Jane Austen vs Emily Bronte: The Queens of English Literature Debate
with Dominic West
Presented by Intelligence Squared
(Filmed at the Royal Geographic Society on February 26, 2014)
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Films for Bookworms
The only thing better than browsing books is browsing books...
and then watching a film about books!
Now Showing for January:
Jane Austen vs Emily Bronte:
The Queens of English Literature Debate
Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes
I have something a little different this month. Rather than presenting a documentary, I wanted to share this recording of a marvelous night of literary discussion and friendly debate.
Who is better: Jane Austen or Emily Bronte? To help you decide who should be crowned queen of all English letters, the madcap literati at Intelligence Squared lined up passionate advocates to make a case for each author. Dominic West, Sam West and other actors perform readings to illustrate the arguments. It's fun, fancy, and a wonderful reminder of why both novelists have endured long past their heyday in Georgian England.
Are you Team Jane: partial to irony that lurks beneath genteel manners? Or are you Team Emily: passionate, uninhibited, tossing away misguided propriety in favor of supernatural, savage love?
(I have a confession: I'm unabashedly partial to Bronte. Wuthering Heights has been a favorite novel since I devoured it when I was 13, burning passionately for Niles, the new boy in my school who had recently moved to Austin from the UK. He was every bit a Heathcliff prototype hunching over his desk in a worn leather motorcycle jacket, a shock of dark hair falling over his eyes as he furiously wrote poetry in a spiral notebook...)Check back every month for a new film pick!
(I have other great bookish videos here.)
Psst: I couldn't resist.
