Hey, everyone
From helping out another user, Jando, with some critic quotes for his Critical Study prescribed text, I decided to compile a whole collection of them for all the prescribed texts. I personally enjoy reading reviews and critical analyses for all my prescribed texts so I decided this would make a great resource for Module B
I have added some quotes for the first round of prescribed texts under Shakesperean drama, prose fiction, drama and film. Feel free to add any yourself, especially for your own prescribed text and you might help someone out
The remaining texts will be posted some time in the next two weeks
• Shakespeare, William, HamletEarl of Shaftesbury, 1710"almost one continued moral, a series of deep reflections, drawn from the mouth upon the subject of one single accident and calamity, naturally fitted to move horror and compassion."
Samuel Johnson, 1765"we must allow to the tragedy of
Hamlet the praise of variety."
William Hazlitt, 1817"This play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of history."
Jan Kott, 1964"a drama of political crime."
Peter Alexander, 1995"The play does not offer any conclusions about what is the right response to the questions it poses about human aggression."
Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster, 2013"
Hamlet is a kind of camera obscura that presents us with a true picture of the world in its inverted form."
"The main reason why
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most enduring play is that it requires the most endurance."
Extra resourcehttp://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/earlycrit.html• Brontë, Charlotte, Jane EyreNicholas Johnson, 2000"show dramatically the journey of a woman striving for balance within her nature."
"Jane Eyre may be seen in a postmodernist light as an expression of Charlotte Brontë's own character."
"It speaks to us today because it takes its inspirations from an internal reality that has remained constant."
Lucasta Miller, 2006"(Bronte's) technical skill at writing the self in a first-person narrative is supreme"
"the enduring appeal of Charlotte Brontë's 'poor, plain, little' governess to generations of women."
" it is the literary qualities of the novel...which give it such intensity."
"The "I" of
Jane Eyre is what the novel is really about; it is as much a Bildungsroman as a love story."
Kelly Harrison, 2015"Brontë grants her heroine such freedom of expression and speech which makes the novel powerful is because she herself is a victim of the trappings of gender constrictions in society."
"Jane breaking free from conventional Victorian rules of society is, in part, what makes the novel powerful and original"
"deduce that the process of writing itself had set free a madwoman."
" the fact that Charlotte Brontë protested against these Victorian norms has influenced the reviewers greatly."
Lucasta Miller, 2016"has the capacity of a fairytale to transcend time"
Extra resourcehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/16/charlotte-bronte-bicentenary-birth-jane-eyre-by-sarah-waters-margaret-drabble-jeanette-winterson• Jones, Gail, Sixty LightsSusan Elderkin, 2004"There is no doubting Jones's flair for luminous and accurate prose."
"Sixty Lights is a passionate and somehow lonely book about the in-between parts of life"
"A layered meditation on loss and grief and of finding joy in unexpected flashes"
Kasia Boddy, 2004"draw on photography's development within the richness of Victorian culture."
"the ghostly nature of photographs, and their ability to summon the dead."
"to flatter readers by demonstrating that what they've got in their hands is a literary novel with a carefully thought-out symbolic underpinning."
Gail Jones, 2012"I am thinking more about the texture of language because it is a more complicated kind of aesthetic compulsion"
"the text as...something that shifts in its communicative power;...keeps on changing, and that readers change it"
"lights are constantly coming on, and it is formed by about sixty thousand words"
Extra resourcehttp://www.culturewars.org.uk/2004-02/sixty.htm• Ondaatje, Michael, In the Skin of a LionCarolyn Kizer, 1987“Ondaatje manages to pick up most of the loose threads in his complex tapestry by the time the book winds down.”
“one is left remembering the descriptions of work and men at work”
Rochelle Simmons, 1998“Cubist qualities should be seen as part of an intense and unwavering fascination with the visual...in...this novel”
Glen Lowry, 2004“Ondaatje's narrative blurs the recognised order of originary identities.”
“the novel reminds readers that the monuments of the modern city bears traces of divergent social meanings and purposes.”
Anne Enright, 2007"
In the Skin of a Lion is haunted by the visionaries and builders of the fiction that is the modern city."
