Nellibobs’ Friday Night #20: ‘Literature of Obstinacy and Stubbornness’
Written by Jane Davis, 21st July 2010
Mr Nellist continues his birthday celebration by considering the literature of obstinacy and stubborness: Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Shakespeare's Coriolanus come to mind.
Share
Related Articles
Meet The Reader: Staff Spotlight with Tavia Panton
Tavia Panton is our Children and Young Persons Project Lead at The Reader. She is also about to begin leading…
Shared Dreams: The Shared Reading Group for Parents Seeking Asylum
Two years ago a new Shared Reading group was set up for families seeking asylum whose children attend the council’s…
Shared Conversation: How Online Shared Reading is Alleviating Loneliness
Former charity manager Diana, who is housebound, has been participating in regular weekly online Shared Reading for the last three…
9 thoughts on “Nellibobs’ Friday Night #20: ‘Literature of Obstinacy and Stubbornness’”
Oh dear, I do like listening to the Nellibob posts and managed to get most of stubborness and ‘Jude the Obscure’ but completely lost track of obstinacy and ‘Coriolanus’.
Whilst reading ‘Jude’ (quite a while ago now) I kept losing myself in amongst all Hardy’s fault lines – one second I would be thinking wow! that’s a brave move the next woah! too far, you have to stop! but it was interminable (in my own mind)and emotions would get in the way. I never seemed to achieve any peace of mind or sense of balance in relation to how I was reading his characters (his men and women) and their struggles for the same. I don’t know, you feel as if Hardy is constantly pushing you, making you try harder to get to create distinctions that matter yet why then did I get a sense of ….not quite that he was mocking you in your efforts, that’s not the right word, but a feeling that he knew you were going to struggle and to a certain degree thought it just that you should. Does that make any sense to anyone!?
Well continued Birthday wishes and thanks for this weeks ‘talk thought’
Just as well I didn’t hear the Coriolanus part I’d be here all night.
Enjoyed this very much – isn’t it stubbornness though (wih two n’s?). Sorry, splitting hairs. Interestingly in the dictionary the word ‘stubborn’ is described as meaning ‘obstinate’, inflexible’ – they obviously haven’t the finely tuned ear of ‘Nellibob’. The above words may seem to be only a hairs breadth away from each other in meaning, but that difference is mighty when swept up into human life.
Blimey, serves me right – ‘wih’ should read as ‘with’.
So welcome to see Brian back. But where have all the old videos gone? Is it just my computer, or have they been taken down? The posts are still there but not the videos. If its a glitch, please oh please correct!
It is a glitch, I’m afraid! Something happened in the move from the old blog to the new but I’ll get it sorted as soon as I can. Thanks for letting me know.
Good to see Nellibobs on absolute top form.
I wish I could see this but my browser needs updating!
Hey Jen,
It’s still wrong on the second line of the copy, I’m afraid – thought you’d want to know!
ps wrong spelling of ‘stubbornness’ I mean!