Art and the senses: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Perfume
The livingroom Percy Road, London‘O for a life of sensations rather than thoughts,' exclaimed John Keats in 1817. This course is dedicated to exploring ways in which writers present sensory pleasure. Concentrating chiefly - though not exclusively* - on the work of Oscar Wilde (Picture of Dorian Gray) and Patrick Suskind (Perfume), we will examine how art and the […]
Fin de siecle Angst: Dracula and Heart of Darkness
The livingroom Percy Road, LondonThe nineteenth-century fin de siècle proved a catalyst for a series of anxieties that emerged during the Victorian period. Loss of religious faith, rise of the occult, fears about the effects of an expanding metropolis and a declining Empire, apocalyptic predictions for the future and concern about technological advances all found expression in two of the […]
Fin de siecle Angst (Part ii): Heart of Darkness
The livingroom Percy Road, LondonThe nineteenth-century fin de siècle proved a catalyst for a series of anxieties that emerged during the Victorian period. Loss of religious faith, rise of the occult, fears about the effects of an expanding metropolis and a declining Empire, apocalyptic predictions for the future and concern about technological advances all found expression in one of the […]
Christmas Bite: Ethan Frome
The livingroom Percy Road, London'A sad tale is best for winter', says Mamillius, Hermione's son in The Winter's Tale, and Wharton's short novel, Ethan Frome is certainly a good test case of his thesis. Set in the austere winter countryside of New England, the novel centres around the forbidden love of Ethan and his wife's cousin, the beautiful Mattie […]
Christmas Bite: Ethan Frome
The livingroom Percy Road, London‘A sad tale is best for winter’, says Mamillius, Hermione's son in The Winter’s Tale, and Wharton’s short novel, Ethan Frome is certainly a good test case of his thesis. Set in the austere winter countryside of New England, the novel centres around the forbidden love of Ethan and his wife’s cousin, the beautiful Mattie Silver […]
Christmas Bite: Ethan Frome
The livingroom Percy Road, London‘A sad tale is best for winter’, says Mamillius, Hermione's son in The Winter’s Tale, and Wharton’s short novel, Ethan Frome is certainly a good test case of his thesis. Set in the austere winter countryside of New England, the novel centres around the forbidden love of Ethan and his wife’s cousin, the beautiful Mattie Silver […]
Christmas Bite: Ethan Frome
The livingroom Percy Road, London‘A sad tale is best for winter’, says Mamillius, Hermione's son in The Winter’s Tale, and Wharton’s short novel, Ethan Frome is certainly a good test case of his thesis. Set in the austere winter countryside of New England, the novel centres around the forbidden love of Ethan and his wife’s cousin, the beautiful Mattie Silver […]
Fitzgerald and the ‘roaring 20s’
The livingroom Percy Road, LondonF. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t just write about the glamour, excess and hangover of the ‘roaring 20s’; he lived them too. His works chart the stunning rise and dizzying fall of the rich, beautiful and damned in a changing world of jazz, Prohibition, cars, car crashes, boom, bust and a gathering storm in Europe. This course […]
The Brontes and the Road Less Travelled
Villette (Charlotte Bronte) and Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Bronte) Both texts have long been unfavourably compared with the more celebrated Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights despite sharing many of their subversive qualities: Anne’s ‘tenant’ is a single mother living in hiding from her depraved alcoholic husband whilst Charlotte’s Villette is an uncompromising depiction of the effects of repressed […]