Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tale Course

It has already been widely circulated in the fairy tale blogworld that Future Learn are running a free academic course on the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, facilitated by The Hans Christian Andersen Centre at the University of Southern Denmark.

There's still time to sign up to the six week course; I'm playing catch up at the moment and all the indications I've had so far suggest to me it will be very interesting! There are some longer writing assignments to complete, and I will probably post them and my responses to discussion stimuli here.

If you join me, I look forward to a good old chinwag and a debate or two!

HCA reading to children. By Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann. Source.

When real life has a well balanced plot

Everyone always says books and films are nothing like real life, because for one reason or another, they're not believable. Somehow my life has been the opposite: several situations I've experienced have been so unique, so random, so hilarious or so well-ordered that it just wouldn't seem credible, even in a book or a film! 

Today I had one of those moments. I went into university for the last time (in theory) to finalise details regarding my transfer, and the girl who helped me out was very familiar...she helped me with everything I needed, then said goodbye and wished me luck with the Open University. As I began cycling home, it dawned on me why I recognised her...

When I first came to visit the university 3 years ago, she was the student giving my group the tour.

When I joined the university last year, she registered me.

When I went to visit my academic advisor, she was in the queue to see him as well.

And now, I guess she graduated and stayed to work there.

She was the person to welcome me, and the person to say goodbye to me.

How strange, that the story of my time with Sussex has been balanced like a good plot by the presence of one person. If I ever doubt that I'm doing good in the world, making a difference or simply making the most of my time, it'll be worth remembering that making a mark can be a very subtle thing, something we might not even be aware of ourselves...

Modernist Alice

Last week I had the opportunity to go to a lecture about one of my favourite childhood books - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Professor Gillian Beer visited Sussex to give a talk on 'Modernist Alice', about how the Carroll books influenced Modernist writers such as Eliot, Joyce and Woolf, as well as other forms of art and new thinking in that era.

by EyeOfMaharet777 @ dA

It wasn't a mind-blowing reinterpretation of the novel, but it was fascinating to see how the logic, words and images Carroll created ended up spanning so many disciplines and influencing so many great minds. It certainly made me think about this funny and magical children's book in a whole new light, and I'm sure that when I revisit the book in the future, the feeling of awe and wonderment it creates will have another, deeper significance. 


I always worried that digging deeper into the books I love would ruin them for me, but I don't think it is as simple as that. We'll never stop loving the books we love for whatever reasons made us love them in the first place - finding out more about them can show us more reasons to admire them.

Feminism and literature

The Madonna. The Whore. The Hysterical Woman. 
Hysterical - hysterectomy: specific female madness. Where is the Penisterical Man?


In a lecture today we discussed feminism and literature. We looked at different ways women are featured in literature, as characters and as authors, and their place in the canon (or lack of.) One of the biggest issues raised was how women write women without falling into inherent patriarchal stereotypes that they have been brought up with. 


And, of course, that got me thinking about my women. I don't want to reflect on them afterwards and blame my mistakes on 'the patriarchy' - I want to train myself to think critically about how I portray women. The way I write currently is not particularly conducive to this; I tend to go into a trance and let the words come out, and I have a variety of female characters that could probably easily be categorised as some sort of stereotype. Oops? 


Is it possible to rectify this without sacrificing voice, style, characterisation? Is it possible to have the perfect, non-stereotyped female literary figure? Is it? 


Maybe not. And I don't think there is just one worldwide patriarchy, either. So maybe we just need enough women to write enough different women to allow a crisscrossing network of so-and-so's character linked to such-and-such patriarchy, so that it all becomes confusing and the critics hold up their hands and say 'enough!' Women can write women however they need and want to for their stories (and for that matter, so can men.)


This is a touchy subject, highly flammable. Any thoughts?

Book heaven

Today I took a trip up to the special collections section of the university library; surrounded by the comforting smell of old, loved books, I was privileged enough to hold in my hands some real treasures. 


I won't lie, I was petrified I would sneeze on them.


But there was something familiar, almost reassuring about handling a book with crisp paper pages, stained with age, and a hard-back, robust cover protecting the story within...


A 1611(!) edition of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen.
A 1st edition(!) of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
A 2nd edition Shakespeare folio(!), undoubtedly the king of the room!


And the illustrations! Perhaps as a result of it being the title page to The Faerie Queen it had more of an effect on me, but I felt utterly transported and in awe - the drawings were intricate, alluring, and dominated the page in a way that book illustrations rarely do nowadays.


Everyone, I beseech you, if you can, hold an old, valuable book in your hands and experience what I have experienced, because it is a beautiful, inspiring feeling, and I cannot do it justice here!

Books, Books, Books

image from here

My reading list for uni has arrived! I'm very very excited - I start my English lit course at Sussex in just over a month, so I have a lot of reading to do. But hey, Alice in Wonderland is on my list, so it won't be such a hard slog...


Although I have been joking all year about being sure John Milton's Paradise Lost would be on my reading list, and now, lo and behold, it is. It's not so funny anymore! Ever since I was at school studying for my GCSEs, my English teachers were talking about this behemoth of a book, and how it is one of the biggest and hardest books to read. Hmm...wish me luck?


This whole year I have told myself I mustn't read so much, because it means I'm not working. Finally, reading and working are the same thing. Bring on the books!