The opening of a novel or short story is a promise: it establishes tone, rhythm, atmosphere, voice, and narrative urgency. In Opening Movements, students will study the first pages of literature through the lens of classical music, examining how composers and authors alike create momentum, tension, anticipation, and emotional resonance from the very first note or sentence.
Aurora Leigh (1856) was one of the first books to track a woman’s development as an artist, and was an inspiration to Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Susan B. Anthony, and George Eliot. We will read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s greatest work together and think about what holds women back and what propels them forward.
Exploring essential elements of the art of fiction, like character, voice, and prose style, we’ll develop the building blocks of a theory and practice of how to move one’s readers. We’ll bring our own work to the table to figure out how the emotions therein can be made more real—part of the reader’s own inner life.