So far, it has been absolutely fantastic and I have found new interests in fields of fiction I hadn't really thought about before, or had thought I didn't like. I just had a lecture on mercy & forgiveness in Victorian fiction by Dr Jan-Melissa Schramm, which made me see Victorian authors like Dickens in a completely new way. I must confess I don't really like Dickens, but now I think I might come back to him and maybe be able to appreciate him more. The gist of the lecture was that Victorian authors like Dickens or Gaskell were of the opinion that reading (the Bible, of course, but also increasingly fiction (which in my eyes the Bible is anyway, but you know...)) enables us to enlarge our capacity for compassion and to take on different perspectives. Dickens and Gaskell both made their readers sympathise with characters who had done wrong and both wrote very strongly about the importance of mercy and forgiveness. This was especially due to the historical context: The Fair Trial Act in 1890 was just one sign of the increasing want for more humane punishment for criminals; but the Industrial Revolution as well as growing poverty also caused social unrest, which as Dr Schramm argues had Britain on the brink of a civil war by the end of the 19th century. She suggests that Dickens and Gaskell promoted the concept of forgiveness to aid reconsiliation.
This is of course only a very rough version of what she said, and I'm not sure I agree with her on everything - one thing that came up during the questions afterwards was Dickens' 'hypocrisy' of often killing a character (e.g. lady Dedlock in Bleak House) that he spent so much time making his readers sympathise with. One could argue that he felt the need to ultimately punish her anyway, or maybe he just thought it would make people sympathise with her more; but the lecture certainly gave me a new angle on his work.
My other, regular lectures are on G.K. Chesterton and Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice and Mansfield Park. I have to confess that I only took Chesterton because everything else was booked, and I had never even heard of him before. My preparatory reading included some of his Father Brown stories, some of his essays, some og his poems and his novel The Man Who Was Thursday.
Now, initially I wasn't very keen on him. I (still) don't really like the Father Brown stories (even though the lectures have made me appreciate them a little more) and when I read that he was an active Roman catholic, I almost gave up on him. Silly me! His essays are really very good (he produced something over 4000 of them in his lifetime! Plus short stories, poems, books... they are not only very witty but they do make very valid points. One I particularly like is The Travellers In State (this site has a lot of his essays, just read a few!). One thing that really shines through in all of them is Chesterton's craftsmanship, his joy in assembling sentences, of rich and especially playful language, that makes me think of Stephen Fry (yes, there he is again! No post would be complete without a little Fry). Chesterton himself described his essay-writing style thus:
There are essays 'that are really themes and themes that are really theses': 'They represent what may be called the Extreme Right of rigid right reason and militant purpose, after the Latin model.'Chesterton preferred those 'very English' essays that are 'none the less beautiful because they twist and ramble like an English road.'His style really often is like an English Road, beautifully paced - as indeed is his poem The Rolling English Road. His use of humor as well as seriousness (not solemnity!) to tackle quite serious and abstract topics works very well, because these two contrast in a way that makes his message much more striking and often catches the reader off guard and makes him/her think again. Similarly to George Orwell (although they couldn't be further apart in everything else), he also uses everyday examples to explain abstract concepts. People often debate whether his work is just to be enjoyed, or whether there is a deeper meaning to it. Personally, I do think he makes quite a lot of often very profound points, but I do also think that stuff like The Shop Of Ghosts is just there to be enjoyed. In any case, his essays make great reading, and they're not very long.
I will go on to The Man Who Was Thursday, but right now I have to go to my next lecture - Chesterton, incidentally. Until then, farewell!
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