When Emily Brontë was studying music in Brussels in 1842, she was drawn into the city's appreciation of Beethoven. After her exposure to the works of the great composer, Brontë's creativity flourished and she went on to compose what was to be her only novel--Wuthering Heights. In Emily Brontë and Beethoven, Robert K. Wallace continues to work from the perspective he developed in his Jane Austen and Mozart--integrating two fields that have traditionally been kept apart. Wallace compares Brontë and Beethoven through a close examination of the Romantic traits that their works share. Innovative and stimulating, Wallace's study extends literary criticism into a new context where equilibrium, balance, proportion and symmetry serve as a fulcrum to launch the reader into a new understanding of the formal parallels, the moods and emotions that connect music and literature.

Available for the first time in the United States a new series of innovative critical studies introducing writers and their contexts to a wide range of readers. Drawing upon the mast recent thinking in English studies, each book considers biographical material, examines recent criticism, includes a detailed bibliography, and offers a concise but challenging reappraisal of a writer's major work. Published in the U. K. by Northcote House in association with The British Council.

Although previous scholarship has acknowledged the importance of the visual arts to the Brontës, relatively little attention has been paid to the influence of music, theatre, and material culture on the siblings' lives and literature. This interdisciplinary collection presents new research on the Brontës' relationship to the wider world of the arts, including their relationship to the visual arts. The contributors examine the siblings' artistic ambitions, productions, and literary representations of creative work in both amateur and professional realms. Also considered are re-envisionings of the Brontës' works, with an emphasis on those created in the artistic media the siblings themselves knew or practiced. With essays by scholars who represent the fields of literary studies, music, art, theatre studies, and material culture, the volume brings together the strongest current research and suggests areas for future work on the Brontës and their cultural contexts.

A useful reference guide for anyone studying Emily Bronte or German Romanticism.

Literary critics such as Virginia Woolf and Lionel Trilling had noted intuitive affinities between the art of Jane Austen and that of Mozart, but this 1983 book was the first to compare their artistic style and individual works in a comprehensive way. Extended comparisons are of course difficult because of the intrinsic differences between prose fiction and instrumental music. In Jane Austen and Mozart, Robert K. Wallace has succeeded in making illuminating comparisons of spirit and form in the work of these two artists. His book celebrates the achievements of Austen and Mozart by comparing their stylistic significance in the history of their separate arts and by offering comparisons of three Austen novels with three Mozart piano concertos. In exploring precise similarities between the two artists, Wallace shows how the art and criticism of one field can illuminate the art and criticism of another. Above all, Jane Austen and Mozart attempts to show the degree to which three masterpieces by each artist have comparable meaning and value.

'You said I killed you - haunt me, then!' Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous love stories in the English language. It is also one of the most potent revenge narratives. The intense and unbreakable bond between the fiery Catherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff has startled and fascinated readers since its first publication in 1847. Of uncertain parentage and ethnicity, Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights as a child when Catherine's father finds him wandering alone through the slave-trading port of Liverpool. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff and Catherine find refuge in each other when the household falls into the hands of Catherine's dissolute older brother. Their bond deepens as they escape together from the violence and stern religion of their home to the Yorkshire moors. But the story of Catherine and Heathcliff's attachment transforms from intimacy to strife when Catherine marries the refined Edgar Linton. The ensuing story of violence and thwarted passion is one of the most powerful tales of the gothic tradition, a literary mode from which Emily Brontë wrings all of its terrifying potential. A regional novel with a global reach, a work of sensational effects with a startling ethical core, Wuthering Heights is both a romantic melodrama and wrenching study of the difficulty of escaping from the legacies of violence. This edition reproduces the authoritative Clarendon text, with revised and expanded notes and a selection from the poems of Emily Brontë.