Monthly Archives

May 2017

EXPRESSIONS LITERATURE

Paradise Lost // Idolatry

Expressions // Idolatry in Paradise Lost

My first encounter with Milton was not what I’d call a positive one. I had to tackle Paradise Lost in my first year at university and I was completely baffled; it seemed so deliberately impenetrable to me that I almost took it as a personal insult that I was able to glean next to nothing from its pages. Maybe because we were instructed to read only a couple of designated chapters due to the time constraints of the course and the massive amount of literature we had to plough through in one semester, or maybe because I was approaching it for the first time as such an inexperienced student and hadn’t the tools with which to effectively tackle it (if that’s the right word), I left those weeks relieved, hoping I needn’t confront Paradise Lost ever again. Two years later, though, I found myself actively choosing to take an intensive course dealing only with this text. Spurred on by a friend who’d referred to our first classes on it as (rather appropriately), “hell, but in a really good way,” I decided I was ready to try again, hopefully to see what all the fuss was about. This time, I was not disappointed. In particular, I was struck by what seemed to me a very self-aware anxiety about the nature of idolatry, of attempting to express God in art, and the constant need to justify and explain how Milton’s own ‘attempt’ is distinct, and exempt from accusations of idolatrous worship.

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EXPRESSIONS LITERATURE

Jane Eyre // Wide Sargasso Sea

Charlotte Bronte

Expressions // Thoughts on feminism in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

I was originally going to write a piece about Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel entitled ‘Why Jane Eyre will always be relevant’ but upon reflection decided that such an effort would not exactly be futile, but, well, frankly unnecessary.  That Jane Eyre is still taught to students from KS4 right up to postgraduate level, that it is still pitched to film executives for ever more adaptations, that figures like the brooding Rochester, and ‘plain’ Jane have each entered our collective consciousness, enshrined among the greatest symbols of our literary heritage, that the literature tags of Tumblr and Instagram are utterly saturated with photographs of stylised quotes from Jane’s great ‘I am no bird’ speech, this – all of this – renders completely redundant the task of attempting to account for, or justify the text’s endurance.  The novel can, and will, speak for itself, as it has for generations. Continue Reading