Andrew Keanie on Hartley Coleridge’s unpublished poem, ‘Windermere Lake’
In ‘Windermere Lake’, the immortal mind can be glimpsed in the melancholy contemplation of its ‘banishment’. Readers of Wordsworth are familiar – and none more familiar than Hartley – with the spiritual signposts amidst the actual topography of the Lake District.
Romanticism
‘Never could the eye have beheld the sun, had not its own essence been soliform, neither can a soul not beautiful attain to an intuition of beauty.’
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
In this week’s blog post, we turn to look at the beloved Christmas favourite of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Learning War
‘Vietnam’ – the reaction, not just the war itself -- was arguably the first shot of today’s ongoing culture wars.
Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You
Rooney’s latest novel has certainly been placed at the height of expectation. But does it live up to the hype?
Neil Root’s Covering Darkness: Writing True Crime
What happens if the story we are reading is based on true crime events? Would we be less likely to choose a book based on true crime?
Why do we read thrillers?
Why is it that we all enjoy thrillers? Thrillers have captured the imaginations of readers for decades, even centuries.
Mary Leapor
Born in 1722 in Marston St. Lawrence, Northamptonshire into a working-class family, poet Mary Leapor was an only child.
Rise in self-help books
Is it any wonder that after the events of the past year a large number of us have turned to self-help books in an attempt to try to find peace of mind?
Flash Fiction
As its name implies Flash Fiction can be loosely defined as stories of strikingly short length. As the popularity of the genre has grown and become fit for more academic analysis, other terms for Flash Fiction have developed such as Nano Fiction, Sudden Fiction and Short Fiction.
How do we consume literature?
Once upon a time, the only way to consume literature was ink on paper.
William Wordsworth
From a young age, his father introduced him to the works of Shakespeare and Milton. Despite a difficult childhood with a frequently absent father, Wordsworth went on to study at St. John’s College, Cambridge where he published his first work, a sonnet in the European Magazine.
Contemporary Rewritings of Greek Myth
The question that remains to be answered: Why is there the need to return to Greek Myth? Surely, after years of being told over and over, do we really need to hear the same stories time and time again?
Why study literature from the past?
It may appear as though studying literature from the past has little to offer us in the present. Pointless, even. Yet, if there was a point to this, what would that point be?
World Earth Day and Ralph Hodgson
As we become more conscious as to the acts that we need to perform in order to help save the planet … there has also been a rise in environmental fiction in recent years that increases awareness about the environment, and human impact on it.