Thursday, June 23, 2016

A Class I Taught on Anne Rice

Courtesy, Gathered Traditions, "Scarlett"
Anne Rice at CommUniversity February 2006
“Before you can see the light, you have to deal with the darkness”
Chinese fortune cookie
Week I: 
A. Biographical background and film Birth of the Vampire/What attracted YOU to Rice?  A “round the room” discussion
1. Rice on Writing
2. Class Overview
3. Reviews on Amazon.com
4. Rice and New Orleans
5 . Biography
6. Her icons and symbols
7. History and Rice
8. Christ the Lord


B.  The Vampire Chronicles/Now a Musical at SF Gate.com based on books
            1. Interview
            2. Vampire Lestat: Who and What he is “We have souls, you and I” ( Memnoch 4 quoted in Hoppenstand 4).
            3. Ten books, one critic calls “Long in the Tooth”
            4. Her vampires as outsiders and avenging angels, the most Byronic of all Byronic heroes


Week II:  The Mayfair Family and The Witching Hour/”How Untypical the Typical Rice Aficionado is” (Hoppenstand, Gothic World 2).

1. Gothic fiction incorporates domestic issues ( Hoppenstand 2). E.g., V.C. Andrews, John Saul, Stephen King, William Peter Blatty (31).
            2. Rice and characters “Like us” (3).  We feel sympathy for them.
            3.  Influences:  Castle of  Otranto, The Monk, Melmoth the Wanderer, Vathek, The Mysteries of Udolpho

Week III:  Historical Novels and Erotica, including Cry to Heaven, Christ the Lord and The Feast of All Saints.
1. Vampires and Polymorphous sexuality
2  Cry to Heaven and androgyny
3. Liberation of Women and sexuality
4. Writing and freedom of lifestyle/cf Marquis de Sade and “Reflections on the Novel”

Week IV:  Anne Rice Memorabilia and the Doll Collections:  Influences on her work and the work of others; the Vampire Genre
1. Dolls
2. Tudor History
3. Vampire lore
4. Egyptology
5. Religion
5. Ghosts et al
6. Art and antiques
7. Law and Political Science
8. Dickens, Brontes, Love craft, Woolf, Shakespeare, and the gang
9. Family Influence
10.  Children and daughter’s death
11. Fairy Tales


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