The Waste Land: Inception
‘APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.’ So begins ‘The Burial of the Dead’, the first part of The Waste Land, and so too begin thousands of books, essays, and articles on T. S. Eliot’s infamous poem. The Waste Land […]
Easter Exploits: Night of the Lepus
I always post the workload I’m dealing with on here in the holiday weeks. I like to think it balances out the fact that most of my regular posts seem to obfuscate rather than explicate the day-to-day life of my English degree. See, I couldn’t even write that sentence without sounding like a poorly-written scientist […]
The Battle of the Books III: There and Back Again
As promised, here’s the conclusion to a competition that has cost me some sleepless nights: the best texts of the second semester of my final undergraduate year. I narrowed the competition down arbitrarily to five, and each one is a masterpiece in its own way. But now it must end. Along the way we’ve laughed, […]
The Battle of the Books II: The Desolation of Smaug
Last week I set up a competition to decide my favourite book out of all those I read in the Autumn/Winter Semester. It started with a list of five, ranging from Medieval Visions to Scientific Romances. At the time, it appeared to be the right thing to do. We make lists all the time, don’t […]
The Battle of the Books: Over the Top
I have just finished the last core text on my undergraduate degree. It was Sarah Kane’s play Blasted (1995), which seems fitting enough. If the Post War to Postmodern module had gone backwards instead of forwards it would have been Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (1951). That would have been appropriate too. Now […]
Postmodernism Explained: Dude, Where’s My Car?
Last week I used the short story form to try and explain just what Modernism looks like, exactly. Now I’m going to do the same to Postmodernism. After all, if you can’t distinguish between the two, do you really know what they are? And if you don’t know what they are, you’re going to find […]
Post War to Postmodern: Scream
I’ve been putting off this one for a while. Why? It’s hard to explain. Perhaps I feel more comfortable when the authors I’m studying are dead — or long dead. I like the Victorians. They’re dead. I like the Augustan poets. They’re dead. I like the Middle Ages. They’re definitely dead. If you were writing […]
Victorian to Modern: The Importance of Being Earnest
It had to happen some day. The Victorians had to shake off the shackles of respectability and give in to the social forces of modernity. They had to cast away their inhibitions and go skinny-dipping, and so forth. This is where I come in and point out that, yadda yadda yadda, the Victorians weren’t so […]
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