ENGL 628 Jane Eyre Neo-Victorian Appropriations Dashboard
Description
Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847) is a seminal text in the Western feminist literature canon, published fifty-five years after Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and a year before the Seneca Falls convention launched the feminist movement in Western culture. Scores of authors, directors, and digital producers have attempted not just to adapt but to appropriate, revise, and modernize Charlotte Bronte’s most famous novel. Antonija Primorac contends that the current vogue of neo-Victorianism is “a powerful trend in contemporary Anglophone media” pointing to the “continuous production of adaptations and appropriations of Victorian literature and culture.” In order to be considered neo-Victorian, Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn posit that “texts (literary, filmic, audio / visual) must in some respect be self-consciously engaged with the act of (re)interpretation, (re)discovery and (re)vision concerning the Victorians” (emphasis in original). In this class, we will explore the creative and rhetorical choices twentieth- and twenty-first-century authors have made when appropriating, revising, and modernizing Jane Eyre’s narrative, paying particular attention to gender ideology in the Victorian era and in more recent times. In this course, we will also leverage the new media capabilities of the COVE (Central Online Victorian Educator) web site in order to examine more deeply the impact of multimodal writing and digital technology on literary studies in the twenty-first century.
Individual Entries
Orkney, Scottland is mentioned for the first time in The Flight of Gemma Hardy when we learn that Mrs. Marsden grew up there (Livesey 13). According to Scotland Info Travelguide, Orkney is an island in northern Scotland that consists of much smaller islands (SIT). The islands are separated regarding proximity to the largest island which is known as "the Mainland" while other islands, though have names, are mainly associated with being North or South of the Mainland (SIT). Ockney is an island with deep, rich history dating back to the Vikings in 3500 BC.
“Orkney.” Scotland Info Guide, Scotland Info, 12 June 2019.
https://www.scotlandinfo.eu/orkney/
KJ
more(Gemma Hardy p. 1629
Fiddlesticks are traditional instruments used to play violins. Those have been named in English since the 15th century - then as 'fydylstyks'. The word was appropriated to indicate absurdity in the 17th century. Thomas Nashe used it that way in the play Summer's Last Will and Testament, 1600. There's nothing inherently comic about a violin bow. It seems that 'fiddlestick' was chosen just because it sounds like a comedy word, like 'scuttlebutt' (a cask of drinking water), 'lickspittle' (a sycophant) and 'snollygoster' (an unprincipled person). It referred to something insignificant, 'fiddlesticks' was originally 'fiddlestick's end', that is, it was a reference to something paltry, trifling and absurd.
https://www.phrases.org.uk › meanings › fiddlesticks