisted that women writers should be taken on their own terms, and joined the chorus of her peers in the 1970s and 80s arguing that many had been unjustly neglected on the basis of their sex. Rebuttals soon followed that these writers had been justly neglected on the basis of merit, and should continue to be neglected. (Sarah Churchwell)
A.V. Club reviews the latest installment of Marvel's Cloak & Dagger: Child of Darkness, Child of Light:
They’re odd but resonant characters, locked into a relationship with Catherine-and-Heathcliff levels of angst and determined to save other kids from grim fates, even if they aren’t sure how to go about it without simply killing every criminal they see. (Keith Phipps, Leonard Pierce, Tasha Robinson and Zack Handlen)
Another Brontëite: writer Lisa Jackson, who is interviewed in Bookreporter:
Jodie from Commerce City, CO: What are your favorite things to read? Who are some of your favorite authors?
Lisa Jackson: I read whatever's current and popular. If a book is continually on the bestseller lists, I want to know why. I also read by recommendation. Oh, I have tons of favorite authors. I like Sue Grafton, William Lashner, Harlan Coben, Charlotte Brontë, Steve Martini, Stephen King, Dan Brown, John Grogan, Chris Bohjalian, Sue Monk Kidd, Daphne DuMaurier, Khaled Hosseini, Nelson DeMille, Tami Hoag, Greg Iles, and Dennis Lehane, to name a few.
Acta Fabula reviews Alain Lescarts's scholar book Splendeurs et misères de la grisette. Évolution d’une figure emblématique:
L’appropriation anglophone de la grisette témoigne de son succès populaire. S’appuyant sur les œuvres de Sterne, de Charlotte Brontë et d’Elizabeth Gaskell, mais aussi sur les comptes-rendus des journaux américains, Alain Lescart montre dans les dernières pages de son livre combien ces écrits contribuent au portrait de la Parisienne en femme romantique, passionnée, aimante, tragique, coquette, futile, superficielle, facile. Mais le personnage permet aussi, comme chez Brontë, de défier la vision classique du mariage et du rôle social des femmes. (Olivier Penot-Lacassagne) (Google translation)
Clave digital discusses El amor en los tiempos del cólera by Gabriel García Márquez:
Me recuerda otras grandes y absurdas historias de amor, como la de King Kong, que es quizás la más absurda y tierna de todas, y una de las más trágicas, tan trágica como la del Conde Drácula que persigue y es perseguido por su obsesión más allá de la muerte y de la sangre, algo parecido a lo que ocurre en “Cumbres borrascosas”. (Pedro Conde Sturla) (Google translation)
A Wuthering Heights in Rangoon in Foreign Policy Journal, a member of the international jewel thief network Pink Panthers reminds the New York Times of Heathcliff, Fairaudio insists on comparing Soap & Skin and Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights (in German) and an absurd liking of melancholia and (female) readers of Wutheing Heights in El Manifiesto (in Spanish).

Huffenglish
shares a teaching Wuthering Heights experience and cstmch uploads to YouTube Remembrance by Emily Bronte, using Nothing else matters by Apocalyptica for the soundtrack.

