Jeannie Judge, English Professor at UMass Lowell, will discuss narrative voice in the novels of Geraldine Brooks.

Geraldine Brooks belongs to a circle of contemporary women writers engaged in revisiting the historical novel, investing it with purposeful candor and creative authenticity. Brooks’ narrators are not flamboyant revolutionaries, powerful rulers, or eloquent artists who provoke dramatic change; instead, they are generally unacknowledged presences—a servant, museum curator, or noncombatant soldier—whose gender, class, and position exclude their voices from the important decisions. Yet, despite their presumed limitations, these narrators break through barriers to achieve significance and to discover the transcendence that comes from intelligence, compassion, and forgiveness.

Speaker's Bio:
Jeannie S. Judge, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of English at University of Massachusetts Lowell where she teaches courses in British Literature and Gender Studies. A specialist in seventeenth-century poetry, she has published many articles on George Herbert’s metaphysical lyrics. Her academic book, Two Natures Met: George Herbert and the Incarnation, examines the spiritual conflicts depicted in Herbert’s English poems in The Temple. Judge has also published articles on Jane Austen, Kate Chopin, and Emily Symonds. Her current book-length project is a study of three contemporary women writers and their engagement with “the past.”