Mathematician and cleric Charles Lutwidge Dodgson published children’s books under the pen name Lewis Carroll. This tour will explore both the man and the author, drawing on letters from Dodgson to his publishers, original drawings by John Tenniel (the illustrator of the Alice books) photographs of children taken by Carroll, and, of course, copies of his books.
The Bibliococktails series celebrates great literature and great libations.
This course will explore perhaps the two most popular English language novels of the 19th Century: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Published just five years apart these two novels reflect very different cultural milieu, yet both were trailblazing in their genres. We’ll see how the ideas and cultural events of their shared era resonate throughout both novels and find some points of intersection in their views and perspectives.
“Picturing Cervantes” explores the ways Don Quixote has been imagined and illustrated through the centuries, featuring remarkable drawings and prints by notable artists such as Gustave Doré and Honoré Daumier. Explore depictions of the questing Don, his companion Sancho Panza, and his noble steed Rocinante from artworks created shortly after the heroic entry of the “Ingenious Gentleman” onto the field of literature, and through the centuries beyond.
This course will consider four plays that foreground issues of gender, sexuality, race, religion, and empire: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, Othello, and The Tempest. We will discuss these plays in terms of their historical context, performance history, reception, popular adaptations, and continued resonances with debates about identity, difference, power, and intimacy. In addition, we will see the Lantern Theater Company’s production of Measure for Measure on April 14.
The Bibliococktails series celebrates great literature and great libations.
Reading Shakespeare’s plays aloud offers not only a communal way to enjoy these great works but also promotes a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s poetry and wordplay. No acting experience is required to participate — just bring a copy of the play we’re reading…and your voice!
Along with James Joyce’s handwritten manuscript of his modernist masterpiece Ulysses, we’ll also read and handle works by Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and more! These Irish authors have connections and influences extending from Thomas Jefferson and Moby-Dick to the present day.
In this course, we’ll read two modernist masterpieces by James Joyce: Dubliners, a collection of stories, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce’s semi-autobiographical novel. Along the way, we’ll read some of Joyce’s letters and earlier writings, and a few key works of literary criticism, seeking to understand the forces that drove Joyce to exile himself from Ireland, only to then repeatedly turn his attention back to the city he left behind. Veterans of The Rosenbach’s Ulysses course will find so much to love in Joyce’s earlier writings, while those steeling themselves to take the plunge into Joyce’s famously difficult book will gain an invaluable introduction.
Bold, cautious, resolved, ambivalent, and sometimes all of the above, gay men of the 19th century strove for authentic identities in art, literature, and love. In this Hands-on Tour, we’ll look at the rise and fall of Oscar Wilde, follow John Addington Symonds path from self-acceptance to advocacy, fraternize with Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, and see the first use of the word homosexual in an English publication.