Saturday, August 20, 2011

Autumn News #4: JASNA Syracuse Fall Meetings


Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the Official Spokescat of the JASNA Syracuse Region, wishes to announce that the topic of JASNA Syracuse's fall meetings will be Sense and Sensibility--the novel that's also the topic of this autumn's JASNA Annual General Meeting in Fort Worth.

First up will be "S&S: Divided Loyalties," at our Michaelmas meeting. This will take place in the Sargent Room of the Liverpool Public Library, 310 Tulip St., Liverpool, on Saturday, September 24, at 2 pm. Lady Mary, of course, has no trouble choosing a favorite character. She says (her remarks are freely translated from the Feline by her human, your RC): "No question about it, my favorite is Lucy Steele. We cats live by the rule 'Everything here is mine,' and so does Lucy. If I knew her, I'd ask her to come catch a few mice with me!" But whose side are we human readers supposed to be on? In Pride and Prejudice, our sympathies are of course with Elizabeth Bennet almost from the start. But deciding where our loyalties lie in S&S is not such an easy task, with two wildly different heroines, two not very heroic heroes, one dangerously attractive villain, one snarky narrator, and a supporting cast of nitwits and schemers. Come and share your opinion! It should be a lively discussion--and one that ties in very well with the "S&S (and Settlements)" topic of the September 10 meeting of the rechristened JABC (CNY) at the Colgate Bookstore.

The second S&S meeting will be our All Hallows meeting at RiverRead Books, 5 Court St., Binghamton, on Saturday, November 5, also at 2 pm. Your RC will begin this meeting with a brief description (or at least as brief as she can make it!) of the Fort Worth AGM. JASNA member and Binghamton University professor Marilyn Gaddis-Rose will then tell us something of her work on Isabelle de Montolieu's 1815 Raison et Sensibilite, the very first French translation of S&S--although, according to Marilyn, R&S may be not so much a translation as a re-imagining. Come prepared for some surprises!

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