Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey was one of the books I looked forward to reading, as I’ve read her other works in the past, with Pride and Prejudice being my absolute favorite. My first impression of the novel was that it wasn’t quite as interesting as P&P, seeing as it started off quite slow and ordinary. But, one […]
Jane Austen, take 2
As a preface to this blog post, I must confess that I (tried to) read Jane Austen before, in the form of Pride and Prejudice, and made it through what I found to be 60 excruciatingly dull pages before falling asleep and giving up. I found the slow plot and the intricate details of socialite life to be exhausting. Considering that Austen, and Pride and Prejudice specifically, have long been favorites of my mother, I was excited (and wary) to give her (Austen, not my mother) a second chance. Interestingly…read more
Northanger Abbey
I found the frequent appearance of Gothic novels in Northanger Abbey an interesting theme. Catherine’s fascination with them as well as Henry’s parody (when they are on the way to Northanger Abbey) allow for Northanger Abbey to become a sort of ideal for Catherine. Northanger is expected by Catherine, to be an old decaying mansion filled […]
Northanger Abbey
Contrary to my expectations, I enjoyed Northanger Abbey abbey quite a bit, becoming strangely compelled by the story, and its characters. I think part of what I was so enamoured by was the fact that Jane Austen was able to make so much out of so little, and out of such ‘traditional’ characters. Even though […]
Like Downton Abbey, But In Book Form
I swear in the first 100 pages of this book, nothing actually happens. I can summarise the first 100 pages like this:Catherine: likeable, if really, really naive and innocent. “A woman in love with one man cannot flirt with another” (140), sorry …
Students’ analyses of Wordsworth & Coleridge poems
In Arts One this week we talked about Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Today in class, after talking about “The Rime of the Ancynt Marinere” and Romanticism in general, I asked the students to meet in groups of 3-4 and analyze one of the other poems in the collection. These are their notes! “Expostulation […]
Lyrical Ballads & Romanticism
Wordsworth and Coleridge – Some thoughts, and a few notes Alternate title: I just really love Rousseau This is not the first time that I’ve read Lyrical Ballads, but perhaps the first time that I’ve been able to read it critically. … Continue reading →
I certainly got my Wordsworth.
Romanticism, a word that is heavily being attributed to this work. When I hear the word I envision the Wanderer Above the Sea Of Fog or the works of the Johann Strauss II. I am not quite sure if this is supposed to be really the origins of the Romanticists, however I would not be taken by […]
We wished we were Romantics
It is hard not to be a romantic, at least not a little. I can’t quite figure if I like romanticism or not. Actually this is not entirely true: I do like romantic poetry and literature. Its style, its prose, its metre, they are all very appealing and aesthetically pleasing. Hardly anyone could argue that […]
Old Man Travelling
Of all the poems in William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, the one that intrigued me the most was Old Man Travelling (on page 103). I am going to use this blog post to try to figure out why it stuck with me even though I am not sure it’s my favourite poem in […]