This group follows a guided tour through the works of masters of the British literary style, starting with William Shakespeare and progressing through literary history. Each month a new work is assigned that is then analyzed together, always creating an interesting dialogue about the writing style, historical and cultural context, and learnings from these literary masters.
The next Literary Masters meeting will be August 21. We will discuss Ulysses by James Joyce.
Literary Masters will be meeting on November 21 to finish analysing the book Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
The next Literary Masters meeting will be October 17. The book will be Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
On August 18 at 3 pm, we will be starting the book “Disgrace” by John Maxwell Coetzee a South African-born novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Vivien has chosen two of Samuel Beckett's short stories to read and analyze for the June meeting “The Expelled” and “First Love”. These are part of a group of four and they appeared in several editions, mine being by Faber and Faber Ltd, published in 2009.
Vivien leads us in discussing the literary aspects of the works we are reading, and we add our own opinions. You are invited to join us this month on Thursday, May 16th. We will be reading three more stories by Alice Munro from the same book “Dear Life”: “Haven”, “In Sight of the Lake”, and “Dear Life”. We hope you will decide to join us there. Write to uwcstudygroups@gmail.com to sign up or for more information.
Our first Literary Masters meeting this year will take place on Thursday April 11th. Vivien Lane will be leading our group again. For the first two meetings we will be reading short stories by Alice Munro, from the book of short stories Dear Life. “Munro focuses on every aspect of our ordinary lives and how the extraordinary often comes uncalled for. With a deceptively simple style, some- times what is left unsaid carries more weight than what is actually said. Her characters live in a stable, small-town world and yet they become universal because her stories touch on childhood, youth and old age and how time and memory sharpen our apprehension in our own lives. Having lived throughout the greater part of the twentieth century she is a witness to all the changes that have taken place, concentrating especially on the world of women.”
In the first meeting we will be looking at the stories: To Reach Japan, Gravel, and Amundsen.
Vivien Lane will start this year’s workshop with a book of short stories entitled “Dear Life” by Nobel Prize for literature author Alice Munro who takes us through the changes that characterize the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of women dealing with life in these times. It has been said that this Canadian author, born in the thirties, is a master of short fiction.
