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Catherine Brown BA (Cantab), MSc (Lond), MA (Lond), PhD (Cantab) 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: http://www.nchum.org/who-we-are/english-faculty
In 2011 Legenda published her monograph The Art of Comparison: How Novels and Critics Compare. This develops a metacritical 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. She does not take nation or language as determinative or necessary units of literary interpretation.
Series featuring Catherine Brown
| # | Episode Title | Description | Duration | People | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Creative Commons | Literature and Form 4: What is "Comparative Literature"? | Dr Catherine Brown gives the fourth and final lecture in the Literature and Form lecture series. With a philosophical discussion on what Comparative Literature is and how we can study 'literature in comparison' | 1:00:57 | Catherine Brown | 21 May 2012 |
| 2 | Creative Commons | Literature and Form 3: Multiple Plotting | Dr Catherine Brown gives the third lecture in the Literature and Form lecture series. Including the differing ways writers plot their work; from multi-plotted works like Ulysses (Joyce) to double plotted works like Daniel Deronda (George Eliot) | 0:50:59 | Catherine Brown | 21 May 2012 |
| 3 | Creative Commons | Literature and Form 2: Chapters | Dr Catherine Brown gives the second lecture in the Literature and Form series, looking at the ways in which writers break up their stories into chapters, parts and volumes | 0:49:14 | Catherine Brown | 21 May 2012 |
| 4 | Creative Commons | Literature and Form 1: Unreliable Narrators | Dr Catherine Brown gives the first lecture in the Literature and Form series. Including Commentary on Nabokov's Lolita and Ian McEwan's Atonement | 0:46:47 | Catherine Brown | 21 May 2012 |
| 5 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 7. Reception History | Catherine Brown gives the Seventh and final lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:53:06 | Catherine Brown | 19 Mar 2012 |
| 6 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 6. Birds, Beasts and Children | Catherine Brown gives the sixth lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:49:50 | Catherine Brown | 19 Mar 2012 |
| 7 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 5. The Alps | Catherine Brown gives the fifth lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:51:16 | Catherine Brown | 28 Feb 2012 |
| 8 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 4. The World at Large | Catherine Brown gives the fourth lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:47:23 | Catherine Brown | 28 Feb 2012 |
| 9 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 3. Christianity | Catherine Brown gives the third lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:56:05 | Catherine Brown | 28 Feb 2012 |
| 10 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 2. Humour | Catherine Brown gives the second lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:45:37 | Catherine Brown | 15 Feb 2012 |
| 11 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 1. Consciousness | Catherine Brown gives her first lecture in the D.H. Lawrence series | 0:48:28 | Catherine Brown | 15 Feb 2012 |
| 12 | Creative Commons | George Eliot - A Very Large Brain | Dr Catherine Brown gives a talk on George Eliot and her influences | 0:11:08 | Catherine Brown | 07 Feb 2012 |
| 13 | Creative Commons | George Eliot 3. Reception History | George Eliot III.Third and final lecture in this mini-series, encouraging its audience to see itself as part of the latest stage in Eliot's British reception history. | 0:46:22 | Catherine Brown | 05 Dec 2011 |
| 14 | Creative Commons | George Eliot 2. Genre and Justice | George Eliot II.The second lecture in the series on George Eliot considers how narrative justice operates in relation to the genres of comedy and tragedy, in works including 'Adam Bede' and 'Daniel Deronda'. | 0:52:39 | Catherine Brown | 15 Nov 2011 |
| 15 | Creative Commons | George Eliot 1. Intellect and Consciousness | George Eliot I.The first lecture ranges across her works, including her atypical novella 'The Lifted Veil'. It notes the power and range of Eliot's intellect and her changing attitudes to the proper function and remit of the intellect and consciousness. | 0:53:16 | Catherine Brown | 10 Nov 2011 |
| 16 | Creative Commons | Walcott and Naipaul: History and Myth | Catherine Brown, Lecturer in English Literature, compares West Indian writers Derek Walcott and Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul on their attitudes towards history and myth | 0:53:28 | Catherine Brown | 26 Oct 2011 |
| # | Episode Title | Description | Duration | People | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Creative Commons | Literature and Form 4: What is "Comparative Literature"? | Dr Catherine Brown gives the fourth and final lecture in the Literature and Form lecture series. With a philosophical discussion on what Comparative Literature is and how we can study 'literature in comparison' | 1:01:07 | Catherine Brown | 21 May 2012 |
| 2 | Creative Commons | Literature and Form 3: Multiple Plotting | Dr Catherine Brown gives the third lecture in the Literature and Form lecture series. Including the differing ways writers plot their work; from multi-plotted works like Ulysses (Joyce) to double plotted works like Daniel Deronda (George Eliot) | 0:51:09 | Catherine Brown | 21 May 2012 |
| 3 | Creative Commons | Literature and Form 2: Chapters | Dr Catherine Brown gives the second lecture in the Literature and Form series, looking at the ways in which writers break up their stories into chapters, parts and volumes | 0:49:27 | Catherine Brown | 21 May 2012 |
| 4 | Creative Commons | Literature and Form 1: Unreliable Narrators | Dr Catherine Brown gives the first lecture in the Literature and Form series. Including Commentary on Nabokov's Lolita and Ian McEwan's Atonement | 0:47:00 | Catherine Brown | 21 May 2012 |
| 5 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 7. Reception History | Catherine Brown gives the Seventh and final lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:53:06 | Catherine Brown | 19 Mar 2012 |
| 6 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 6. Birds, Beasts and Children | Catherine Brown gives the sixth lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:49:50 | Catherine Brown | 19 Mar 2012 |
| 7 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 5. The Alps | Catherine Brown gives the fifth lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:51:31 | Catherine Brown | 28 Feb 2012 |
| 8 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 4. The World at Large | Catherine Brown gives the fourth lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:47:38 | Catherine Brown | 28 Feb 2012 |
| 9 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 3. Christianity | Catherine Brown gives the third lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:56:19 | Catherine Brown | 28 Feb 2012 |
| 10 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 2. Humour | Catherine Brown gives the second lecture in the DH Lawrence series | 0:45:37 | Catherine Brown | 15 Feb 2012 |
| 11 | Creative Commons | DH Lawrence 1. Consciousness | Catherine Brown gives the first lecture in the D.H. Lawrence series | 0:48:28 | Catherine Brown | 15 Feb 2012 |
| 12 | Creative Commons | George Eliot - A Very Large Brain | Dr Catherine Brown gives a talk on George Eliot and her influences | 0:11:08 | Catherine Brown | 07 Feb 2012 |
| 13 | Realism | Dr Catherine Brown, English Faculty, Oxford, gives a lecture exploring the nature of realism in verbal and visual art. | 0:45:51 | Catherine Brown | 08 Nov 2011 |