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Pedagogy 6.3 (2006) 535-538



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Approaches to Teaching the Brontës One More Time

The Oxford Companion to the Brontës. Edited by Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Instructors of courses on the Brontë family now have another large encyclopedic resource to use in their teaching of the lives and works of the family. Like Heather Glen's recently published Cambridge Companion to the Brontës (2002), this companion surveys the lives and writings of all of the family, including the father, Patrick, and brother, Branwell, while also covering some of the minute details in the works of the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. The question that I will address here is not which companion to use but how to use this particular resource. Of what use to instructors and students are detailed entries on specialized topics found in the lives and works?

The editors state in their preface that their purpose is to "evoke the milieu in which the Brontës lived and wrote, to disseminate new reliable research, and to provide detailed information about their lives, works, and reputation" (ix). With the assistance of seven other scholars and specialists on the Brontës, the editors have ably accomplished their stated intentions. This volume is as comprehensive as any instructor could wish, while at the same time also being specific and focused. For instance, the chronology at the front [End Page 535] of the volume runs for almost twenty pages and places the lives of the Brontës into the context of larger literary and artistic movements as well as historical events (xxix–xlvii). In addition, the Oxford Companion includes numerous illustrations, including the drawings that Charlotte made to illustrate her early Angrian saga. Several useful maps are also provided, one that charts Charlotte's honeymoon tour of Ireland. Finally, there is a valuable glossary of dialect and obsolete words used in all the writings.

The basic question in approaching a volume like this, however, is how useful is it for the student in the typical undergraduate English course? First of all, the volume would have to be available in paperback (it was released in softcover in 2005) and priced reasonably for student purchase. The more germane issue, however, is how would students use the Oxford Companion? The editors themselves present a caveat to the student reader in the preface, stating: "What the Companion does not do is annotate the Brontës' works. There are entries on authors they drew upon, including explanation of allusions, but there are no specific entries on quotations or attempts to gloss the Brontës' vocabulary" (ix). In short, this is not a large Cliff's Notes in hardback. What would students derive from such a resource, and how would they best be directed to make use of the volume? As Terri Hasseler points out in her review of this volume, its availability to students could go a long way to offsetting their very heavy reliance on the Internet for "research." In a recent search of three Brontë Web sites, I found three different dates for the publication of Jane Eyre. Only one of those dates was correct. In short, students have developed an attitude of Googling their paper topics and very infrequently using a book or article for their research. The paperback Oxford Companion as a course text would, I agree, encourage them to return to the use of print media for their scholarship.

However, it seems to me that the average undergraduate student would be fairly lost in this volume without clear instructional direction. There are hundreds of detailed entries on friends that the Brontës corresponded with, people and families who lived in the Haworth area, and religious, political, and social contexts that influenced their writings. The heart of the volume for students, I would suspect, would be in the detailed biographical sketches provided for each member of the family, as well as the sections on the major novels: The Professor, Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette for Charlotte; Wuthering Heights for Emily; and...

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