Holiday Fiction to read over the break!

Spend the summer with a great book!

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.  

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. 

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.

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.

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

On I Love to Write Day, founder John Riddle encourages the writing... of anything!  A poem, a short story, a greeting card, a letter, your novel during NatNoWriMo, anything.   For many people, that will be the beginning of their writing career. I Love To Write Day has the potential to launch the career of the next John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King or Toni Morrison.  

While you're taking your inspiration, here are some people expressing their love of writing:

"To enthrall a reader is to control his breathing."  -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"The South is obsessed with words, the nuances, the rhythms, the hidden meanings of words, and that was a marvelous gift to get at a young age"

"Where's the camera?  Where's that pair of eyes that is guiding the reader through this story?"  - Ann-Marie MacDonald

More Blackout Poetry from English Students

We held a third Blackout Poetry Workshop with English students on Monday. 

How to get started with Blackout Poetry at home?

1. Choose a piece of preprinted text. This can be anything you choose copied or scanned text from a book, a piece of newspaper, a magazine, a printed-out article, or even a recipe or printed-out short story. The key is having a piece of printed text.
2. Skim over the text in front of you.
3. Pick words that hold meaning for you. You want to look for an anchor word. An anchor word will help you select your theme.
4. Now read the text in its entirety. You may need to do this a couple of times. You will be creating a new work from this page of text.
5. Go through and choose your words by lightly circling them with a pencil or writing them on a separate sheet of paper.
6. Read your words.
7. Look for words that connect to your page.
8. Finalize your new message by outlining the selected words.
9. Go over the outlined words with Sharpie or a black marker.
10. Black out the unused words or don't. The key is to make the new text pop. Illustrate as you like or just leave it black and white
11. You have now given your page of text a whole new meaning and created a found poem!!

Check out student work from our Blackout Poetry Workshop in the Prestonsburg campus library for English classes last week!

Remember if you are on campus to stop by the Prestonsburg Campus library to pick up a pocket poem. 

Today is the birthday of A.A. Milne, known best for writing two novels of the Hundred Acre Wood, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.   For anyone who remembers the friendship between the boy and the animals of the wood, including Piglet and Eeyore, the gentle stories of happy times and saving each other from dangers (and from themselves) were wonderful childhood experiences.

The novels were episodic.   Meant to be told briefly as a series of stories, the stories were written to soothe Milne's son, Christopher Robin, who was introduced in the stories as the boy who went into the woods.   Milne modeled the Hundred Acre Wood on Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England.   Milne had grown up in the English countryside, first writing scientific articles, then essays filled with whimsy, and later working as a playwright.   But his stories of silly verse and comedic moments modeled after his son's toys, where the boy became a benign master of animals over Edward Bear and the other soft-hearted animals, were his most enduring legacy.  They became a staple in nurseries around the world as parents read the two books to their little ones at naptime or bedtime.

A.A. Milne was inspired to write about bears not only by his son's teddy bear, but also by a real-life experience of seeing a "Winnie" bear who was tamed by men.   A fateful whistle-stop encounter with a gentle bear cub begins the historic friendship, when a veterinarian named Colebourn buys the cub for 20 dollars. Though officers in Colebourn's division were initially aghast, they were quickly won over by her irrepressible charm, and the bear, named Winnipeg after their hometown, became the division's mascot. Winnie accompanied the soldiers all the way to England, where Colebourn eventually took Winnie to the London Zoo to keep her safe from going into battle. --There Christopher Robin met Winnie and the rest is literary history.

For years following the publication of the books, their world and philosophy was debated.   Some scholars picked up apart the complicated relationship between Christopher Milne and his father A. A., others noted the incredibly limited revisions that A.A. made over the years, grounding the stories in their original form as almost perfect in a way that his relationship with his son was inevitably not.   A few studied the psychology of the friends, others the Disneyfication of the stories.  Still others looked at the legacy of Winnie the Pooh as a archetype for children's fascination with the world, in a way that adults forgot to trust.   In 1982, there was even a book - the Tao of Pooh - where it was written that everything in life you needed to know was already spoken or done by one small yellow bear at the edge of the Hundred Acre Wood. 

So, happy birthday to Mr. Milne.  His most famous creation lives on in the hearts of children -- making everyone's favorite day, today.

If you love to read horror or paranormal novels, then you have Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to thank for it -- August 30 marks 225 years since her birth.  Her masterpiece was Frankenstein.