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Catherine Brown

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Catherine Brown
Academic Position:
Convenor and Senior Lecturer
College:
New College
Research Interests:
English literature since 1800

Dr Catherine Brown studied English under J.H. Prynne at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, then moved out into academic and practical politics, lived in New York and Moscow, and learned Russian and Spanish, before returning to Caius for her PhD as an English-Russian comparatist. She has taught English literature since 1800, at the universities of Cambridge, Greenwich, and Oxford. She is currently the Convenor and Senior Lecturer in English literature at New College of the Humanities.

In 2011 Legenda published her monograph The Art of Comparison: How Novels and Critics Compare. This develops a meta-critical argument about the nature of comparative literature, and comparison per se, by comparing how three novels (Daniel Deronda, Anna Karenina, Women in Love) invite and complicate internal comparisons between their two major plots. Her next monograph will concern representations of torture in nineteenth and twentieth century literature, as considered from the points of view of ethics, genre, and reader response. It will explore the two-way interaction between the practice of torture and its representation – for example, ‘the ticking time-bomb scenario’, which is often used in defences of the practice of torture, first appeared in a novel by a former French paratrooper, Jean Lartéguy (The Centurions, 1960).

Her main area of specialism is the novel thirty years either side of 1900, and her main authors are D.H. Lawrence and George Eliot (she is co-editing a book on the latter’s reception in Europe with Elinor Shaffer, forthcoming from Continuum in 2013). She also has interests in the British novel of the last thirty years (on which she gives a two-day conference annually at Perm State University in the Urals), twentieth century drama, and Anglophone Nigerian and Caribbean literature. In addition to Russian and Spanish, she knows French and maternal German. Comparativism and cosmopolitanism are ongoing concerns. Her theoretical inclinations are towards narrative theory, genre theory, reader response, Russian formalism, and Czech structuralism.

Recent Publications

  • The Reception of George Eliot in Europe (forthcoming London and New York: Continuum 2014)
  • ‘The Unconscious Good Life in Women in Love and Anna Karenina’, Comparative Literature, vol. 63:1, Winter 2011, 25-46
  • ‘Cosmopolitanism, Croquet, and Language: James and Turgenev’, Literary Imagination, forthcoming 2013
  • ‘What is “Comparative” Literature?’, Comparative Critical Studies, January 2013
  • ‘The Russian Soul Englished’, Journal of Modern Literature, 2012
  • The Art of Comparison: How Novels and Critics Compare (Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature, 2011)
  • ‘Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Sonnets 88-93’, The Facts on File Companion to Shakespeare ed. by Kenneth Womack and William Baker, 5 vols (New York: Facts on File, 2011)
# Title Description Contributor
1 Literature and Form 4: What is "Comparative Literature"?

Dr Catherine Brown gives the fourth and final lecture in the Literature and Form lecture series...

Catherine Brown
2 Literature and Form 3: Multiple Plotting

Dr Catherine Brown gives the third lecture in the Literature and Form lecture series. Including...

Catherine Brown
3 Literature and Form 2: Chapters

Dr. Catherine Brown offers a series of talks introducing different writing forms and their use...

Catherine Brown
4 Literature and Form 1: Unreliable Narrators

Dr. Catherine Brown offers a series introducing different writing forms and their use in great...

Catherine Brown
5 DH Lawrence 7. Reception History

Catherine Brown gives the Seventh and final lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
6 DH Lawrence 6. Birds, Beasts and Children

Catherine Brown gives the sixth lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
7 DH Lawrence 5. The Alps

Catherine Brown gives the fifth lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
8 DH Lawrence 4. The World at Large

Catherine Brown gives the fourth lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
9 DH Lawrence 3. Christianity

Catherine Brown gives the third lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
10 DH Lawrence 2. Humour

Catherine Brown gives the second lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
11 DH Lawrence 1. Consciousness

Catherine Brown gives the first lecture in the D.H. Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
12 George Eliot - A Very Large Brain

Dr Catherine Brown gives a talk on George Eliot and her influences

Catherine Brown
# Title Description Contributor
1 Literature and Form 4: What is "Comparative Literature"?

Dr Catherine Brown gives the fourth and final lecture in the Literature and Form lecture series...

Catherine Brown
2 Literature and Form 3: Multiple Plotting

Dr Catherine Brown gives the third lecture in the Literature and Form lecture series. Including...

Catherine Brown
3 Literature and Form 2: Chapters

Dr. Catherine Brown offers a series of talks introducing different writing forms and their use...

Catherine Brown
4 Literature and Form 1: Unreliable Narrators

Dr. Catherine Brown offers a series introducing different writing forms and their use in great...

Catherine Brown
5 DH Lawrence 7. Reception History

Catherine Brown gives the Seventh and final lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
6 DH Lawrence 6. Birds, Beasts and Children

Catherine Brown gives the sixth lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
7 DH Lawrence 5. The Alps

Catherine Brown gives the fifth lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
8 DH Lawrence 4. The World at Large

Catherine Brown gives the fourth lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
9 DH Lawrence 3. Christianity

Catherine Brown gives the third lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
10 DH Lawrence 2. Humour

Catherine Brown gives the second lecture in the DH Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
11 DH Lawrence 1. Consciousness

Catherine Brown gives her first lecture in the D.H. Lawrence series

Catherine Brown
12 George Eliot - A Very Large Brain

In this ten minute podcast, Dr Catherine Brown discusses George Eliot's intellectual...

Catherine Brown
13 George Eliot 3. Reception History

In this third and final podcast, Dr Catherine Brown discusses the popularity of George Eliot...

Catherine Brown
14 George Eliot 2. Genre and Justice

The second lecture in the series on George Eliot considers how narrative justice operates in...

Catherine Brown
15 George Eliot 1. Intellect and Consciousness

In this lecture Dr Catherine Brown brings her discussion to focus primarily upon Eliot's...

Catherine Brown
16 Walcott and Naipaul: History and Myth

Catherine Brown, Lecturer in English Literature, compares West Indian writers Derek Walcott and...

Catherine Brown