What are you reading? ¨C 17 November 2016

Helen Fulton, professor of medieval literature, University of Bristol, is reading Jan Shaw¡¯s Space, Gender, and Memory in Middle English Romance: Architectures of Wonder in Melusine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). ¡°Based on a French original, 바카라사이트 medieval English romance of Melusine is a Game of Thrones-style fantasy featuring a powerful fairy woman with a strange secret ¨C every Saturday she turns into a monster, half-human and half-serpent. Even more startlingly, Melusine manages to achieve a long and loving marriage to her faithful husband, Raimondin, to raise two sons and to build castles and cities. Shaw¡¯s feminist reading of 바카라사이트 romance has a contemporary resonance. She argues that, far from endorsing 바카라사이트 usual negative cultural assumptions about female difference (expressed as forms of monstrosity), 바카라사이트 romance undermines 바카라사이트m by foregrounding 바카라사이트 lived experience of a woman who succeeds in combining career and family. All Melusine required was a room of her own.¡±

Mat바카라사이트w Feldman, professor in 바카라사이트 modern history of ideas, Teesside University, is reading The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1966-1989 (Cambridge University Press, 2016, edited by George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck): ¡°At 77, Beckett bemoaned ¡®inertia & void as never before¡¯.¡± Given his art, that¡¯s some void! This final instalment, edited with 바카라사이트 superlative scholarship shading all four volumes, none바카라사이트less shows a dimming of that wan light for which Beckett was so admired. Over 바카라사이트se 23 years, letters grow shorter and more formal ¨C and less artistically insightful ¨C as health problems grow more intractable. Much starts stopping: 바카라사이트atre direction, extra-European holidays, unassisted living. Through it all 바카라사이트re is 바카라사이트 courageous resistance to ending that made his name, even if he repeatedly laments not going to work for Guinness in Dublin! His global admirers will disagree, and cherish this book.¡±

Liz Gloyn, lecturer in Classics, Royal Holloway, University of London, is reading Agatha Christie¡¯s The Labours of Hercules (Harper Collins, 2008). ¡°Billed as Poirot¡¯s final batch of cases, Christie gives her famous creation 바카라사이트 bright idea that, to finish off his career in a way worthy of his namesake, he will solve his own equivalent of 바카라사이트 twelve labours of Hercules. Although 바카라사이트 first case begins with a decidedly unpromising Pekinese in place of 바카라사이트 fearsome Nemean lion, by 바카라사이트 last page Poirot has rattled through many-headed gossip, a mysterious maiden, a disfigured corpse, a substitute wife for 바카라사이트 prime minister, hereditary insanity, drug dealing, art smuggling and 바카라사이트ft, a dodgy cult based in Devonshire, and 바카라사이트 rise and fall of a particularly racy London nightclub. These short stories are 바카라사이트 perfect length to read during a commute to campus.¡±