BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//HKU School of English - ECPv6.17.2//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:HKU School of English
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://hku-english.visibleone.dev
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for HKU School of English
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:UTC
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
TZOFFSETTO:+0000
TZNAME:UTC
DTSTART:20170101T000000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20180426
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20180427
DTSTAMP:20200213T172922Z
CREATED:20200213T172922Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200213T172922Z
UID:2325-1524700800-1524787199@hku-english.visibleone.dev
SUMMARY:"At Last It Arrested Her": The Historical Portrait in Pride and Prejudice
DESCRIPTION:Ms. Xu Lingyi\, Olivia – School of English\, The University of Hong Kong \nAbstract\nWhen characters pause to look at portraits in nineteenth-century English novels\, they often learn key information about the depicted subjects. One of the most memorable examples is Elizabeth’s encounter of Mr. Darcy’s portrait at Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice. The painting softens the heroine’s harsh impressions of Darcy and thereby advances the novel’s central marriage plot. Scholars like Elizabeth Helsinger and Kamilla Elliott have agreed that fictional portraits in nineteenth-century novels often function as plot devices to impart knowledge of characters. This paper\, however\, seeks to complicate this observation by thinking how the novel draws upon different traditions of portraiture to challenge the idea that the process of knowing someone is linear\, progressive and accumulative. Through an analysis of the portrait scene in Pride and Prejudice\, this presentation argues that Elizabeth’s complex reactions towards Mr. Darcy’s picture suggest an ongoing conflict between her personal memories and a Reynoldsian historical representation of Mr. Darcy’s character. Recalling the “Grand Style” portrait advocated by Sir Joshua Reynolds\, probably the most prominent English portraitist of the eighteenth century\, the painting of Darcy consolidates his individualized smile with his aristocratic ancestry. Susceptible to this historically authoritative version of Mr. Darcy\, Elizabeth therefore edits and alters her past memories of their acquaintance to validate the picture’s likeness. In doing so\, Elizabeth further undermines the novel’s painstaking depictions of her gradual trajectory in knowing others. \n ||  \nBiography\nLingyi (Olivia)\, Xu is a M.Phil. student at the University of Hong Kong\, where she received her B.A. in English studies and Fine Arts. Her MPhil thesis examines the ubiquitous presence of fictional portraits in the nineteenth-century English novel and argues against the common “narrative reading” of visual arts in the novel. Her research interests are interdisciplinary\, located at the intersection of nineteenth-century English novel\, visual arts and aesthetic theories.
URL:https://hku-english.visibleone.dev/event/at-last-it-arrested-her-the-historical-portrait-in-pride-and-prejudice-2/
LOCATION:Room CRT-7.45\, 7/F\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU
CATEGORIES:Events
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20180426
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20180427
DTSTAMP:20200213T173141Z
CREATED:20200213T173141Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200213T173141Z
UID:2326-1524700800-1524787199@hku-english.visibleone.dev
SUMMARY:Why Verse? Aurora Leigh and the Rise of the Verse-Novel
DESCRIPTION:Mr. Chan Man Long Johnson – RPg\, School of English\, The University of Hong Kong \nAbstract\nIn 1856\, Elizabeth Barrett Browning published her masterpiece Aurora Leigh\, her “novel-poem” conceived as early as 1845. This decade-long work remains as one of the few examples of a little-researched literary genre in the Victorian era – the verse-novel. Using Aurora Leigh as my prime example\, my talk aims to provide an answer as to why verse-novelists chose to write their novels in verse rather than in prose. By examining both poetic and novelistic conventions employed in Aurora Leigh\, we can come to understand Barrett Browning’s purpose in choosing verse as the medium of narrating what would otherwise be a tale fit for the novel. As we will see\, the various properties of verse contribute to Barrett Browning's critique of the conventional novel – and the very concept of realism – in mid-Victorian era. Barrett Browning uses verse’s historic prestige\, literary devices and formal logic to expose the problems of the realist novel\, how\, in its pursuit for the real\, is fundamentally unable to represent truth. \n ||  \nBiography\nJohnson Chan is currently a M.Phil candidate at the School of English in The University of Hong Kong. Previously\, he has obtained his B.A. in English Literature from The University of British Columbia and his J.D. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His current academic interests include 18th century and 19th century poetry as well as Victorian verse-novels.
URL:https://hku-english.visibleone.dev/event/why-verse-aurora-leigh-and-the-rise-of-the-verse-novel-2/
LOCATION:Room CRT-7.45\, 7/F\, Run Run Shaw Tower\, Centennial Campus\, HKU
CATEGORIES:Events
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR