Monday, 10 December 2012
Thursday, 6 December 2012
READING, WATCHING, DISCUSSING JANE AUSTEN'S EMMA
Emma was written between January 1814 and March 1815. The setting of the narrative's action would appear to be recent: 1813-14. By this period, Austen was a known and successful writer. Like Sense and Sensibility, the work was published on commission by the distinguished house of John Murray. It was published ('by the author of Pride and Prejudice, etc.') in December 1815 (dated 1816 on the title page). The novel was dedicated to the Prince Regent, at the request of the Carlton House Librarian, the Revd James Stanier Clarke.
When , in January 1815, Jane Austen began to write her fifth
novel, EMMA, she stated that she was working at creating a heroine that nobody
but herself would be able to like ("I am going to take a
heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.")
The Heroine
Emma Woodhouse is beautiful, clever and wealthy
(the only Austen heroine to own all these “virtues”) but also spoilt and a
bit snob. Readers, especially Austen’s contemporary readers, shouldn’t like her
much since Emma definitely lacks the common sense, balance and measure of other
heroines. Yet, even with her faults and her mistakes, the character of Emma is
drawn to get sympathy and understanding; the reader tends to forgive her and to
side with her in a totally irrational way. Emma’s defects, constantly
underlined in the text, make her the perfect anti-heroine: she is not
particularly accomplished, she has been educated by too an indulgent
father and too a friendly governess, she has great
self-esteem and tends to misinterpret reality according to her wishes. In a few
words, she is not “by the book”, if we think of the 18th century “conduct -
books” about the education of girls belonging to high society. But , of course,
Jane Austen, is mocking those clichés, so her Emma is not only beautiful and
intelligent but , above all, free. It is Mr Knightley himself to acknowledge
that Emma is perfect with all her imperfections.
Monday, 3 December 2012
SHAKESPEARE'S RICHARD III IN MOVIES - VIDEO COMPARISON
While historians and historical fiction writers have re-discovered and re-written what people for centuries have thought of Richard III, the only image we have on stage and in films is the one we inherited from Shakespeare.
"The history of the world, like letters without poetry, flowers without perfume, or thought without imagination, would be a dry matter indeed without its legends, and many of these, though scorned by proof a hundred times, seem worth preserving for their own familiar sakes". (from the preamble of Richard III 1955)On Imdb you can find a detailed list of all the filmed works dedicated to or focusing on Richard III, and including even those movies just featuring him as a minor character. But, except for The Black Arrow (adaptation of R. L. Stevenson's historical novel in which young Richard of Gloucester helps the protagonist Richard - Dick - Shelton), in all of them we have him portrayed as the wicked villain.
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