The Mysteries of Writing: Novels and Poetry - An Introduction By Professor Belinda Jack

Professor Belinda Jack, the Gresham Professor of Rhetoric, continues her examination of Literature and its enduring fascination. This series focuses on the novel and on poetry and discusses a small and highly personal selection of great works.

Literature of any merit has its ambiguities and this allows for different readings, giving rise to different interpretations and so, literary critical debate. This series of lectures will focus on four novels and two poems in order to focus on these 'Mysteries of Writing'.

Works have been selected for their popularity or, contrariwise, their relative obscurity, to offer historical range, and to include both English and non-English texts. In analysing a few works in detail, methods of reading will be identified which can be used to unlock from all texts some of their abiding and powerful relevance to human life.