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Saturday, March 14, 2009

The Yorkshire Post has an article about youth hostels, including the one at Haworth:
One of them is the hostel at Haworth, a large Victorian mansion that evokes the era of the Brontë novels. It is among the most popular hostels in Britain with overseas visitors, and after a winter of refurbishment has just reopened.
Keighley News also has more information about the new tourist campaign to promote the Pennine areas of West Yorkshire (by the West Yorkshire Tourism Partnership):
Haworth is heavily involved in a new campaign designed to attract visitors to Pennine areas of West Yorkshire.
Five local authorities – including Bradford, Kirklees and Calderdale – have combined to boost short breaks and increase visitor spending in the area.
Pennine Yorkshire, the rural areas of West Yorkshire, will be promoted via a new website, brochure and marketing campaign.
Two pages of the 20-page guide are dedicated to Haworth and Bronte Country, with the guide picking out the Bronte Parsonage as the first destination for many visitors.
Haworth’s cobbled main street, lined with small independent shops, pubs and tearooms, is also brought to the reader’s attention.
The guide goes on to conjure up inspiring images of puffs of white steam rising over the Worth Valley – the first indication of an approaching train on the Keighley and Worth Valley line.
For a special meal out, the Weavers restaurant in Haworth is recommended as a “popular choice”.
And it adds that Haworth’s Cheese Shop offers a choice of a dozen Yorkshire cheeses.
Under the section labelled ‘attractions for all the family’, the guide picks out East Riddlesden Hall, which has been described as a “brooding mansion” by the National Trust.
Liz Tattersley, manager of West Yorkshire Tourism Partnership, said the economic climate could mean more domestic trips being taken, giving the area a “genuine opportunity” to attract more visitors.
She said: “The new website and marketing campaign will capitalise on this, raising the profile of the Pennine Yorkshire region which is personified by open moorland, wooded valleys and a strong industrial heritage.
“Pennine Yorkshire is renowned for attractions, including the World Heritage Site in Saltaire, Haworth and its Bronte associations, Holmfirth and Last of the Summer Wine, plus Hebden Bridge, voted the fourth funkiest place in the world.”
If Novels Could Read is a literary game being played on The Guardian's Book Blog:
I'd personally love to give Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus to the likes of Ms Bennet – and I bet Becky Sharp would have had a copy to hand, she knew what was what when it came to men. Perhaps the Kama Sutra might help out poor, repressed Jane Eyre, and she'd realise there's more to life than Mr Rochester. And if Juliet had been following The Rules (wait at least three dates before you sleep with him) would it all have gone so wrong? (Alison Flood)
A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx by Elaine Showalter is reviewed in the Washington Post. A couple of Brontë mentions can be spotted:
As a literature professor at Princeton, she helped pioneer feminist criticism in the 1970s with works like "Toward a Feminist Poetics" and "A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing." (...)
Along the way, Showalter raises complicated questions about how art and social circumstances intersect. Crucially, she shows how many talented female writers were discouraged from developing their abilities or died in childbirth before coming to maturity. The demands of housework were a particular trouble. Fanny Fern -- a flowery novelist and columnist -- put it succinctly when she wrote in the mid-19th century, "I am sick, in an age which produced a Brontë . . . of the prate of men who assert that every woman should be a perfect housekeeper." (In fact, "A Jury of Her Peers" is not only a history of women who wrote books but also of women who hated sewing -- "that interminable thing," as Elizabeth Stoddard called it.) (Meghan O'Rourke)
The Age takes for granted that Stephenie Meyer's Twilight marks the way to discover the Brontës:
All of which may not be much help to concerned parents who want to guide their daughters in the direction of Great Literature. But take heart. Dark hero? Demon lover? Impossible, dangerous, even lethal liaison? Across the windswept moors lies the throbbing heart of Bronte territory. Before too long, it might be Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights clutched to your daughter's bosom. (Jane Sullivan)
WEBReporter (Czech Republic) announces the upcoming premiere of a new production of Jane Eyre (Jana Eyrová) adapted by Věra Mašková and directed by Peter Gábor at the Divadlo ABC in Prague (April 18):
Městská divadla pražská uvedou další českou premiéru. Tentokrát divákům nabídnou jevištní adaptaci světového bestselleru Jana Eyrová. Známý příběh o zapovězené lásce a děsivém tajemství v režii Petera Gábora bude mít premiéru v Divadle ABC 18. dubna. Příběh hlavní hrdinky je nabitý událostmi, překvapivými dějovými zvraty, silnými emocemi, tedy vším, co má dobrý divadelní titul mít.
Slavná viktoriánská novela Charlotty Brontëové vypráví pět kapitol ze života Jany – její dět
ství v Gatesheadu, kde je tyranizována svou tetou, nesnadná léta v Lowoodské škole, její první zkušenost guvernantky na zámku Thornfield, kde se seznamuje s mužem svého srdce – záhadným Edwardem Rochesterem, pobyt v rodině faráře Johna Riverse a konečně happy-end, kdy se znovu setkává s milovaným mužem. Román je částečně autobiografický. Už ve své době si získal velkou oblibu, a neztratil ji ani v dalších staletích.
Jana Eyrová je především příběhem o setkání dvou mimořádnýc
h jedinců, dvou lidí, které rozděluje původ, věk, prostředí, lidí, kteří naprosto neodpovídají standardní představě mileneckého páru, a přesto je spojí hluboká náklonnost. Není to prchavá touha, ale skutečné souznění duší, o to tragičtější, že děsivé tajemství z minulosti maří jakoukoli naději na naplnění tohoto vztahu. "Jana Eyrová je ale také příběhem o tom, že každý náš skutek má své důsledky, a že všechny dlouhé stíny našich hříchů padají na naše životy ve chvílích, kdy to nejméně čekáme," řekla autorka scénáře, dramaturgyně Věra Mašková a dodala: "Před vlastní vinou, před vlastním špatným svědomím se nemůžeme schovat, život ve lži nám jednoho dne zhořkne, a tento den nás přinutí zaplatit. Ale Jana Eyrová je i příběhem o tom, že přijmeme-li svoje břemeno, a pokusíme se odčinit svou vinu, máme naději na milosrdný soud."
A čím podle představitelky titulní role Evellyn Pacolákové nejvíc přitahuje příběh Jany Eyrové? "Jednak je to samozřejmě působivý příběh lásky, který se tu odehrává. Ale hodně přitahuje i samotná postava Jany Eyrové – její osobní svoboda, její hledání. V době, kdy se příběh odehrává, byla společnost výrazně rozdělená, byly tu velké kastovní rozdíly mezi vládnoucí vrstvou a služebnictvem. Jana, která pocházela z nedobrých poměrů, odmítá tyto rozdíly brát v úvahu. A z toho vlastně vzniká její – možná nevědomá – vzpoura a její cesta ke svobodě."
Jevištní adaptace Jany Eyrové v Divadle ABC nabídne divákům pohled očima Janiných vzpomínek, což dává možnost nerealistického ztvárnění příběhu, v němž se akcentuje, stejně jako ve vzpomínkách určitý výrazný detail.
V roli Jany se představí nová posila Městských divadel pražských Evellyn Pacoláková. Po studiích na JAMU v Brně nastoupila do angažmá v olomoucké činohře, kde se brzy stala výraznou členkou souboru. O jejím výrazném hereckém talentu svědčí Ceny za nejlepší výkon sezony 2000/2001 (Larisa v inscenaci Bez věna), sezony 2003/2004 (Beatrice v Mnoho povyku pro nic) a předevš
ím Cena Thalie 2005 pro mladého činoherce do 33 let.
Edward Rochester - Hynek Čermák se kromě divadla se objevuje v nejrůznějších filmových a televizních produkcích, zahrál si například v seriálech Zdivočelá země, Nemocnice na kraji města po dvaceti letech, Rodinná pouta, Poslední sezóna, Agentura Puzzle, Četnické humoresky či Eden. Natočil americký film Wrong Mr. Johnson, kde hrál jednu z hlavních rolí. Je autorem asi padesáti písní, které si sám interpretuje s hudební skupinou Provas. Od puberty se aktivně věnuje sportovnímu létání a dalším adrenalinovým aktivitám. (Barbora Bělinová
) (Google translation)
We can include the Spanish writer Laura Freixas to the Brontëite ranks according to El País:
Su proceso de vampirización fue un viaje continuo. Siguió en Inglaterra, donde fue lectora de español, y donde se sumió en la lectura de autores especialmente suculentos para un buen festín que deja poso: las hermanas Brontë, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf... El amor por la Woolf en cierto modo ha transustanciado a la escritora de Al faro en su propia personalidad, pues es la traductora de sus diarios. Y otra mujer, la brasileña Clarice Lispector, es otro de sus alimentos literarios; Freixas escribe ahora su biografía, una manera de vampirizar, también, la vida. (Juan Cruz) (Google translation)
A review on Panorama.it of the Italian translation of Fabrice Gaignault's Dictionnaire de littérature à l'usage des snobs : Et (surtout) de ceux qui ne le sont pas (published in 2007) reveals that Branwell Brontë is one of its entries:
Nel dizionario spunta il sempre taciuto Patrick Branwell Bronte, fratello delle ben più note Charlotte, Emily e Anne. (Antonio Carnevale) (Google translation)
On the blogosphere, The World of Cheese reviews Wuthering Heights and Jyusan, Nijyusan, Yonjyuni talks about Jane Eyre 2006. Les soeurs Brontë has uploaded robot portraits of Charlotte, Emily and Anne and a post on Lord Byron, the Gondal Lord of Elbë and Heathcliff. SueWeasley has uploaded a Haworth trip video to youtube.

And finally a curious story. Why would a US cop from Forth Worth, Texas end behind the counter of Haworth's Rose & Co Apothecary ? The answer in The Telegraph & Argus.

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Monday, June 15, 2009

Monday, June 15, 2009 12:04 am by Cristina in ,    No comments
As the Brontë Parsonage Blog reported a couple of weeks ago, today, June 15, there is a Brontë-related alert at the Courtauld Institute, London, at 7 pm.
The Royal Society of Literature
Monday 15 June: American women writers and the Brontës

Elaine Showalter


Chaired by Ion Trewin

One of the first essays that Virginia Woolf had published, in The Guardian when she was 22, was about a ‘pilgrimage’ to Haworth. She was writing 50 years after the death of the last of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, but the ‘thrill’ of the bleak Yorkshire vicarage and the sisters’ small relics was vivid and powerful. Haworth had already become a place for pilgrimage not just for British admirers, but also for Americans, many of them writers.

Elaine Showalter discusses the enormous impact of the Brontës – through Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Villette and Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë – on American women’s writing in the 19th century: writers black and white, novelists and poets, from Emily Dickinson to Sarah Orne Jewett, who used the lives and novels of the Brontës as inspirations for American stories. A professor emerita at Princeton and former chair of the judges of the Man Booker International Prize, Elaine Showalter has just completed a new book, A Jury of Her Peers: American women writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, published by Virago Press in May. Her previous books include A Literature of Their Own: British women novelists from Brontë to Lessing.

