June 2020
Summer fun with Dracula
Ever since it was published in the late nineteenth century, Dracula has gripped the public imagination. Whilst most of us become acquainted with the fictional creation through the countless film and TV adaptations, on this course you will read the original novel by Bram Stoker and learn about the fascinating cultural context from which it emerged. So, up for discussion will be explore the use Stoker makes of late nineteenth-century attitudes to science and disease (think about the centrality of…
Find out more »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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