BBC One’s The Living and the Dead revels in the Victorians’ obsession with the supernatural and the limits of science.
Let’s critique the literary canon, but we shouldn’t throw the Brontës out with the bathwater.
The Brontë Sisters, by Patrick Branwell Brontë, circa 1834.
Like it or not, the literary canon is part of the cultural capital of the West. Universities that choose not to teach it – or refuse to critically engage with it – are actually disempowering students.
When Henry James renounced his American citizenship in 1915 in response to his country’s inaction, he spearheaded a movement of writers who refused to sit on the sidelines amid turmoil in Europe.