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 [...]
Posted in 18th Century, Novel, adolescence | 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 [...]
Jean Honore Fragonard, The Bolt (1776)
Yesterday I wrote about Aphra Behn giving us images of women’s sexual liberation in her 1677 play The Rover. But there is a dark undertone that differentiates the play from male-authored Restoration comedies. Behn’s play may not be as polished as the plays of William Wycherley and George Etherege. Her [...]
Aphra Behn, by Mary Beale
I am having a great deal of fun teaching Aphra Behn’s play The Rover this week. Written in 1677 during the reign of Charles II, it is a rollicking sex comedy that proved to be very popular. A woman writing for the stage was in itself extraordinary. That the play makes [...]
Virginia Woolf
I have been reporting on the salons we have been holding to honor my friend and former colleague at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Alan Paskow. Alan has an aggressive cancer that has moved into his lungs, and while the outlook is not good, he and his wife Jackie (also a former colleague) have [...]
Harriet Tubman, inspiration for the heroine
About our “One Maryland One Book” discussion at Leonardtown Library on Thursday, I’m sorry to report that (as expected) we didn’t pull in anyone other than our book group regulars. The good news is that that group appears as solid as ever and we had a very good conversation about [...]
A couple of months ago I wondered on this blog whether some of the vitriolic attacks on Obama (as distinguished from reasoned disagreement) were driven by racism, and now I see that others are wondering the same, including Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Carter. But a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish has a more [...]
Posted in 21st Century, Narrative, Race | Tagged Absolon Absolon, All the King's Men, Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Beloved, Daily Dish, Flannery O'Connor, Gloria Naylor, Human Stain, Joseph Conrad, Linden Hills, Philip Roth, right-wing anger, Robert Penn Warren, Secret Sharer, Sophie's Choice, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, William Styron, Wise Blood |
James McBride
This evening our Leonardtown Library Book Discussion group discusses James McBride’s Song Yet Sung, a fine book that I will address in an upcoming post. Today I want to talk about the occasion. Readers from all over Maryland are reading this book as part of a “One Maryland One Book” program sponsored by the [...]
Posted in 21st Century, Novel, reading | Tagged Big Read, Cultural Literacy, E. D. Hirsch, Earnest Gaines, James McBride, Lesson before Dying, literacy, One Maryland One Book, reading groups, Song Yet Sung, William Bennett |
