‘What to do with noodle?’: humour in the Victorian novel

‘WHAT TO DO WITH NOODLE?’: HUMOUR IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

Dr Rohan Quince, author; Jillian Vigrass, teacher and author; Jeremy Fogg, researcher

Tuesday 27 January  5.00 pm  COURSE FEES R115; Staff and students R58

Victorian novels deal with the important things in life: marriage, money, politics – and how to deal with foreigners. Victorian writers created wonderfully memorable characters who quarrel and gossip and fall in love, while we chuckle at their human failings and foibles.

Using scenes from the novels, the presenters bring to life some of the eccentric characters who populate the fictional world of writers like Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Anthony Trollope.

Recommended reading

Dickens, C. 1849. David Copperfield. London: Bradbury & Evans. Dickens, C. 1852. Bleak House. London: Bradbury & Evans.

Eliot, G. 1860. The Mill on the Floss. London: William Blackwood and Sons. Eliot, G. 1871. Middlemarch. London: William Blackwood and Sons.

Trollope, A. 1857. Barchester Towers. London: Longmans.

TO BOOK: https://www.webtickets.co.za/performance.aspx?itemid=1575249241

Jillian Vigrass Gorton studied for a BA and a Secondary Teacher’s Diploma at UCT, graduating in 1972. She has been a life-long teacher of English, in state schools in South Africa, the United Kingdom and, after independence, in Zimbabwe, and then in international schools in Ethiopia, Portugal and Switzerland. Her play, Chimurenga Children , set on Zimbabwean Independence Day, was staged in 2022 in Geneva. Her children’s book, Ozzee the Mozzee, on how to avoid getting malaria, was published in April 2024. Together with Rohan Quince, she has presented Writers Bear Witness lectures in Europe and South Africa.

Dr Rohan Quince grew up in Johannesburg. He taught English for forty years at schools and universities in South Africa and the United States. He is the author of Shakespeare in South Africa: Stage Productions during the Apartheid Era. He teaches a U3A course on Shakespeare and his Contemporaries and runs a weekly Shakespeare Club at the National Children’s Theatre in Johannesburg. He and Jeremy Fogg have performed together at the National Arts Festival. Together with Jillian Vigrass, he presented a series of Writers Bear Witness lectures at UCT Summer School in 2025.

Educated in Johannesburg, at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town, Jeremy Fogg taught for some years in both cities. He became Researcher at the National English Literary Museum (now Amazwi Museum of South African Literature) in Grahamstown/ Makhanda, in 1986 and retired from that institution as Deputy Director in 2013. With Professor Paul Walters, he has published widely on the life and writings of Olive Schreiner. Together with his school friend, Rohan Quince, he participated in the National Arts Festival in 2017 - 2019.