The talk will be held, as usual, in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre at the Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, WC2, and will begin at 7pm, with doors opening at 6pm. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception. Free for Fellows and members of the RSL; £8 for non-members; £5 concs.
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Sunday, March 26, 2017

More US newspapers announce tonight's US premiere of To Walk Invisible on PBS:

The New York Times:
At first the Brontë sisters tried being governesses — a miserable job, but good for mining material for the novels they would write as “brothers,” using masculine-sounding pseudonyms: Currer Bell for Charlotte (Finn Atkins), who wrote “Jane Eyre”; Ellis Bell for Emily (Chloe Pirrie), the author of “Wuthering Heights”; and Acton Bell for Anne (Charlie Murphy), who wrote “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.” Sally Wainwright (“Last Tango in Halifax,” “Happy Valley”) is the force behind this movie about the dutiful daughters of an ailing Yorkshire clergyman (Jonathan Pryce) and the ne’er-do-well sibling, Branwell (Adam Nagaitis), who inspired vivid characters in his sisters’ novels. (Kathryn Shattuck)
Northwest Arkansas Democratic Gazette:
Masterpiece presents To Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters at 8 p.m. today on AETN. The two-hour film highlights the famous literary siblings who, against all odds, "had their genius for writing romantic novels recognized in a male-dominated 19th-century world."
The film was written and directed by Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax) and tells the tale of Charlotte, Emily and Anne, the dutiful clergyman's daughters who became the authors of "the most controversial fiction of the 1840s." (...)
Wainwright based the film largely on Charlotte's letters and concentrates on the three-year period "that saw them rise from ordinary, unmarried women, taking care of the household and their widowed father, to the secret authors of the world's most sensational literature."
"I hope people will be entertained and go away wanting to know more about the Brontës," Wainwright added. (Michael Storey)
The Times Herald-Record clearly has not done a proper research (check the final paragraph):
"Invisible" is a must for Brontë buffs and "Masterpiece" completists, but even they may find some of the dialogue hard to understand.
At first I thought this was a matter of local dialects falling deaf on American ears, but apparently many British viewers went on social media to complain about muffled audio.
The film includes a peculiar, unfortunate and blessedly short bookending gimmick, depicting the young Brontë children flush with imagination and playing some fantastic board game of their own devising.
It comes off as a desperate effort to attract "Harry Potter" readers. Equally jarring, the film concludes with a contemporary trip to a Brontë museum, where we all end up in the gift shop.
Neal Justin in the Kansas Star-Tribune is no lover of the new production:
Charlotte, Emily and Anne may have been the most successful sister act in literary history, but their real-life tale isn’t exactly a page turner. It’s hard to come to any other conclusion after watching “To Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters,” a well-meaning but tedious biopic that does little to capture the brilliance and personalities of the women behind “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.” Perhaps director/writer Sally Wainwright purposely churned out a yawner in hopes that viewers would switch off their sets and crack open a classic novel.
Also in The Vindicator,  Detroit Free Press, East Bay Times, ...

