Willy Russell could have chosen any books and authors to reference in the play. Why did he choose the ones that he did? In order to figure out the answer to this question we need to know a little more about some of the authors and their works that are referenced by Frank and Rita.
Between you find out a little about...
T. S. Eliot and his poem 'J. Arthur Profrock'
E. M. Forster and the novel 'Howard's End'
The life and work of Roger McGough
W. B. Yeats and the poem 'The Wild Swans at Coole'
Rita Mae Brown and her novel 'Rubyfruit Jungle'
Henrik Ibsen and his play 'Peer Gynt'
Anton Checkhov and his play 'The Seagull'
Oscar Wilde and his play 'The Importance of Being Earnest'
Bram Stoker and his novel 'Dracula'
D. H. Lawrence and his novels 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' and 'Sons and Lovers'
William Blake and his collection of poems 'Songs of Innocence and Experience'
Mary Shelley and her novel 'Frankenstein'
Get on it...
Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born English poet, playwright and literary critic, born September 26, 1888 and died January 4, 1965. Elliot became incredibly well known with his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" which is recognised as one a masterpiece of the Modernist movement (Rejecting the old, outdated ideas in art in favour of new ideas and thoughts) T.S Elliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Elliot seemed rather torn between his nationality, believing his "...mind may be American but my heart is British" though believed a reason he thought people viewed his work as so good was because it was American; he said the sources and 'emotional springs' which made up his work would have differed had he been born in England.
ReplyDeleteThe poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a monologue; it's from the point of view of one person with the main character's thoughts about different life subjects making up much of the poem, with it being difficult to interpret. There is no doubt, however, that the ideas the poem poses, whether it's perhaps Prufrock's attempts as pursuing romance or a message of disillusionment within society about whether we can actually live meaningful lives in the modern age coupled with the modernistic style of the poem, makes for one of the most well known and appreciated literary works of the 20th century.
Bram Stoker was an Irish novelist who is best known for his Gothic novel Dracula (1887).
ReplyDeleteDracula is a novel made up of letters, diary entries and ship logs. The novel is based around a newly qualified English solicitor Jonathan Harker who is travelling from England to Count Dracula's castle. Jonathan soon becomes a prisoner of the castle (possibly relating to Frank being stuck in the University).
Dracula also examines the role of women in Victorian culture. This could possibly be a reference to Rita and the role of most women during the 1970's/80's in Liverpool.
Roger McGough is a well known English poet from Liverpool.
ReplyDeleteRussell would have used McGough in Educating Rita, because he is a more mainstream and modern poet compared to W.B Yeates,who is also mentioned in the play. McGough would have been used because he was at his peak during the 70s/80s as he was producing poems on a regular basis. This would have made him well known at the time; so by linking him in to the play, this would have made the characters more realistic.
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet. In his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."
ReplyDelete'The Wild Swans at Coole' is a poem by W. B. Yeats, published in 1917. It was written during a period that Yeats was staying with his friend Lady Gregory at her home at Coole Park. It is in a regular form, consisting of five six line stanzas.
Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet in the late 1800's he became one of londons most popular playwrights. Today he is remembered for his plays and of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
ReplyDeleteHe was deeply interested in the rising philosophy of aestheticism though he also profoundly explored Roman Catholicism and finally converted on his deathbed.
At the height of his fame and success, whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was still on stage in London, Wilde sued his lover's father for libel. After a series of trials, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency with other men and imprisoned for two years, held to hard labour.
Mary Shelly wrote 'Frankenstein' in 1817. The main themes of the book are: childbirth, Religion and The Supernatural.
ReplyDeleteThe plot of the play follows Dr.Frankensteins attepts to create life, he eventually succeds and creats the Frankenstein monster. Disgusted by his creation he runs away. Left without a father figure the monster becomes angry at society.
Mary Shelly was trying to reflect modern society with a dark look into the deepest coners of the human mind. She shows us our follies; beleveing we can prevent the natural order and prevent death.
E. M. Forster and the novel "Howard's End"
ReplyDelete(1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) Being recognized as an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist; he is better remembered for his analytic novels themed on class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society (these contained a great deal of irony and are considered well-plotted novels).
A number of critics such as Lionel Trilling, consider Howards End as being "Forster's masterpiece"
It centers around three families in England at the beginning of the twentieth century: the Wilcoxes (are rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies); the semi-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Tibby, and Helen), who have a lot in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, a couple who are struggling members of the lower-middle class.
The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced.
"Only connect..." finds itself to be the decider, the cleverly repeated motto.
"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer."
Mary Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) llstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein.
ReplyDeleteThrough research it can be determined the many influences the author was under during the creation of the novel. She had traveled the region in which the story takes place, and the topics of galvanism and such other occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions. Frankenstein is infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. It was also a warning against the expansion of modern man in the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films.
Frankenstein begins in epistolary form, documenting the correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton sets out to explore the North Pole and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame and friendship. The ship becomes trapped in ice, and, one day, the crew sees a dogsled in the distance, on which there is the figure of a giant man. Hours later, the crew finds Frankenstein in need of sustenance. Frankenstein had been in pursuit of his monster when all but one of his dogs died. He had broken apart his dogsled to make oars and rowed an ice-raft toward the vessel. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion and recounts his story to Walton. Before beginning his story, Frankenstein warns Walton of the wretched effects of allowing ambition to push one to aim beyond what one is capable of achieving.
