Sensory Book Club:
A Christmas Carol
Welcome! Below you are about to discover what the three mystery aromas are provided in your aroma box.
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Why smell?
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Smell is the most evocative of the human senses. It connects directly to the limbic system of the brain, the part responsible for emotion and memory. That's why smells can bring memories to mind vividly and unexpectedly. But did you know our sense of smell is like a muscle? It gets stronger with practice. We can develop our olfactory system and our ability to articulate aromas by consciously smelling and describing what we sense. Think of it like practising the vocabulary of a foreign language!
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Dicken's novels are full of olfactory descriptions and cues, it was part of his narrative technique to bring scenes to life, not just focusing on the visual but also the more visceral sense of smell, helping to really place the reader in the scene. He was certainly aware of the evocative power of scent especially to conjure positive and negative emotional associations of childhood; he once wrote:
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“For many years, when I came near to Robert Warren’s in the Strand, I crossed over to the opposite side of the way, to avoid a certain smell of the cement they put upon the blacking-corks, which reminded me of what I was once.”
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“He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten!” A Christmas Carol
AROMA 1
Imagining Dickensian London, what associations or memories come to mind? How would you describe it?
AROMA 2
Imagining Dickensian London, what associations or memories come to mind? How would you describe it?
AROMA 3
Imagining Dickensian London, what associations or memories come to mind? How would you describe it?