Post Type Archives: VBC Events

Matrix is the story of the fascinating Marie de France, a medieval nun and brilliant poet whose mysterious Lais continue to enchant readers some eight centuries after they were written. Groff’s novel tells the dramatic story of Marie’s life, from her expulsion from the royal court of Eleanor of Aquitane in France to her life […]

It is difficult to encapsulate in few words just how towering a figure in literary history James Joyce was and remains. He changed forever the way we think about the “novel” with his monumental Ulysses from 1922, and in other works like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners he combined […]

Joyce Carol Oates. The name is one of the most iconic in all of contemporary American literature, an author who has built up a staggering body of work that chronicles the American experience in all its complexity, depth, and texture. Oates is best known for bestselling novels like We Were the Mulvaneys, a haunting account […]

I have been teaching Frankenstein for decades now, and it never ceases to amaze me: what starts as an extravagant “gothic” tale morphs into a breathtaking meditation on the nature of artistic – and human – creation, the psychology of guilt, and the ethics of pursuing knowledge at all costs. Shelley’s novel also provides a […]

This has long been one of my all-time favorite books: I fell under the spell of its gorgeous lyricism decades ago when I first read it, and the enchantment has only deepened since. I even went so far as to visit the beautiful city where the novel takes place, the gem of Renaissance architecture Ferrara, […]