The Silver Petticoat Review recommends the production.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch has an article on the columnist and writer Sara Payson Parton (aka Fanny Fern):
Although their names are largely forgotten, many American writers drew from Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” in the 1850s. And some were successful — very successful.
One million copies sold for one novel, “The Wide Wide World” by Susan Warner. Warner had, in fact, started writing her book before “Jane” took the English-reading world by storm. Her sister, Anna, also wrote popular novels and likened the American pair to the Brontë sisters. Between them, they published 21 titles — with most of the money going to pay their father’s debts, writes Elaine Showalter in “A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx.” (...)
Although “Ruth Hall” was apparently no “Jane Eyre” or “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Fern’s feminism and professionalism, Showalter writes, “cleared the path for Stowe and the new order of women to come.” (Jane Henderson)
Critic (New Zealand) reviews Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea:
This book lives on my bookshelf, in a case, with a plaque underneath: ‘A Modernist Triumph of Femme Freedom’. In 1969, Jean Rhys published Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel and intervention to Jane Eyre, much like the prequel and intervention of my flatmate telling me I am cunty vomitty person the day after a party. However, where my flatmate sets a house on fire, Rhys burns it to the ground. This novel deconstructs the hysterical woman, especially as portrayed in the ‘feminist’ gothic text Jane Eyre.
Where Bertha in Jane Eyre is an elusive creature, so too is the tumbling narrative of Wide Sargasso Sea. The way the protagonist’s focus sways from the heave and seethe of the Caribbean jungle to her decomposing marriage lends itself to post-post-colonial dialogue. (...)
This is a baffling read and for such a short novel, it is surprisingly dense. Not because of the content, but because of the space that the narrative is meant to occupy. Wide Sargasso Sea alleviates the limitations of Jane Eyre, and celebrates the existence of a) humans and b) women, no matter their mental state, background or role within society. Like a Lana Del Rey song, Wide Sargasso Sea works to validate and celebrate self-indulgent sadness; it is a love letter to the tides of hedonistic apathy, commiserating the vilification of those who suffer loss without need for redemption or forgiveness. Most importantly, Rhys drives for the continuation of the human voice through dissolution to insanity. In short: it’s a good time. (Zoe Taptiklis)
The Sunday Times reviews the biography Jane Welsh Carlyle and Her Victorian World by Kathy Chamberlain:
She herself was rumoured to be the author of the pseudonymously published Jane Eyre. She admired Charlotte Brontë, but disliked Jane Austen (“too washy — watergruel”) and said of George Eliot: “She looks Propriety personified. Oh, so slow!” (Paula Byrne)
Also in The Sunday Times, an interview with Reed Hastings founder and CEO of Netflix:
As I wait to meet the CEO and founder of Netflix, Reed Hastings, two PRs are talking about how as children they were obsessed with books. “I used to read under the covers so my mum didn’t know,” says one. “Yes, I set fire to a T-shirt using it to dim my bedside light,” says the other. This, they agree, is how people feel about Netflix. A new episode is like the next chapter: gobbling down the Gilmore Girls is the same as piling through Jane Eyre. I’m not sure whether this conversation is for my benefit. (I wouldn’t be surprised.) (Janice Turner)
BuzzFeed lists several classical films 'every woman should see'. Including Jane Eyre 1944 where Orson Welles plays one Mr Rotchester, apparently:
Joan Fontaine plays Jane Eyre who works as governess at Mr. Rotchester's home. She falls in love but struggles under numerous circumstances that keep her apart from Mr. Rotchester. (juldarps)
Reading is my Superpower interviews the author Barbara Cameron:
Who is your favorite book character from childhood?
Barbara: It’s got to be Jane Eyre. I first read the book when I was about twelve and fell in love with her spirit and her loving kindness. I wore out several copies of that book and loved being able to teach it when I later became a college English instructor.
El Día de Córdoba (Spain) interviews the writer Rodrigo Fresán who thinks that David Lynch could be a perfect director for a Wuthering Heights film:
-En la segunda parte tiene gran importancia la familia Brontë y especialmente Cumbres borrascosas, "un libro tóxico y con alto poder de contagio". (Braulio Ortiz)
-Lynch podría hacer una adaptación maravillosa de ese libro. Estamos ante una novela que, es curioso, por el tema y el tono ya resultaba antigua en la fecha en la que aparece, y sin embargo anticipa muchas de las cosas que vendrán después. Todo lo que hicieron las hermanas Brontë es fascinante. A mí me gusta mucho Jane Eyre, pero también otro libro de Charlotte que se llama Villette, y las dos novelas protofeministas de Anne [La inquilina de Wildfell y Agnes Grey]. Lo interesante de Cumbres borrascosas es que puede verse no tanto como una novela de vampiros como de vampirizados: el vampiro pasó, los mordió a todos y los dejó allí.  (Translation)
Vivere Pesaro (Italy) vindicates the work of the writer Grazia Deledda:
Le sue tematiche hanno un'impronta verista, tenendo conto che la Deledda è una profonda osservatrice della Sardegna antica, dell'interiorizzazione della sua terra. Ne La Madre, la Deledda recupera il significato dell'Isola del mito, di una certa impronta anglosassone come Cime tempestose di Emily Brontë. Ma la Deledda viene definita anche una scrittrice, anche superficiale, estimatrice di Carolina Invernizio. (Paolo Montanari) (Translation)
The Readiness is All reviews Wuthering Heights.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Saturday, February 14, 2009 1:46 pm by M. in , , , , , , ,    No comments
Judy Hinderliter writes in The Ithaca Journal about her literary life experiences and describes one particular event that, we are pretty sure, many of the readers of BrontëBlog and the people behind it who have have been able to visit the British Library in London have experienced:
Many years later, the power of the written word was once again brought home. During a trip to England to visit our daughter who was attending school, we visited the National Museum in London. I remember standing transfixed before the glass case holding the original copy of my favorite classic. I was not prepared for the emotions I felt seeing Charlotte Bronte's hand written copy of "Jane Eyre."
The new book by Elaine Showalter (author of one of the most influential books in feminist literary criticism: A Literature of Their Own. British Women Literature: From Brontë to Lessing, 1977):
A Jury of Her Peers. American Women Writers. From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx is reviewed on Los Angeles Times. Jane Eyre is mentioned:
Though the 1850s are considered a golden age in American letters, with male luminaries like Whitman, Melville, Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne, they were also, as Showalter quotes literary historian David S. Reynolds, the "American Woman's Renaissance," influenced to a large degree by the enormous popularity of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre," published in America in 1848. The increase in "domestic novels" written by women inspired vitriolic reviews and threatened marriages. (Susan Salter Reynolds)
The New York Times presents the new production of Verdi's Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera House which opens next Monday. The production's director David McVicar talks about Leonora, portrayed by the soprano Sondra Radvanovsky:
Too often, Mr. McVicar finds, the character comes onstage as a “poncy lady in a big frock.” To him she is closer to a Brontë heroine on the moors, or to Beethoven’s Leonore in “Fidelio,” who, like this Leonora, will stop at nothing to free her man from prison. (Matthew Gurewitsch)
The Chicago Tribune reviews The Women by T.C. Boyle, a fictionalised account of the life of Frank Lloyd Wright who
Outfitted with a cape and cane, popping back and forth between Chicago and Taliesin, his home in Wisconsin, often the transgressive subject on the society page or even front page of the newspapers, he was larger than life and "could have been a figure summoned by the Brontes," quips novelist T.C. Boyle in his treatment of Wright's life, "The Women." (Art Winslow)
And we have now a couple of Heathcliff-like British MPs. Sky News selects Andy Burnham:
Straight in at the top, like a Manc version of Heathcliff (the Byronic anti-hero, not the cartoon cat) is Andy "so hot I" Burnham. Beloved of many in the Sky Westminster office, the Culture Sec is a rare exception to GK Chesterton's rule that "All government is an ugly necessity". (Niall Paterson)
The other one is our particular Heathcliff of Downing Street:
Gordon Brown, in one of his more unfortunately spun speeches, cast himself as Heathcliff. There is no doubt that in his younger days he cut quite a dash with foreign princesses and the like - although sadly, instead of wandering on moors, he launched himself passionately into endless committee meetings and finance reform. (Jenny Colgan, Alison Flood and John Dugdalein The Guardian)
In the same article we find another Brontë reference talking about Sienna Miller:
I don't know much about Sienna Miller - well, that's nonsense, like the rest of the UK I know far too much about her. But she sure is mighty purty, as we can see in this week's Hello! magazine, which shows her dressing up as Natasha Rostova (a brunette, surely?) from War and Peace, as part of a Unicef campaign to fight illiteracy around the world. (...) I'd have liked to have seen a post-smallpox Esther Summerson, or a Bertha Rochester, but there you go. (Jenny Colgan, Alison Flood and John Dugdalein The Guardian)
Estense (Ferrara, Italy) announces the exhibition 'Il Sogno di Ofelia' by Beatrice Piva (Centro fisioterapico Il Girasole, until next April 14). Her work is described like this:
Il lavoro di Beatrice Piva si basa sulla sperimentazione di nuove tecniche e sul tema dell'amore unito alla morte, alla passione di tipo romantico-distruttivo che troviamo nelle tragedie di Shakespeare, nei libri delle sorelle Bronte e nell'immaginario romantico-gotico. (Google translation)
And we have an alert for tomorrow, February 15, in Avigliano, Italy:
L’Assessorato alla Cultura e un gruppo di giovani studenti hanno organizzato per domenica prossima, alle 17,00, un recital di poesie al teatro comunale incentrando l’iniziativa sul rapporto fra i poeti e la natura. L’iniziativa proporrà brani di Mario Luzi, William Words Worth, Charles Beaudelaire, Charles Bronte, Walt Whitman, Eugenio Montale, Alessandro Baricco e Premiata Forneria Marconi preceduti da introduzioni che illustreranno il mondo poetico degli autori e l’importanza che il tema della natura ha avuto nella loro produzione. Intermezzi musicali accompagneranno la recitazione dei testi con l’obiettivo unitario di sollecitare e stimolare l’attenzione sul rapporto arte-natura. (Atlantide Magazine) (Google translation)
Le Monde (France) compares the Loeseth sisters (skiers) to the Brontës:
Reste à savoir maintenant si les soeurs Loeseth atteindront, dans leur domaine, la gloire des soeurs Brontë.
LiteraturKritik (in German) explores the connections between Darwin's evolution theory and critical approaches to literature. Quoting from Joseph Carroll's Evolution and Literary Theory:
Carrolls zweites Beispiel ist Emily Brontës Roman "Sturmhöhe": Die Beziehung zwischen der Protagonistin Catherine und ihrem Adoptivbruder Heathcliff zeige zwar Züge einer leidenschaftlichen Verbindung, könne aber nach Westermarck keine wirklich leidenschaftliche Beziehung sein, da Catherine und Heathcliff zusammen aufgewachsen sind. Gegen diese Auffassung hat Alan Richardson in einem Aufsatz zum Inzestmotiv in der englischen Romantik zu Recht eingewandt: "fictional representations just do not work that way. Like dreams, fictive works can bear a number of different relations to the rules and regularities of daily experience, often giving us the inverse of the lived world. If Emily Brontë is at liberty to people the Yorkshire moors with ghosts, why not incestuous foster-siblings as well?" (Katjia Mellmann) (Google translation)
The Berliner Literaturkritik reviews Anne Donovan's Being Emily:
Charakteren: der Bruder ist sanftmütig, kümmernd und schwul, die Tante keck und lesbisch, der Vater ein Trunkenbold. Der Titel verweist auf Emily Brontë, berühmte Autorin der „Sturmhöhe“, die es nach Ansicht Fionas auch geschafft hat, Literatur und Hausarbeit unter einen Hut zu bekommen. (Sabine Thieslers) (Google translation)
Der Tagesspiele reviews a recent premiere at the Berlinale, Lone Scherfig's An Education. We highlight a Brontë reference:
Ist David vielleicht ein zwiespältiger Verführer wie Rochester aus Charlotte Brontës Roman „Jane Eyre“, über den Jenny glänzende Schulaufsätze schreibt? Oder gar ein Schurke wie Patricia Highsmiths Tom Ripley? (Julian Hanich) (Google translation)
Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) talks about Astrid Lindgren's influences, particularly Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, quoting profusely from John Seelyes's Jane Eyre’s American Daughters: From ”The Wide, Wide World” to ”Anne of Green Gables”:
Utgångspunkten för Seelye är alltså ”Jane Eyre”, ursprungligen utgiven 1847. Vad har Charlotte Brontës mästerverk, än i dag något av en kultbok för tonårsflickor, gemensamt med böckerna om Anne Shirley, för att inte tala om deras svenska förlängning Pippi Långstrump? Alla dessa böcker går att karaktärisera som ett slags Bildungsromaner, med ensamstående hjältinnor, som med egna krafter slår sig fram i världen. (...)
I ett väsentliga avseende skiljer sig ändå ”Jane Eyre” inte bara från L M Montgomerys och Astrid Lindgrens böcker utan också från merparten av sina amerikanska döttrar. Charlotte Brontës roman är en yttring av viktoriansk gotik, en skräckromantik med melodramatiska kryddor i ett däremellan realistiskt flöde. (Read more) (Nalle Valtiala) (Google translation)
And now for some explicit and non-explicit references to this most pink of all days, Valentine's day:

