Review of The Mill on The Floss

In the radio dramatization of a novel, it is left to the actors to persuade us that they are the individuals whose roles they undertake, but it remains the responsibility of the scriptwriter to select and organize those roles with respect for the overall vision of the originating artist. How well, then, did Radio Four\u27s recent five-episode dramatization of The Mill on the Floss serve George Eliot? It is axiomatic that, without Maggie Tulliver, there would be no Mill on the Floss; but, in this most autobiographical of George Eliot\u27s novels, it is not Maggie who is omnipresent, but the narrator. Though Maggie is the protagonist, it is the narrator\u27s spirit that pervades; the narrator\u27s voice that compels - that guides us into the intimately known, sensuously remembered, and possessively loved locality of Dorlcote, and draws attention to the rapt little girl who is to be the story\u27s heroine. Why, then, were the lachrymose introductory tones (perhaps intended to sound dreamy, merely) in this production those of a male? We had to wait until Episode Two for the answer. George Eliot\u27s narrator had been eliminated, and Philip Wakem - Maggie\u27 s sensitive, deformed, and highly partial friend, absent for long tracts of the novel - promoted to fulfil her office. This depressing device automatically dispensed both with George Eliot\u27s epic scope, and with the ironic perspective within which she holds Philip himself. From the outset, then, it was apparent that, in the case of this production, to dramatize meant to diminish. But we could still hope that some of the life in the novel would be transmitted

Travellers

A new, original poetry collection, which explores cross-cultural themes and contexts, ranging from Middle Eastern historiography through the twentieth century, across retelling of Biblical themes and motifs, dovetailing themes of love, piety, anguish and conflict. The means and methods of the collection delve into the contradictions and overlappings of prosaic narrative and poetic suggestion and suggestibility

The Author is not Dead, Merely Somewhere Else: Creative Writing After Theory

Wandor has written the first history of Creative Writing in the UK, analysing its complex relationship with English and literary theory. Erudite and provocative, the book presents a searching critique of Creative Writing pedagogy, arguing for new approaches. Indispensable for teachers, students and everyone concerned with the future of literature

Writing drama

Writing drama appears in various guises on creative writing courses: as ‘screenwriting’, ‘scriptwriting’, ‘playwriting’, ‘writing for performance’. Often two or more of these categories are conflated: ‘writing for stage, film, radio and TV’, as if the media-specific skills were simply interchangeable. This chapter is very deliberately entitled ‘Writing drama’, in order to mine a clear path through these attempts to pinpoint the third of the core genres of imaginative writing: prose fiction, poetry and drama. It's important to do that in order to understand what is involved in writing drama, in the distinctive ways it circulates from imagination to page to stage to page to imagination. These ways are radically different from prose fiction and poetry. I will argue also (contentiously for some, but argument is always a good thing) that, like prose fiction and poetry, writing drama is a discrete literary activity and process. This is notwithstanding the necessity of performance in relation to drama as a fictional genre. Publication and pedagogy Unlike the novel and poetry, where publication is on the page and in the book, writing drama reaches its audience through performance (live or recorded) before (if ever) attaining publication in print. Indeed, this is part of the excitement of writing drama – a passion for the power and magic of performance. Performance excites the drama-writing process, and ways of thinking about performance have expanded considerably in recent decades. However, these very expansions, while illuminating many aspects of performance, have also served to confuse and mystify the imaginative and material role of the dramatist