My top picks for engaging with Romanticism for somebody who has previously been bored by it. These texts are weird, in different genres, or written for modern audiences about Romanticism - in short, they’re not really the kind of thing you’d come across in school, or even university, really. I picked these to represent much of what there is to love about this style of writing and relating to art, so hopefully everybody will find something to enjoy among these suggestions.
Why Am I Rewriting Phantom of the Opera?
In re-writing Phantom of the Opera, I am trying to connect with a Sensibility that I found in the original, marrying modern writing practices with the emotion and tension of the original, and expanding Leroux’s seminal work into something a modern reader might enjoy more, but which also connects to the Romantic ideals of a past conception of literature.
The League of Gentlemen: Papa Lazarou and punching up
I want to investigate - coming from a place of love - how it came to be that League of Gentlemen had some, uh, Not OK jokes, how this might be changed, and what we can learn from the ideas articulated by and radiating from some of the more offensive jokes of the series - and from how beloved they always were.
Late Romantic 