Harlaxton Day 12: Class and Free Time

My day began with a hearty Harlaxton breakfast consisting of a bagel and a mocha. I was excited. Today was one of my most anticipated days of the trip, as we were finally going to discuss my favorite assigned reading: Wuthering Heights.

Our class began, of course, with a quiz over Wuthering Heights and some information about Emily Brontë (the author of the aforementioned novel). After reviewing the quiz, we switched topics and began discussing poetry. The main focus of our discussion was on meter. We discussed iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, and spondaic meters. Professor Rutledge made the point that most of our names are in trochaic meter (an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable) and used some of my classmates as examples.  For instance (where ‘ marks an accented syllable and U marks an unaccented syllable):

‘   U     ‘    U

“Rithik Reddy”

After our section on meter, we began studying the history of the Brontë family, the influential literary works of Emily Brontë’s time, and Emily’s only novel, Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights was influenced–among other things–by gothic novels and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Some of the more interesting narrative techniques in the book are Brontë’s use of multiple points of view to tell the story, and the chiasmus between Heathcliff, Catherine, Edgar, and Isabella.

Later in the day, we watched a screenplay of the book. It made some interesting decisions, such as playing down the rocky relationship between young Cathy and Hareton, and spending more time on the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff. All in all, it was fairly true to the novel and tied the day together nicely.

Tomorrow, we’re going to visit Brontë Country and we’ll get to see the area that inspired Wuthering Heights. That will probably end up being my favorite part of the trip, though it has some tough competition in the nights I’ve spent playing snooker at the manor.

 

Alex