Kamila Shamsie, 2009"There is real anger in it about the way the powerful take advantage of those who work the hardest...incredible tenderness between friends and lovers... flashes of unexpected humor...some truly heart-stopping moments."
"showing us the world through a magic magnifying glass, which enlarges everything that is vital and interesting, and obliterates all that is dull."
Extra resourceshttps://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/28/specials/ondaatje-lion.htmlhttps://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/06/book-life-skin-lion-writerhttps://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/scl/article/view/8175/9232• Winton, Tim, CloudstreetRobert Dixon, 2005"a fascination with history, with Australian traditions and their place in the modern world."
"a novel tracing the relation between tradition and modernisation"
"The sense of the national emerging out of the regional is artfully inscribed in Cloudstreet"
"the novel's discovery of the extraordinary within the ordinary, its quest for metaphysical transcendence within ordinary Australian life."
" its rich and much-publicised interaction with Winton's own biography"
Aida Edemariam, 2008"he has found a language that captures the world around him, a concrete poetry both tough and tender, fresh and ancient."
"achieved through a commitment to Western Australian vernacular"
"commandeered his own family stories...made of them a baggy, unashamedly poetic and non-naturalistic but also hyper-real and absorbing...rubbing along in a big house in Perth."
Magdalena Ball, 2011"The setting, as is the case with all of Winton’s novels, is as much a character as the Pickles and the Lambs are."
"it’s almost difficult to reconcile the honesty of the story—the lives of these two flawed families—with the fireworks that it creates in terms of its illumination of the human condition."
"Cloudstreet illuminates a particular period of time in Australia’s history...and conveys both the time and place magnificently in a way that will engage the reader instantly."
"The book is rife with magic, so purely woven into the story you might miss it on a first reading. It’s a magic that comes straight from a love of humanity"
James Ley, 2014"notable for the humane sympathy it extends to its damaged characters, its willingness to dignify lives that otherwise may be deemed marginal or inconsequential, as well as its dark view of contemporary society"
"the thematic richness of Winton’s fiction"
Extra resourcehttps://www.penguin.com.au/books/65-cloudstreet-penguin-australian-classics/book-clubs/84-cloudstreet-reading-notes• Chekhov, Anton, The Seagull (d) (translated by Stephen Mulrine)Ben Brantley, 2008"the enduring strength and immense difficulty of Chekhov."
"a text highlighted and annotated in brightly colored markers, with certain passages leaping out in self-explanatory eagerness."
"clash of heightened and sometimes incompatible acting styles can be intermittent fun."
Ian Rickson, 2008"Chekhov conjures up a climate of self-destruction."
"cruelty, in all its vivid shades of viciousness, is what the play puts on display."
"Chekhov’s algebra of aimlessness with extraordinary nuance."
David D'arcy, 2018"classic play about failed hopes and tangled attractions"
"the playwright’s view of these Russian dark ages"
Extra resourceshttp://tech.mit.edu/V112/N9/seagull.09a.htmlhttp://www.seagulltheplay.com/a-review-on-criticism-of-seagull.htmlhttps://pages.stolaf.edu/th271-spring2014/commentary-by-artists-or-critics-the-seagull/https://www.apnews.com/4c31f0b4545e4e04ad7209408fd9a63e/Review:-'The-Seagull'-a-lively-but-uneven-Chekhov-adaptation• Welles, Orson, Citizen Kane (f)Otis Fergunson, 1941"approached in several ways: as a film, as an event, as a topic of the times"
"it has the excitement of all surprises without stirring emotions much more enduring"
"was naturally entranced with the marvelous things the moving camera could do for him"
John. C. Flinn. Sr., 1941"Swift moving world events since before the turn of the century until the present furnish the background"
"it is a refreshing cinematic novelty"
"professional polish which brightens the production"
Roger Ebert, 1998" it is a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound"
"The structure of
Citizen Kane is circular, adding more depth every time it passes over the life."
"filled with bravura visual moments"
Extra resourceshttps://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/citizen-kane-review-1941-movie-998891https://www.nytimes.com/1941/05/02/archives/orson-welless-controversial-citizen-kane-proves-a-sensational-film.htmlhttp://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-whats-so-good-about-citizen-kanehttp://www.openculture.com/2014/08/jorge-luis-borges-film-critic-reviews-citizen-kane.html