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Doubles, doppelgängers and split personalities
It’s my turn to set the Culture Club agenda (we rotate this around the group). I’ve chosen as my theme: Doubles, Doppelgangers and Split Personalities, and we’re going to be looking at the following works: The Confessions and Private Memoirs of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg (Novel) The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar […]
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Reality
The next theme for Culture Club is… ‘Reality’. This was my choice, following on from our theme of ‘madness’ from last time. Here are the works we’ll be discussing: Jorge Luis Borges: Labyrinths Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire Henry Green: Loving Richard Strauss: Symphonia Domestica Plus the following poems by Dylan Thomas: Ears in the turrets […]
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Catching up
Well, due to work commitments mainly, I haven’t been able to keep up with the Culture Club blog for, what, eight months (oh dear), so it’s more than due an update. Our last assignment was on the theme of ‘madness’ and included the following works: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (novel) King Lear by William […]
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Culture Club: Theme for May – July 2011
This month we’ve chosen works that were all published or released in a specific year: 1925. And what a year. In fact the variety of works is quite a surprise. Here’s what we’ll be looking at. The Great Gatsby (novel) – F. Scott Fitzgerald The Trial (novel) – Franz Kafka Mrs Dalloway (novel) – Virginia […]
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Thoughts on Tristram Shandy
I have been reading and studying Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman for the past couple of months. It’s been a laborious task, and I’m afraid not a happy one. I’ve read around it and I understand the reasons why Tristram Shandy is considered a classic, but my problems with the […]
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A Sentimental Journey, The Opera
Thanks to a comment left on this blog by the Laurence Sterne Trust I discovered that the composer Craig Vear has written and produced a digital opera based on A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne. You can actually hear the 45-minute long piece streamed on the internet in a recording of the public showing at the […]
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Culture Club: Theme for February – March 2011
For this month’s Culture Club we’re focusing on the writer Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne (novel) A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy – Laurence Sterne (novel) I’m late posting this so I’m half way through the book as I write. The truth is I’m hating it, […]
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Dualisms in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
In a central episode in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the hero defines to a group of visiting actors the ‘purpose’ of drama: ‘…whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature’ This is the central theme of the play, which abounds in dualities (I count three […]
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Culture Club: Theme for August – November 2010
It’s not so long since we last did a work by William Shakespeare (we did Shakespeare’s Sonnets back at the beginning of the year), but you can never have enough Shakespeare, right? We’re back at him, and this time it’s Hamlet, one of his best known works for the theatre and the single most highly […]
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The Novel and Literary Form
We’re reading a bunch of novels for this month’s Culture Club (Under the Volcano, The Power and the Glory, The Plumed Serpent). I love reading novels, but when studying them I’m invariably irritated by the lack of form. By ‘form’ I mean literary or artistic form, such as the 14 lines and strict rhyme scheme […]