You are cordially invited to a talk: At 7 p.m. on Thursday September 16, 2010
at the Norfolk Arts Centre on Lynwood St in Simcoe,
David Beasley, author of the popular novels Sarah’s Journey and From Bloody Beginnings; Richard Beasley’s Upper Canada, will launch two books:
his novel Violet’s Flight about the escape from Burma of tens of thousands over the Himalayas to India at the time of the Japanese invasion in 1942, the war and occupation in Burma from the perspective not just of the Burmese, but of Japanese officers and the clandestine forces.
It concludes with the assassination of Aung San which led to the Burma of today. Much of it is told from the viewpoint of Violet and her father Aloysius Nicholas. Violet lived her last years in Simcoe. Before she died she left her remembrances of growing up in Burma with David Beasley.
The second book, Violet Beasley’s The Role of Memory in the Poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson discusses insightfully Tennyson’s best poems, “In Memoriam”, “Maud”, and “Idylls of the King” and how Tennyson used memory for creative inspiration.
Violet wrote: The chief importance of memory in Tennyson’s poetry is that, through it, he presents his diverse themes in a variety of ways. By analyzing his use of memory in his poetry, therefore, this study attempts to show Tennyson as the abiding experimentalist in the use of the poetic memory.
It includes a brief biography of Violet Beasley and her essay, Background of Memory in Literature [from St Augustine through Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Wordsworth et al.].