by chrisa | Aug 30, 2016 | Collaborations
The reputation of David Foster Wallace, the startlingly original author of Infinite Jest (1996), has undergone a change since his death in 2008. As of 2016, there has been an increased academic interest in his work, with several doctoral theses, monographs and...
by eleanorh | Oct 19, 2020 | Uncategorized
The coronavirus crisis has ushered in its own language. Covid-secure, social distancing, the R rate. These phrases have now become familiar. Some of this language is new but Covid-19 has also revived older words. Chancellor Rishi Sunak referred to ‘furlough’...
by eleanorh | Oct 12, 2020 | Uncategorized
Like Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi/The Betrothed, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (ca. 1349-1353) is set during a pandemic: the Black Death of 1348-49, which killed at least 50% of the Italian population. You can read Italian and English versions on Decameron...
by eleanorh | Sep 28, 2020 | Uncategorized
Italian literature has long had a familiarity with pandemics. The first major Italian novel, Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi/The Betrothed was published in 1840 and is set during the plague epidemic of 1629-31 (you can read an 1844 English translation here: vol...
by eleanorh | Sep 21, 2020 | Uncategorized
Throughout the lockdown I have been thinking about the ways in which I spend my time; am I productive enough, what do I do to wind-down, do I wind-down enough, and how do I compare with others? Both my work-life and leisure are tied to reading, and whilst the...
by eleanorh | Sep 7, 2020 | Uncategorized
At the start of the current pandemic lockdown I started an umpteenth re-reading of Middlemarch. I will be writing briefly on the novel for our new MA, but this choice of reading was as much for my own sanity as for reasons of work. As always, I found so much to...
by eleanorh | Jul 13, 2020 | Uncategorized
At rare off-duty times during lockdown, two moments from novels have repeatedly come to mind. One is Arthur Clennam’s imprisonment in the Marshalsea towards the close of Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit: ‘None of us clearly know to whom or to what we are indebted …...