The Findlay Courier suggests Valentine's literary presents:
William Wordsworth. Emily Bronte. John Donne. Classical works by such poets can be used and offer inspiration. (Joy Brown)
The Toronto Star interviews some of the nominees for the U.K.-based Romantic Novel of the Year Award. The article begins with a Brontë&Austen compulsory reference:
Foreplay, not consummation, is the lifeblood of enduring romantic fiction. Whether it's the reconciliation of Jane and Rochester in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre or the battle of wills between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the denouement, no matter how swoon-inducing, is more icing than cake. False starts, tentative advances and even wrenching reversals along the way command the heart's attention. (Vit Wagner)
USA Today, The Hagerstown Herald-Mail and The Frederick News Post continue with their infomercial about Nora Roberts' recently inaugurated Inn BoonsBoro:
The room named for Jane and Rochester from Charlotte Bronte¨'s Jane Eyre (Roberts says she has read the book countless times) includes a fainting couch and a free-standing copper tub where guests can soak in heather-scented water. Each room has its own uniquely scented bath gels and lotions, which are produced locally. (Carol Emmott)
Michelle Kerns on The Examiner chooses her personal top 5 of the most annoying literary romances and the 5 most inspiringly romantic fictional liaisons. We have a Brontë on each list:
Annoying: 3. Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

I hated this book so much I could barely force myself to finish it. I've never understood why readers consider Heathcliff and Cathy's relationship to be so romantic; dysfunctional and destructive seems closer to the mark to me. And who needs enemies when you can count on your supposed devoted lover to do his best to destroy the life of your only child?
That's the problem precisely, the book is not romantic but Romantic.
Inspiring: 2. Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

For about 10 years, Jane Eyre was my absolute favorite book. It not only featured the first English novel heroine that wasn't beautiful, but a plain little creature that ended up getting everything she wanted on her terms -- atta girl! Jane Eyre contains some of the most delightfully romantic scenes in all of literature. My favorite is the one in which Mr. Rochester pretends to be a fortune-telling gypsy in order to find out what Jane thinks about him. I'm no romance fan, but that scene makes me all giggly.
20 Minutos (Spain) includes Wuthering Heights in the reading suggestions for a day like today:
La trágica historia de amor en los brumosos páramos de Yorkshire entre la apasionada Catherine y el atormentado Heathcliff es sin duda uno de los romances más inolvidables de la literatura de todos los tiempos. (Regina ExLibris) (Google translation)
The Independent interviews the known romance author, Penny Jordan. As opposite to many others authors of the genre she doesn't like particularly the Brontës:
My favourite books have never been literary greats. I like those that use words as bricks to build a story. Books about families fascinate me; I loved Sense and Sensibility for the social commentary; the nitty-gritty, the details of everyday life. This is what makes me smile. I don't much enjoy the big drama of the Brontë sisters. (Charlotte Philby)
The Philippine Star chooses favourite love teams:
Richard Gomez and Dawn Zulueta — They only did two films together: Hihintayin Kita sa Langit (where they fell in love with each other) and Saan Ka Man Naroroon (they were already on the brink of breakup by then). To this day, I still swoon (and that rarely happens to me) over their scenes together when I see Hihintayin. I guess it also helped that the photography, music and the basic story (an adaptation of Wuthering Heights) were also beautifully executed and all these contributed to make Hihintayin Kita sa Langit as the most romantic local movie in my book. (Butch Francisco)
The Global Post turns to Afghanistan to find love stories in the times of the Taliban:
Aziz was a modern-day Majnoon. He and Shukria fell in love in high school. She was a flashing, dark-eyed beauty, he a brooding Heathcliff type. They were both headed for medical school when the Taliban took over their northern city. (Jean MacKenzie)
The Times takes a more serious approach: is love a mental disease?:
There is also a school of thought that insists love is a cultural phenomenon. As the great French cynic La Rochefoucauld said: “People would not fall in love if they had not heard love talked about.” The culture keeps up a rapid-fire bombardment of the power and the glory of romantic love, and yet it seems curious that so many of the Greatest Love Stories Ever Told - Cathy and Heathcliff, Tristan and Isolde, Heloise and Abelard, Lancelot and Guinevere - end in disaster, if not death and carnage. If we were being really sceptical, we might conclude that it is delusional that “in love” should be regarded as the greatest and most time-consuming aspiration of the modern female. (Sara Vine and Tania Kindersley)
And the blogosphere and the V-day also bring together some Brontës: Complete & Unabridged, StellaforStar

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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Tuesday, February 24, 2009 1:33 pm by Cristina in , , , ,    No comments
The financial crisis continues reaching bookish areas. The publisher Wordsworth has just announced that they will publish only half the number of books they released last year 'just in case' according to The Bookseller. The plan doesn't sound too bad, but their marketing hopes seem a little shaky:
As well as the Darwin giveaway, the classics publisher received a boost when its edition of D H Lawrence’s infamous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover appeared on "Eastenders". Bleak House, Cranford and Little Dorrit are also doing well on the back of recent adaptations, and Wordsworth is anticipating adapations [sic] of Frankenstein and Emma later this year, as well as a film about the Bronte sisters. (Catherine Neilan)
We sincerely hope that they are also pinning their hopes on the new Wuthering Heights, as the Brontë biopic, from where we stand, looks as remote as ever.

