The Joys of Teaching Literature, started in September 2010 and with a Spanish version since July 2021, is a blog for ranting and raving about (teaching and researching) English Literature, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, and other aspects of the Anglophone world. I publish a post once a week, usually on Monday. Please, download the yearly volumes from https://ddd.uab.cat/record/116328, or read the volume collecting some of the entries (Passionate Professing: The Context and Practice of English Literature, 2023). The comments option is not available, sorry, but you may contact me through my e-mail address, Sara.Martin@uab.cat. The contents of this blog are protected by a type 4 Creative Common License (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd)).

  • THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: TRYING TO DEFINE THE CURRENT DISCOURSE OF ROMANCE (IN FICTION)

    For the last five weeks I’ve been teaching an MA course with the title of ‘Postmodernity: New Sexualities/New Textualities.’ This was originally called ‘The Discourses of Desire,’ a title I much preferred but that was dropped out to include some reference to the confusing idea that we live in postmodern times (they seem to be…

  • AN AWKWARD MOMENT AT A CONFERENCE AND HOW TO DEAL WITH IT (MORE OR LESS)

    Two weeks ago I attended a conference and I found myself listening to a paper which dealt exactly with the topic of one of my publications (a chapter in a collective volume, four years old). I’d rather not mention which topic as part of the self-censorship that I must apply here, or risk losing the…

  • LEARNING ABOUT EMOTION: FOR A LITTLE GIRL

    A few months ago I saw with my two little nieces the Disney film Bolt (2008). This is a delicious comedy about a cute dog who, like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, has no idea that his life is happening in front of hidden cameras. In this particular case, Bolt, a star in a…

  • LEARNING TO BE LESS AFRAID OF THE NARRATOR…

    This post is, particularly, for our second-year Victorian Literature students who must be this week hurrying up to finish their paper proposals and thus meet the 18th November deadline. They have been asked to write a paper (1,500 words with three secondary sources) on the narrator(s) in either Oliver Twist or The Tenant of Wildfell…

  • DEFINING LITERARY GENERATIONS: THE CASE OF THE NEW PURITANS

    Back in 2001, Nicholas Blincoe and Matt Thorne edited an anthology of short fiction, All Hail the New Puritans, which aimed at defining a new literary school. This, basically, applied the minimalist principles of the Dogme 95 film movement to prose fiction, as stated in the (controversial) manifesto that opens the collection. A few years…