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01/28/2024
profile-icon Robyn Williams

English novelist Jane Austen from an original family portrait. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)On this date in 1813, the novel Pride and Prejudice was published anonymously.  

 

It brought Jane Austen joy, if not financial security.  She read most of her works to her family as she composed them, at night in drawing rooms and kitchens, as entertainment and conversation.  When her family's lives changed, Austen would interweave their experiences in society with her characters' lives.  Publication also ushered in a new era of fiction devoted to social and economic ties between the landed rural gentry of English society.   Pride and Prejudice stands out as a novel by the very fact that it pulled back the curtain to reveal the burdens and dangers of such a society: the raft of too-many daughters, the burden of spinsterdom at the ripe old age of 27 and the lengths one would go toward in order to alleviate that spinsterhood, and the threat of social suicide by elopement, never to be seen in polite circles due to one's alleged impropriety.   Austen explored these themes in a novel originally entitled First Impressions; through the long lens of history, we see that the first impressions are often lacking, but fascinating to revisit with age and maturity to change the perspective.  

Mr Bennet (Donald Sutherland) and daughters in Pride and Prejudice

Erroneous first impressions must be adjusted to one's actual experience of other persons; for example, Elizabeth learns that her first impressions of both Darcy and Wickham were mistaken. Austen called the novel First Impressions until she saw the ending.  Yet the novel's final title, Pride and Prejudice, is perhaps more apt, as it suggests the much more profound influences involved, and values at stake, in one's judgment of persons. "What Do I Not Owe You?": An Examination of Gratitude in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice notes that the theme of humility as a fundamental remedy manifests itself not only in terms of the judgments made by Elizabeth and Darcy, but also, perhaps more subtly, in terms of their developing love for one another, particularly as their gratitude for one another evinces itself in the novel. Indeed, the concept of gratitude garners elaborate treatment throughout the novel, particularly in the scenes and descriptions dealing with the evolving attachment between Darcy and Elizabeth. Pride and Prejudice reveals and celebrates the profound idea that gratitude is the proper response to the gift of self that is love, and, further, that gratitude is a sign and effect of authentic humility. 

 

Marriage was the ultimate power play in Austen's rural society.   "In Want of a Wife"--or a Husband--in Pride and Prejudice  studies a novel that takes its first sentence and creates an entire theme.   Witty as the first sentence of the novel is, there is another way to read it. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”  If we take this sentence at face value, it says that everyone understands that the single man’s life is incomplete, that once he has met his material needs, he must then be looking to meet some other kind of need, one that can only be filled by a wife. What sort of a need this might be is left unsaid. In fact, from one perspective, the rest of the novel is an exploration of what the individual lacks, and what each character is looking for in a mate. We are offered a parade of couples throughout the novel, each couple having a different basis for formation. They fare better or worse depending on the wisdom and affections of the people involved.  One of the reasons the novel endures is because it takes as its subject marriage itself, and all the ways we both create relationships and decide what we'll settle into. 

In the spotlight: Keira Knightley on the set of Pride and Prejudice (2005), directed by Joe Wright

Are you a "Darcy jumps into the lake" viewer or a "Darcy stalks the moors in his nightdress" viewer?   Lost in Austen: Screen Adaptation in a Post-Feminist World includes a reading/viewing of the television series Lost in Austen (Dan Zeff, 2008), based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. This television series is situated in a large and expanding field of adaptations provoked by Austen's novel, including, for example, Pride and Prejudice (Robert Z. Leonard, 1940) considered by George Bluestone in 1957, Bridget Jones's Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001) considered by Mireia Aragay and Gemrna Lopez in 2005, and the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice directed by Joe Wright.  Relations of difference arise from the situation of a screen work in an intertextual field, and so provide a way of conceiving screen adaptations in a symbiotic relationship with source works and other works of art and, consequently, of reading/viewing them informed by differences that arise from the adaptation process.