The Seattle Weekly discusses another aspect of the same problem: library use is on the rise, and many bookshops - new and secondhand alike - are going down.
Yet at precisely the same time that layoffs are afflicting the region, when consumer spending is down, and the economy is mired in a recession, used book stores are failing? It doesn't make any sense. Paying a buck for a dog-eared Penguin edition of Jane Eyre is an entertainment bargain. It used to be that used book stores sprouted like mushrooms at every major Metro stop in the city. They were the distressed building owner's best friend: If you couldn't rent a vacant storefront space to, say, the Gap, a used book store could move in its entire inventory, plus cat, and start attracting customers. Secondhand retailers may not pay top-dollar rents, but they keep shoppers on the sidewalk, which helps raise all boats. (Brian Miller)
Salon reviews the new book by Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers. American Women Writers. From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx:
Why, for example, did Britain produce several women novelists of genius during the 19th century -- Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontës, as well as accomplished lesser artists like Elizabeth Gaskell -- while America did not? That question could (and sometimes does) lead to a lot of speculation on the national characters of the English-speaking peoples, but Showalter mentions an equally plausible, practical cause: "While English women novelists, even those as poor as the Brontës, had servants, American women were expected to clean, cook and sew; even in the South, white women in slaveholding families were trained in domestic arts." Quite a few of the short biographical sketches she offers feature women complaining about being compelled by parents to learn to make pies or mend when they would rather write. In 1877, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps made the heroine of her novel, "The Story of Avis," fume, "I hate to make my bed, and I hate, hate to sew chemises, and I hate, hate, hate to go cooking round the kitchen."
Housework in America has never been an uncomplicated matter. The class system in Britain consigned a certain set of people to this humble labor, while America promised the enterprising among them an opportunity to make something more of their lives. Nevertheless, the cooking and cleaning still had to be done -- especially on the small family farms that were the economic engines of early America -- and so the responsibility for it was transferred from a servant class to the female relatives of the new republic's self-made men. (Laura Miller)
While we are unable to discuss the matter properly, not knowing much about the Brontës' American counterparts, two things must be said here. The Brontës were poorer than the other women writers mentioned here but they weren't workhouse-poor. They were middle-class. And again while unsure as to how their house chores workloads compare to the American women of the time's, the Brontës were by no means free of responsibilities. They may not have gone down on their knees and scrubbed the floor everyday but they had gentlewomen's tasks as sewing, running the household, the typical parish duties of a parson's daughters, etc. Emily Brontë famously baked bread while studying German and Charlotte Brontë openly declared:
By the way, I have lately discovered I have quite a talent for cleaning, sweeping up hearths, dusting rooms, making beds, etc.; so, if everything else fails, I can turn my hand to that, if anybody will give me good wages for little labour. I won't be a cook; I hate cooking. I won't be a nurserymaid, nor a lady's maid, far less a lady's companion, or a mantua-maker, or a straw-bonnet maker, or a taker-in of plain work. I won't be anything but a housemaid. (15 April 1839)
Later in December of that same year:
We are at present, and have been during the last month, rather busy, as, for that space of time, we have been without a servant, except a little girl to run errands. Poor Tabby became so lame that she was at length obliged to leave us. She is residing with her sister, in a little house of her own, which she bought with her savings a year or two since. She is very comfortable, and wants nothing; as she is near we see her very often. In the meantime, Emily and I are sufficiently busy, as you may suppose: I manage the ironing, and keep the rooms clean; Emily does the baking, and attends to the kitchen. We are such odd animals, that we prefer this mode of contrivance to having a new face amongst us. Besides, we do not despair of Tabby's return, and she shall not be supplanted by a stranger in her absence. I excited aunt's wrath very much by burning the clothes, the first time I attempted to iron; but I do better now. Human feelings are queer things; I am much happier black-leading the stoves, making the beds, and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else.
So, even if it was temporarily, the Brontës could do - and did - household works as well.

The Ticker reports that The Weissman School of Arts and Science is offering two new scholarships to juniors studying English and requiring financial assistance:
The scholarships are the Sarah Guttesman Lubin Memorial Scholarship and the Donald J. Loff Scholarship for Excellence in English. While both scholarships are for those with an interest in English, each caters to a specific topic in English.
The Sarah Guttesman Lubin Memorial Scholarship is awarded every spring to an undergraduate studying 19th century British and/or American literature. Baruch alumnus Melvin Lubin (’48) created the scholarship to honor his late wife Sarah who passed away in December 2007.
Sarah was very involved in getting young people to enjoy literature, Lubin said. "She was always trying to get young people to read Trollope or Dickens, or the Brontes or Walter Scott, or Mark Twain and Melville, or whatever she was reading at the moment," said Lubin. (Ning Mao)
And the latest Wuthering Heights is 'working' for the Kansas City Star:
3. "Masterpiece Classic." I'm not a fan of PBS's long-in-the-tooth British import series, but its current reimaginings of such classics as "Wuthering Heights" and "Little Dorrit" are fresh and even exciting.
The novel seems to have worked on the blogosphere as well: Precipice Express writes about it, LitCritique gives it a 3/5 and Babbles of the Critically Sane discusses 'Heathcliff - Monster or Misunderstood?'.

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Saturday, March 07, 2009

Saturday, March 07, 2009 4:36 pm by M. in , , , , , ,    No comments
The Telegraph & Argus publishes the following story which is tangentially related to the Brontës:
Picture Source: Ann Dinsdale with Dave Foster and a work of art by his grandfather, Walter Foster.
Brontë expert Ann Dinsdale came to the rescue of Dave Foster to help identify the location of one of the paintings by his grandfather, Walter Foster.
Mr Foster, who is researching the history of the Aireville Group of artists at the turn of the 20th century, has had a number of his grandfather’s works of art turned into prints. Among them are seven of the Bronte country by Walter which are for sale at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth.
“I was actually under the impression that one was located between Druids and Thwaites Brow near Keighley. But Ann put me right. She recognised it straight away,” said Mr Foster.
Mrs Dinsdale, Bronte Parsonage Museum collections manager, said: “I know it as Rush Isle which overlooks Ponden reservoir and is still there but derelict.”
Walter Foster, who died aged 42 in 1929, was head of Salts School of Art in Saltaire and a graduate of the Royal College of Art.
The Aireville Group worked between 1890 and 1940 and included Augustus Spencer, of Silsden, who became Principal of the Royal College of Art.
The Sudbury Times reviews the latest novel by Azar Nafisi, Things I've Been Silent About and a mention to her previous one is mandatory:
In Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi offered a colourful account of eight female friends who threw off the veils demanded by the fundamentalist regime, to discuss Western literature in a private home. It was a daring enterprise, one open to punishment if discovered and Nafisi described, in engaging detail, how Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Henry James and Vladimir Nabokov allowed her and her students to retain "a firm belief in the portable world of the imagination, and the subversive power of literature, a belief that it is possible, through fiction, to turn anguish into a thing of enduring beauty.'' (Nancy Schiefer)
The Daily Herald (Everett, WA) talks about the popularity of graphic novels among teenagers. The article ends like this:
Mukilteo teen librarian Kathleen Fernandes said in quality graphic novels, it's intellectually more challenging than parents realize."
She's eagerly awaiting the arrival of Charlotte Bronte's 1847 classic "Jane Eyre" as a graphic novel. It's on order. (Eric Stevick)
We suppose she is referring to the Classical Comics adaptation of Jane Eyre, available in the US since last December.

