So, I work and go to school at a university which has a pretty good reputation academically, and a phenomenal reputation for athletics ( Read more... )

66.5 hours and 14,242 words later, not counting bibliographies, I'm done with my doctoral exams. (People of LJ, I feel like you especially will appreciate the fact that my third essay was all about costume dramas.) Now to wait a week or two, and then find out if I passed. Then if I did pass, to turn around immediately and write a prospectus. Next, ( Read more... )

You're all well-read people. Can you think of any examples of what one might call "literary novelization"? I've been reading a lot of adaptation theory and it's often mentioned that novelization - the writing of a book based on a film - gets little scholarly attention. Since intellectual types tend to say "the book is better," this is interesting, ( Read more... )

From a list of other titles in the series, in the front matter of a critical monograph I just started reading:


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For an assignment, I'm trolling Youtube for early silent versions of A Christmas Carol. This one claims to be the earliest, from 1901. Only half of it (about 3 1/2 minutes) is said to survive, so I could easily tell you to go watch it, but I'll cut straight to the point instead - how awesome is the set decoration?

This is the Cratchits' house:

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Disclaimer: I have never seen or read the end of Gone With the Wind and I don't know what happens (except the final line, of course). So please don't spoil me, and don't judge too harshly if my claims are ridiculous in light of the full narrative ( Read more... )

In my research today I encountered a 1856 essay by George Eliot called "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," in which she complains about a character apparently predominating the popular fiction of her day. She is known today by the name of Mary Sue"The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, ( Read more... )

I've been rereading Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and came across this passage which is not only super-applicable to my independent study topic, it's also just-well, awesome.

Who has not felt, in the first madness of sorrow, an unreasoning rage against the mute propriety of chairs and tables, the stiff squareness of Turkey carpets ( Read more... )