 

 British actress Kiera Knightley is shown in a scene from Jane Austen rendered the reader gripped by the plucky central character, constrained (as Austen was) by a enclosed social world, where every step was watched and all moves had to be carefully planned.   Elizabeth Bennet spoke to the reader's voice with unswerving satire and accuracy about what a young girl, unmarried but intelligent, had to consider when navigating this world.  It was said that Elizabeth was the author's favorite of all of her own heroines.  To transcend the trivialities of life in which the more foolish characters are overly absorbed was a staple of Bennet's experiences. Certainly Austen, and her character, have provided an enduring legacy as they told a life story set among the societies of Britain's rural elite.

 

 

01/19/2024
profile-icon Robyn Williams

circa 1845: Author and poet Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849).

It's the birthday of the man who gave us The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, and the Murders in the Rue Morgue.  His gothic legacy inspired generations of murder, mayhem, and fear.   Here's some interesting facts and philosophies surrounding this dark American son. 

Born in Boston in 1809, Poe spent his first years in a family of actors soon separated by abandonment and death, when he landed in the charitable Richmond, Virginia, home of John and Frances Allan, a legacy whom he would take as a middle name.  Raised in wealth, he was the heir apparent. John and Frances lavished love on him, including extended time in Europe and promises that his education would be paid, but bad feelings between his adoptive father eventually led to a stormy separation in 1827 and 1830, while he was rising to sergeant major in the army and publishing his first book of poems, Tamerlane. By the end of his West Point career, he agreed to be discharged under economic duress, as John Allan took a younger wife and Poe realized that he would never inherit the money he enjoyed in his early life.

In the 1830s, he would live with and tie his fortunes to a cousin, Mary, another important mother figure.  Her daughter Virginia would become his wife at the age of thirteen.  Edgar and Virginia, with her mother, moved from city to city as he wrote, criticized, and established himself in the literary world.  But always Poe was haunted by failure: endless literary feuding, his alcoholism, and his inability to get along very well with people were three of the factors of his anxiety, as well as watching Virginia slowly begin to exhibit the consumption symptoms that had killed Poe's own mother.   On January 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died. By that time, the family had endured starvation, low opinions and accusations of plagiarism, and more volatile work with voting. 

By 1849, during his travels, Poe would be discovered near a polling place, allegedly set upon by a gang, and die four days later in the hospital.  The wonder is not that Poe began totally to disintegrate but that he nevertheless continued to produce work of very high caliber to the end.  His dark twists and turns were not only chilling, but reflective of the emerging industrialization and compartmentalization of the new age.   Here are a few additional articles on Poe's writing and influence.

 

Edgar Allan Poe: The Meaning of Style

 

Edgar Allan Poe: The Romantic as Classicist

 

Whodunit? The 'Murder' of Edgar Allan Poe Solved at Last

 

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary: Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia tells the Dark Story of One of American Literature's Greatest Innovators and Masters of Horror

 

 

 

01/12/2024
profile-icon Robyn Williams

 

Very few people in American history inspire so much creative thought as Martin Luther King Jr.   Only a handful of politicians, statesmen, philosophers, and creatives are able to generate a fire of mind in the thoughts of writers.  King joins the ranks of John F. Kennedy, Emily Dickinson, and Pocahontas as individuals who continually inspire writers across the globe.    Here are a few ideas surrounding Martin Luther King Jr., as the nation remembers his life and legacy, calling on future generations to emulate his thoughtful philosophy of American life.

 

 

Cover ArtBearing the Cross by David J. Garrow

ISBN: 0688166326
Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, this is the most comprehensive book ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on more than 700 interviews with all of King's surviving associates, as well as with those who opposed him, and enhanced by the author's access to King's personal papers and tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents, this is a towering portrait of a man's metamorphosis into a legend. Garrow traces King's transformation from a young, earnest pastor of a modest church into the foremost spokesperson of the black freedom struggle. The book's central unifying theme is King's growing awareness of the symbolic meaning of the cross as his sense of mission deepened, matured, and was transmuted by sometimes-reluctant degrees into acceptance of a life and a role that would end by demanding the ultimate in self-sacrifice. This is a powerful portrait of a man at the epicenter of one of the most dramatic periods in our history.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Journeying Toward the Promised Land

A complete chronological timeline of King's life and works.