The New York Times reviews Elaine Showalter's latest book, A Jury of Her Peers. American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx:
In the 1970s, Showalter wrote “A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing,” which established an alternative canon of British women writers at a moment when feminist studies were very much in vogue, and her new book is an attempt to do the same thing for American literature. (Katie Roiphe)
Phong Bui interviews artist Lisa Yuskavage in The Brooklyn Rail and the interviewer makes the following statement:
But that’s the thing, I think one of the reasons why Balthus was never fully appreciated was partly because of the strong American puritanical view of sexuality. Very few care to know the reason why Balthus only illustrated the first half of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights for example.
Another artist discussed in an article in the news is Kiki Smith, who is compared to the Brontës:
Como las heroínas de Austen o las hermanas Brontë, Smith logra sacar el mejor partido de su reclusión doméstica. (Ángela Molina in El País) (Google translation)
Children literature author Jacqueline Wilson is interviewed in The Times:

She wasn't beautiful, rich or popular. Her father was prone to rages. Her diaries, faithfully reproduced, could be those of any mildly bookish teenager discovering the Brontës, film, and the “crass stupidity and insensitivity” of a teacher who shouted at a poor girl in her class who came to school in grubby bedroom slippers. (Amanda Craig)

Handbag celebrates the International Women's Day with a selection of inspiring women through the ages, Brontës included:
These three women produced some of the most influential, romantic and poetic literature of the Victorian era. Living in a rectory in Yorkshire with their distant father and alcoholic brother, they were isolated, lonely and suffered frequent bouts of ill health, yet produced a prolific amount of writing. Their works were published initially under the names Ellis (Emily), Currer (Charlotte) and Acton (Anne) Bell, due to the fact that it was considered unseemly at the time for women to write and publish books. Emily's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte's Jane Eyre remain as timeless classics. (EdAssistant3)
20 Minutos (Spain) also celebrates the day listing several women writers. We know the Brontës were not the most lively creatures in the world but they were not always hiding:
Hubo muchas escritoras que (...) se vieron obligadas a ocultar manuscritos.
Es el caso de la obra Jane Eyre, cuya autora, la británica Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), tenía que esconder entre las patatas que pelaba.
Ella y sus dos hermanas, Emily (1818-1849) y Anne (1820-1849), recurrieron a seudónimos de varón para poder publicar. Charlotte se escondió tras Currer Bell y sus hermanas adoptaron el mismo apellido y alias que mantenían sus iniciales: Ellis (Emily) y Acton (Anne).
A pesar de sus esfuerzos por disfrazar su autoría, las editoriales rechazaban, como si pudieran adivinar la mano que tras las firmas se escondía, sus textos. Persistieron, y en 1846 salían los Poemas de Currer, Ellis y Acton Bell.
Al año siguiente Cumbres borrascosas era aceptada, y Anne lograba también un buen camino para su Agnes Grey. Charlotte tuvo que aguantarse con el rechazo a El profesor, pero consiguió que Jane Eyre viera la luz. (Paula Arenas) (Google translation)
Hiding Jane Eyre's manuscript among the peeled potatoes? But how these so-called "journalists" can invent such stupidities?

Día Uno Digital
(Argentina) also joins in the celebrations:

1847 Eyre divina: Firmando con su seudónimo literario, CURRER BELL, para que la tomaran en serio corno escritora, al igual que lo hicieron George Sand y George Eliot, la maestra de es-cuela inglesa CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ actualiza la historia de Cenicienta con su inspiradora Jane Eyre, en la cual una fuerte heroína no convencional triunfa a pesar de sü clase y su sexo... ¡y se queda con su hombre! (Google translation)

The Shropshire Star mentions several shootings made recently in the Peak District, including Jane Eyre 2006:

‘Visit Peak District & Derbyshire’ offers its visitors a Movie Map - focusing on Keira Knightley and The Duchess - to help visitors follow in the footsteps of the stars. It also highlights all of the other movies and TV productions, shot on location in and around the region in recent times - including BBC TV’s adaptation of Jane Eyre, the award-winning Pride & Prejudice, and The Other Boleyn Girl.

The British soap opera Coronation Street is praised in this article in the Carlisle News & Star, Wuthering Heights reference included:
Ken’s a snob with nothing to be stuck-up about. His principles are dubious, his questionable morals are justified by the romance he’s learned from Wuthering Heights and he justifies his unhappy indiscretions by always playing away with a Salford version of Lady Macbeth. (Anne Pickles)
PopMatters discussing the controversial (to put it mildly) Japanese sex game Rapelay seems to think for sure that Heathcliff raped Isabella:
Literature has obviously covered the topic extensively as well, from Wuthering Heights to The Kite Runner. People arguing that these books are superior in their content because they handle the topic maturely are on shaky ground because, frankly, who wants to detail how to tastefully portray rape? (L.B. Jeffries)
We read on Globe Newswire about the novel debut of Gege Lambert, The Gateway. Apparently, the author likes the Brontës:
Gege Lambert was born and resides in Toronto, Ontario. She is passionate about romance. Her favorite authors are Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Baroness Emmuska Orczy. She greatly admires the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson and finds William Shakespeare's words of love ever timeless. Like Ms. Austen, she has never married but has loved and is loved.
A weird Wuthering Heights connection can be traced in this news about a NCAA rules violation by the University of Alabama:
The report went on to stress the “academic nature” of the extra benefits.
“In short, it is a case about a semester’s use of Norton Anthologies, “Wuthering Heights,” math answer keys and other materials of an academic nature, all of which were returned [or charged to the student-athlete] when the semester is over,” the response said. (Cecil Hurt in The Tuscaloosa News)
Helsingborgs Dagblad interviews the Swedish politician Anne Marie Brodén. A new Brontëite:
Bästa bok?
Svårt att säga men en av mina favoriter är Sagan om ringen av Tolkien, en annan är Jane Eyre av Bronte. (Google translation)
On the blogosphere: Books for Dummies posts about Jane Eyre and Könyvmolyok reviews Wuthering Heights in Hungarian.

