Passionate Poetry

Passionate poetry

Reading poetry requires some mental space. We need to be able to resist the demands of a hectic lifestyle and allow the words to penetrate our minds and hearts. So what better time to pick up a volume during the less pressured days of the summer holidays!

The brevity of much poetry means that we encounter ideas and emotions distilled into their purest form. It is powerful stuff, particularly when it speaks of the strongest human feelings.

The poetry of the Brontës

The Brontë sisters are famous for their vivid and tumultuous novels, such as The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. But many of the themes and passions we come across in these stories exist in condensed form in the sisters’ surviving poems. It is hard to read, for example, Cold In The Earth and not think of Cathy’s love for Heathcliff which endures beyond the grave.

Another level of interest is added when we find out about the actual lives and loves of the three sisters, and see how they translated the stuff of their daily environment into these moving poems. An ideal way of discovering what they knew and what motivated the Brontës is launched this week at Crossref-it.info. Go to Context links: Selected poetry of the Brontës.

But best of all, find a quiet place on a lazy summer’s day and read these distillations of passion for yourself!

The Brontë sisters in the media

Recently, we focussed on Charles Dicken's work and how this has been portrayed in different ways by the media. To complement this, we thought that we would continue our blog today by concentrating on how the Brontës' work has been interpreted by film, stage and audio productions. Charlotte, Emily and Anne's works remain some of the best known and most loved work in fiction and they have found their way into a variety of productions.

Some of the most recent gems include:

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (BBC, 2006)

Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (ITV, 2009) - check it out on the Brontë Blog as well!

Charlotte Brontë's Villette (Serial for BBC Radio 4, 2009)

It is worth noting that we posted an entry on Jane Eyre back in March, click here to read about Symbolism in Jane Eyre http://crossref-it.blogspot.com/2009/03/symbolism-in-charlotte-brontes-jane.html

There have been so many Brontë adaptations and hopefully there will be a lot more to come. Are there any that you have particularly enjoyed?

Charlotte Brontë and her sisters

Charlotte Brontë was born in 1816 in Thornton, the third of six children. She was born into a literary and intellectual household and the children were encouraged to read and take an interest in the world.

She did not have an easy life:

In 1821, at the age of 5, Charlotte lost her mother to cancer, leaving her father with six children aged eight and under.

In 1825, Maria and Elizabeth, Charlotte's two elder sisters, fell ill at Cowan Bridge school and returned to their home in Haworth, only to die. Charlotte and Emily were then also removed from the school.

In 1848, the year after Jane Eyre was published, Charlotte's sister Emily and her brother Branwell died, while her sister Anne died one year later in 1849. Charlotte herself died in 1855 - while pregnant with her first child.

Clearly she did not have an easy life. Yet, despite all the suffering and despite her short life, she managed to create a wealth of literature. Jane Eyre, The Professor, Villette, Shirley... Quite an achievement! Not to mention Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which the three sisters collaborated on.

This truly was an extraordinary family. Their books can help us understand them, and equally, understanding them and understanding the context they lived in can help us appreciate their books.

For more information on Charlotte Brontë's life visit her biography section with timeline on Crossref-it.info.