April 2020
All Roads Lead to Middlemarch
This course is entirely dedicated to one of the greatest literary works of the nineteenth-century and my own personal favourite: George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Written in 1871, the novel deals with such important contemporary issues as political change, education for women, identity, marriage and the changing social structure. It is still deeply meaningful today and this is partly why it has stood the test of time: it is, amongst other things, a series of love stories, an exploration of life in the…
Find out more »Housekeeping with Marilynne Robinson
The small town in which Housekeeping is set is a remote outpost in Idaho, America's Midwest. Sylvie, the principal character, is an 'oddball', uncomfortable with settling in one place and afraid to take her coat lest somebody ask her to stay. But stay she does as she tries to fulfil her duty as guardian to her two abandoned nieces. In this course we will explore Robinson's presentation of a lived alone and the social forces that shape identity making us…
Find out more »The Waste Land
T S Eliot’s, ‘The Waste Land’, published in 1922, is the most famous poem of the twentieth century and widely considered to be the great, but difficult masterpiece of modernist poetry. This short course aims to cut through some of those difficulties. We shall examine the poem closely and, as we do so, situate it in its historical and literary moment, and explore its themes, form and complex allusions. If you are keen to understand and appreciate ‘The Waste Land’…
Find out more »May 2020
North and South
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the griminess of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man John…
Find out more »June 2020
All Roads Lead to Middlemarch
This course is entirely dedicated to one of the greatest literary works of the nineteenth-century and my own personal favourite: George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Written in 1871, the novel deals with such important contemporary issues as political change, education for women, identity, marriage and the changing social structure. It is still deeply meaningful today and this is partly why it has stood the test of time: it is, amongst other things, a series of love stories, an exploration of life in the…
Find out more »Blood Meridian
According to The New Yorker, reading Blood Meridian (Corman McCarthy) is like receiving 'a slap in the face, an affront that asks us to endure a vision of the Old West full of charred skulls and blood-soaked scalps'. I agree. So why inflict Blood Meridian on you? We are all guilty of reading books that fall neatly within the parameters of carefully constructed comfort zones. For me, reading McCarthy's novel was not an easy experience: I was at times shocked,…
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