Finally, have you ever imagined how a Kentucky Fried Chicken would look like at Haworth Parsonage? We read in The Taranaki Daily News (New Zealand):
Tim [Chadwick] had to do a reading from The Scarecrow, which was written by Hawera author Ronald Hugh Morrieson, who also wrote Came a Hot Friday.
The reading was in the KFC in Hawera, which was built on the site of Morrieson's old home.
It was the first time Tim had been inside the KFC. In the early 1990s, he had fought against it.
Tim formed the Scarecrow Committee and petitioned the South Taranaki District Council to retain Morrieson's house. But the general feeling was KFC was more important, he says. More people signed a petition wanting KFC than wanting Morrieson's house.
"I think it is stupid, simple as that. I think one day there'll be enlightened people in Hawera who will realise it was wrong to get rid of it."
Tim has visited the Bronte sisters' house in England and Keats' house in London.
"Here was a golden opportunity for Hawera to do something similar and the call of fried chicken was greater." (Helen Harvey)
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Monday, June 01, 2009

Monday, June 01, 2009 5:12 pm by Cristina in , , , , ,    No comments
Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour gets another review, this time from the Financial Times.
One of those cads, writer Ford Madox Ford, encouraged her to write. And in her writing Jean found the outlet for her pain. Her novels and short stories distilled her life-long, and growing, sense of alienation. She was 76 when her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, was published. Writing it took her nine years, during which time she was in and out of hospitals and prisons; she often subsisted on a bottle of whisky a day. The novel, in turn, brims with what Pizzichini calls the “triumphant poetry of despair”. (Ángel Gurría-Quintana)
Appropriately enough, The Boston Globe has an article on 'Why movie-goers love a good back-story' (and perhaps not just movie-goers as readers also like their back-stories).
Jean Rhys' 1966 novel "Wide Sargasso Sea" (and the fine 1993 movie adapted from it) envisions what Rochester and the missus were up to before "Jane Eyre." (Ty Burr)
And a passing comment on PopMatters in a review of the novel The Servants' Quarters by Lynn Freed goes along those lines as well.
There are no new stories under the sun, only creative reworkings of a few plotlines: love, loss, revenge, redemption. That’s four. The fifth may be classified as variations on Victoriana, in this case, Jane Eyre. [...]
The Servant’s Quarters is clearly the work of a seasoned writer, elegantly written, compact, flowing. Yet it is utterly predictable—Brontë combined with Beauty and the Beast, leavened with Cinderella’s witless, nasty relatives. (Diane Leach)
Sandra Howard mourns the loss of her sister in the Daily Mail and reminisces about other famous sisters in history:
The Bronte sisters, too, were in competition, all writing powerful stories about doomed passionate love, yet remained intensely loyal and tight-knit. Jane Austen similarly revered sisterhood in Pride And Prejudice and in her own life.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has an article on music band the Avetts where one of their tracks is described as follows:
"Salina," off the band's 2007 album Emotionalism, became a winding suite that evolved from slow waltz to jiving jig to melancholic cello showcase, with a cinematic tone worthy of Wuthering Heights. (A.D. Amorosi)
A couple of things from the blogosphere: Normblog has rererad Jane Eyre and A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore has been reading an advanced review copy of the forthcoming novel by Denise Giardina, Emily's Ghost.

Finally, a couple of alerts from the Brontë Parsonage Blog:
A little late for a reminder, but you might catch it: on Radio 4 this evening (19.45) - in the Writing the Century programme - Linton Andrews holds forth. He was Editor of the Yorkshire Post - and Chairman of the Brontë Society half a century ago. 1954 is the year for today.... (Richard Wilcocks)
Elaine Showalter discusses the enormous impact of the Brontës – through Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Villette and Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë – on American women’s writing in the 19th century: writers black and white, novelists and poets, from Emily Dickinson to Sarah Orne Jewett, who used the lives and novels of the Brontës as inspirations for American stories. A professor emerita at Princeton and former chair of the judges of the Man Booker International Prize, Elaine Showalter has just completed a new book, A Jury of Her Peers: American women writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, published by Virago Press in May. Her previous books include A Literature of Their Own: British women novelists from Brontë to Lessing.
The talk will be held, as usual, in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre at the Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, WC2, and will begin at 7pm, with doors opening at 6pm. (Rachel Page)
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Friday, June 05, 2009

Friday, June 05, 2009 4:23 pm by M. in , , , , , , ,    No comments
Tom Sutcliffe raises an interesting question in an article in The Independent about J.D. Salinger's reappearance stopping the publication of a sequel of The Catcher of the Rye:
Had Jane Eyre still been in copyright when Jean Rhys published Wide Sargasso Sea, Charlotte Brontë could presumably have prevented publication. But would readers have really wanted her to?
The Guardian also mentions sequels and prequels of Jane Eyre in an article about the same subject:
Once well-known figures are out of copyright, they fall very rapidly into other hands. By now, the minority of Sherlock Holmes's appearances are in stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. ­Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is neatly book-ended by both a prequel (Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea) and a sequel: DS Thomas's Charlotte. Emma ­Tennant has been the most active heroine ­smuggler, transplanting heroines from Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy into her own fiction. (Mark Lawson)
The Film Music Society reports about the recent Motion Picture Academy Tribute to the legendary lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman:
Michel Legrand flew in from Paris for the event, playing the piano and singing "I Was Born in Love With You" from Wuthering Heights (1970). The evening's highlight for many, however, was the stunning duet of Legrand and Alan Bergman on one of their most famous songs, "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair that also included footage of Steve McQueen's glider sequence that inspired it. (Jon Burlingname)
The New Statesman reviews the latest book by Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger and talks about country-house novels:
There are two main traditions of country-house novel. One of them, the one these novels have in mind, is the Gothic tradition, which extends back to what is usually thought of as the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s preposterous The Castle of Otranto, and takes in Edgar Allan Poe’s House of Usher, Bartram-Haugh in She­ridan Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas, Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre, Bly House in The Turn of the Screw, Manderley in Rebecca, et al. (John O'Connell)
Now, a gem of random thinking. In the Indian Financial Chronicle we find a paragraph which is able to link together running naked (among wolves, sic), Titanic and Wuthering Heights:
For some, passion is running naked with the wolves… it’s so extreme! I remember this one scene from the movie Titanic, when Kate Winslet jumps out of her lifeboat, just as happy to sink or swim with Leonardo Di Caprio. In that moment any woman would have traded places with her. Remember the movie Wuthering heights? Certainly passion gripped the audience hearts as much as the actors. (Bubbles Shabharwal)
Also in The Independent Elaine Showalter's latest book (A Jury of Her Peers) is reviewed, The Portsmouth News and The Leamington Spa Courier have a reminder of the current Tamasha Theatre's performances of Wuthering Heights (with a wrong picture, though).

Brontës.nl informs of a new Dutch theatrical adaptation of Wuthering Heights which will be premiered next October 20 in Den Bosch by the Theater Artemis company. The adaptation has been written by Jeroen Olyslaegers and will be directed by Floor Huygen.

Nöja posts a brief review of Agnes Grey in Swedish, Collected Works of Richard C Mather publishes an extract from an original (and juvenile) parody of Wuthering Heights and Paxton Holley converts Jane Eyre into a sort of Beatrix Kiddo, ...borgs hjørne talks about Wuthering Heights in Norwegian, PageTurner posts about Jane Eyre, Erodiade2008 uploads a video of Emily Brontë's poem I'm Happiest When Most Away and The American Scene reproduces the (in)famous Charlotte Brontë's eliminated preface to Shirley: A Word to the Quarterly.

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