Henrik Ibsen writer of Peer Gynt(written in 1867) was a major 19th centry Norwegian playwriter, theatre director and poet. He was often refered to as "the farther" of modern drama and is one of the founders of modernism in the theatre.
ReplyDeleteNeerdowell and braggart Peer Gynt has many adventures in varied countries, making and losing money, gaining fortune at others expense, until he finds salvation in the love of Solveig.
David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic.Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as, "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation."
ReplyDeleteSons and Lovers was his first successful novel and arguably his most popular. Many of the details of the novel's plot are based on Lawrence's own life and, unlike his subsequent novels, this one is relatively straightforward in its descriptions and action.The novel was controversial when it was published because of its frank way of addressing sex.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928.the book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an aristocratic woman, its explicit descriptions of sex.
Anton Checkhov was a Russian writer. He wrote plays and short stories which are considered some of the best in the world.
ReplyDeleteHis play 'The Seagull' focuses on the romantic and artistic conflicts between the four characters:
-Nini
-Irina
-Konstantin
-Trigorin
The opening night of 'The Seagull' in 1896 is famous for its failure. However this changed when the play was directed by Constantin Stanislavski in 1898. It was shown in the Moscow Art Theatre and this time the play was a triumph.
Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) is an American writer. She is best known for her first novel Rubyfruit Jungle. Published in 1973, it dealt with lesbian themes in an explicit manner unusual for the time. Brown is also a mystery writer and screenwriter. In the late 1960s, Brown turned her attention to politics. She became active in the American Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, the Gay Liberation movement and the feminist movement. She co-founded the Student Homophile League and participated in the Stonewall riots in New York City. She took an administrative position with the fledgling National Organization for Women, but angrily resigned in February 1970 over Betty Friedan's anti-gay remarks and NOW's attempts to distance itself from lesbian organizations. She played a leading role in the "Lavender Menace" zap of the Second Congress to Unite Women on May 1, 1970, which protested about Friedan's remarks and the exclusion of lesbians from the women's movement. In the early 1970s, she became a founding member of The Furies Collective, a lesbian feminist newspaper collective which held that heterosexuality was the root of all oppression. She has said, "I don't believe in straight or gay. I really don't. I think we're all degrees of bisexual." Brown began her writing career with poetry:
ReplyDelete* The Hand That Cradles the Rock (1971)
* Songs to a Handsome Woman (1973)
In popular culture, the protagonist Susan in the film, "Educating Rita" changes her name to Rita due to her admirance for Rita Mae Brown
Posting this on behalf of Lauren, cause' I'm nice like that.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morgan Forster, a delightful english novelist is known best for his well thought, fully plotted novels classifying the differences in the 20th century of british society. Forsters use of sympathy and understanding can be summed up in his 1910 novel 'Only Connect'.
In Howard's End by E.M Forster the writer talks of 'only connect'.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, just as the "Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced"; Frank (in Educating Rita) also tries to help Rita through education and combat prejudice by portrayal that even one considered of lower class, can rise and hold one's own in numerous discussions with the 'upper-classes'... We 'only' have to observe the two to 'connect' their ties: the wealth of knowledge and the lack of it, the adornment of life and the yearning for it; the overcomplicated sermons and the simplistic views... they all connect...
Well I think it's along those lines anyways
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900 was an irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete who, after writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.
ReplyDeleteRita finds Rubyfruit Jungle as a great book.
ReplyDeleteThe novel focuses on Molly Bolt, the adopted daughter of a poor family, who possesses remarkable beauty and who is aware of her lesbianism from early childhood. Her relationship with her mother is rocky, and at a young age her mother, referred to as "Carrie," informs Molly that she is not her own biological child but a "bastard." Molly has her first same-sex sexual relationship in the sixth grade with her friend Leota B. Bisland, and then again in a Florida high school, where she has another sexual relationship with another friend, Carolyn Simpson, the school lead cheerleader, who willingly has sex with Molly but refuses the name "lesbian."
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970), was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.
ReplyDeleteHowards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, which tells a story of class struggle in turn-of-the-century England. The main theme is the difficulties, troubles, and also the benefits of relationships between members of different social classes. Many critics, including Lionel Trilling, consider Howards End "undoubtedly Forster's masterpiece
The book is about three families in England at the beginning of the twentieth century: the Wilcoxes, who are rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Tibby, and Helen), who have a lot in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, a couple who are struggling members of the lower-middle class. The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced. The motto of the book is "Only connect
Rita Mae Brown, and her novel 'Rubyfruit Jungle'
ReplyDeleteRubyfruit Jungle is the first novel (1973) by Rita Mae Brown a femenist, known for its explicit lesbianism.
Rubyfruit Jungle chronicles the life of a young woman named Molly Bolt. Starting with her childhood in Pennsylvania, the book follows her young life in Florida and her later lifein New York. Her relationships with other women are also a big part and conflict in the novel. Many of the events and characters in the book draw from Brown's own earlyer years.
so er yes.