Film Friday
The nature of Spain’s World Cup victory over Holland seems to have stuck with me all this past week. Spanish elegance won out over a Dutch “kick ’em in the legs” strategy (check out the state of hero Andres Iniesta’s legs here), and I have been writing about Prospero triumphing over Caliban and John [...]
Giulio Romano, Two Lovers
Well, the semester is underway. Yesterday I began teaching one of my favorite classes, the early British Literature survey (Literature in History I). Along with Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Wife of Bath, Doctor Faustus, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Paradise Lost, I will be teaching the poetry of [...]
We talked about the movie Twilight in the last gathering of my British Restoration and 18th Century Couples Comedy class. That and France Burney’s epistolary novel Evelina (1775). Hang on as I spell out the connection.
If you don’t know about Twilight, then you are probably neither a teenager nor the parent of a teenager. Twilight [...]
Last night I gave a short lecture and then moderated a talkback following a college production of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man (1894), directed by my colleague Michael Ellis-Tolaydo. I hadn’t read the play since I was in high school, when I went on a Shaw kick. (I first became enamored [...]
The Princess Bride, True Love Triumphant
In my Tom Jones class earlier this week, one of my students (Erin Hendrix) noted that one of the passages made her think of a scene in the movie The Princess Bride. This led to a discussion of how both works employ irony to help us hold on to our [...]
Emily in the Castle of Udolpho
In yesterday’s post I discussed anxious parents and proposed Northanger Abbey as a sane approach to teenage reading (and movie watching and internet using). I elaborate here.
I start first with the reading material in question. Heroine Catherine Moreland and her best friend Isabella Thorpe are enthralled with the novels of [...]
“Before,” by William Hogarth (1736)
What can happen to your daughters if they read novels? According to William Hogarth, something like the above.
Check out the lower left hand corner where a side table is falling over. The drawer has been left casually but deliberately open so that one can see the book that is proudly displayed [...]
Also posted in 18th Century, Novel | Tagged "Before", adolescence, Child rearing, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Novel reading, Rambler #4, Richard Sheridan, Samuel Johnson, School for Scandal, William Hogarth |
Samuel Johnson
If we need proof that adolescence has always been a difficult age, we can look at those 18th century moralists that were panicked about young people reading novels.
Of course if you’re young (to build off of a comment that Barbara makes in response to Friday’s post), part of the fun of reading novels is [...]
Jane Austen
Last night I was teaching a Jane Austen class at a local retirement center and was talking about the defense of novels that appears in Northanger Abbey.
Catherine, the book’s heroine, has just made a new friend in Isabella Thorpe. They go everywhere together in Bath and, when the weather is bad, meet to discuss [...]
Also posted in 19th Century, Novel |
J. D. Salinger
I contrasted Lord of the Rings with J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye the other day. It’s not a contrast that anyone other than I would make, and it’s all based on the fact that I loved the one and hated the other. In my post today I explore my dislike of [...]