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the White House with Lyndon Johnson, March 18, 1966. Both men are dressed in suits with solemn expressions. Power for the Powerless: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Late Theory of Civil Disobedience

This article examines the early reception of King’s  "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and the development of the liberal idea of civil disobedience it has become synonymous with to argue that its canonization coincided with, and displaced, the radicalization of King’s developing thinking about disobedience. It examines published and archival writings from 1965 through 1968 to reconstruct King’s power-oriented theory of “mass” civil disobedience as it developed in response to the dual challenges of white backlash and Black Power.

 

Critical Lessons About Leadership from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s brand of authentic leadership was disruptive. Disruptive leaders bring joy, hope, and a positive attitude to their companies and nations, primarily due to their ability to engender greater trust and engagement. Dr. King's innovative, groundbreaking leadership style disrupted civil inequity between the white majority and people of color. Nobody before Dr. King even fathomed the oxymoron of peaceful protest. He made white leaders look at their hypocrisy and ultimately agree to begin honoring the constitutional "all men are created equal."

 

"Where Do We Go From Here?": Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Workers' Rights

This article chronicles Dr. King's alliances with labor activists as well as the tensions between organized labor and civil rights activism. This article also highlights how Dr. King's emphasis on labor activism informed his approach to fighting against segregation and on behalf of voting rights for African Americans. For Dr. King, true racial equality was inseparable from economic empowerment. On 10th December 1964,  American civil rights leader Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Prize for Peace from Gunnar Jahn, president of the Nobel Prize Committee, in Oslo. Dr. King's insight that racial discrimination was linked to the economic subordination of workers followed a great tradition of political activism within the United States on behalf of racial equality and the rights of workers. This article argues that advocates for workers' rights and racial equality have been most successful when they worked together because race discrimination has been integrally connected to the exploitation of workers throughout our country's history. 

 

Surveillance, Spatial Compression, and Scale: The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1976, the Church Committee, a Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, came to the conclusion that Martin Luther King Jr “was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ‘neutralize’ him as an effective civil rights leader”. This paper explores how the FBI surveilled Martin Luther King Jr between September 1957 and Dr King's death in 1968 and how such surveillance relates to both spatial compression and scale. First, using FBI internal memos, government documents, social movement archives, mass-media accounts, and other sources, this history looks at how state surveillance—operating through the social mechanism of intimidation—compressed both the physical and tactical space that Dr King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference could comfortably inhabit. 

 

Cover ArtKnock at Midnight by Clayborne Carson; Peter Holloran

ISBN: 0446523461
These 11 historic sermons--some complete recordings of entire addresses, others reconstructed from various church services--make plain why Martin Luther King Jr. considered his "first calling and greatest commitment" to be a preacher of the gospel. As an orator he is second to none, drawing his audience in with an urgency that resonates through every soaring cadence of his familiar, powerful voice. Using insights from psychology, philosophy, and the Bible, he appeals to the heads as well as the hearts of his congregations, explaining that personal and social change can only be effected by adopting a morality of love in service of God and humankind. While King's concern for social justice is a common theme throughout, each sermon is a jewel of literary artistry, as it presents a simple problem, examines its complications, and offers a startling and often challenging resolution. Topics range from "Rediscovering Lost Values," a caution that scientific progress without moral progress can result only in a step backward for humanity, to "An American Dream," a wake-up call to the "self-evident truth" of equality proclaimed in the Constitution. Brief introductions to the sermons from spiritual leaders and friends, including Dr. Joan Campbell, Billy Graham, Dr. Robert Franklin, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, offer personal insights into King's life, work, and legacy. An interesting note from the producers explains how the recordings of the sermons (published in a hardcover companion of the same name) were pieced together. In word and in voice, these are masterpieces of theological literature from one of the world's great orators, who Robert Franklin rightly says may well be "the greatest religious intellectual of the twentieth century." (Running time: 8 hours, 6 cassettes) --Uma Kukathas