Tagged: novel

From The Guardian: House of Names by Colm Tibn brilliant retelling of a Greek tragedy

Colm Toibin is an author whose latest novel, House of Names, a retelling of a Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, has graced fine book stores everywhere. Alex Preston, writing forThe Guardian, notes, however: I say ostensibly a retelling, because House of Names gives us so much that isnt in the original trilogy (and excludes so much that […]

From The TLS: In Search of Excitement

A history of the novel, The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 7, asks whether the novel is history. Another,The Value of the Novel, by Peter Boxall provides the theoretical foundation for the argument that the novel is not dead–it has only taken a novel form, one that will forecast cultural change as […]

Jane Austen: ‘Persuasion’ vs ‘Emma’

In view of CC202’s intellectual dabbling in Jane Austen’s works, the Core presents an article that argues Emma is in certain ways better than Persuasion. Here is an extract: Published posthumously, it [Persuasion] has an almost skeletal feel, like an outline in which only the most salient points about each character are noted, as if […]

André Alexis: Why Read?

The essay discusses David Shields’ novel How Literature Saved My Life, and how its ideas truly relate to many aspects of existence. Here is an extract: One of the other things literature does is that it keeps the plates in the air, so to speak. Much thinking, in the humanities, has shifted from the answer-oriented […]

Paula Byrne: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and politics

The class of CC202 delves into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Here the Core presents an article looks at that work from another perspective- politics. Here is an excerpt: The Victorians fostered the idea of Austen as the retiring spinster who confined her novels to the small canvas of village life. In more recent times she […]