Sometimes I will discover that two different works start talking to each other simply because I happen to be teaching them both at the same time. This week Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (from my Jane Austen first year seminar) and John Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes (from my British fantasy course) engaged in one of […]
Tag Archives: adolescence
Moving Beyond Adolescent Fantasies
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Eve of St. Agnes, fantasy, Jane Austen, John Keats, Northanger Abbey Comments closed
Thru Zombie Flix, Our Kids Fight Back
Night of the Living Dead Film Friday Many of my students are fans of zombie movies (of all things). The genre has, in fact, taken off in recent years—a sure sign that one can never predict which symbol systems are going to grip our minds from one moment to the next (and why movie making […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Film, George Romero, Identity formation, Night of the Living Dead, zombie movies Comments closed
Jane Austen’s Emma as Teenpic
Alicia Silverstone in Clueless Film Friday I’m currently preparing to teach a first year seminar on “Jane Austen and the Challenges Faced by Regency Teenagers.” For years it didn’t strike me forcefully enough that most of Jane Austen’s heroines are either teenagers or recent teenagers. That’s because (1) Austen heroines seem fully adult and (2) […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Amy Heckerling, Clueless, Emma, Film, Jane Austen Comments closed
Escape from Adulthood
Film Friday In the spirit of the final weeks of summer when Americans are going to the beach and visiting theme parks, I thought I’d turn to a thoroughly enjoyable film where a magical transformation takes place at a carnival. The film is Penny Marshall’s Big (1988), starring Tom Hanks as a 13-year-old (Josh) who […]
The Magic Flute and Teenage Hormones
Film Friday The nature of Spain’s World Cup victory over Holland seems to have stuck with me all this past week.Spanish elegance won out over a Dutch “kick ’em in the legs” strategy (check out the state of hero Andres Iniesta’s legs here), and I have been writing about Prospero triumphing over Caliban and John […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged As Good as It Gets, Ingmar Berman, Magic Flute, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Comments closed
Managing Midsummer Madness (i.e., Sex)
Midsummer Night’s Dream provides good instruction for the parents of teenagers. First of all, don’t think that you can tyrannically dictate your children’s choices (say, by threatening them with execution). On the other hand, they need guidelines and guidance. There’s no telling how they’ll behave once they are set loose in the forest of their […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Marriage, Midsummer Night's Dream, Relationships, sex, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Donne as an Aid to Teenage Angst
Well, the semester is underway. Yesterday I began teaching one of my favorite classes, the early British Literature survey (Literature in History I). Along with Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Wife of Bath, Doctor Faustus, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Paradise Lost, I will be teaching the poetry of John Donne. I […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Good Morrow, John Donne, Margaret Edson, New Criticism, teaching, W;t Comments closed
Using Twilight to Teach Antigone
Having compared Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight yesterday with Frances Burney’s Evelina, I feel I owe my readers an apology and an explanation. The apology is that I violated one of my principles for the website and judged the book by the movie. All I’ve read of Twilight is the excerpt on amazon.com. If I sell the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alexander Pope, Antigone, Dunciad, Father-daughter conflict, Sophocles, Stephenie Meyer, teaching Comments closed
Comparing Evelina and Twilight
We talked about the movie Twilight in the last gathering of my British Restoration and 18th Century Couples Comedy class. That and France Burney’s epistolary novel Evelina (1775). Hang on as I spell out the connection. If you don’t know about Twilight, then you are probably neither a teenager nor the parent of a teenager. […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Coming of Age, Evelina, Frances Burney, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight Comments closed
