Interesting Literature

What Was the Original ‘Oldest Profession’?

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Here’s a question to begin this week’s blog post. What was the original ‘oldest profession’?

a) prostitution
b) farming
c) law
d) soldiering
e) tailoring
f) humbugging

I’ll come to the correct answer in due course, but it most definitely is not a).

The Satyricon, Michael Heseltine, and T. S. Eliot

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Readers of The Waste Land encounter texts in four different languages before they even make it to the opening line of the poem. T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem about post-war Europe begins with an epigraph from the Roman writer Petronius, followed by a dedication to Eliot’s fellow poet (and fellow American-in-Europe), Ezra Pound.

The Original Meaning of Liff

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Have you ever heard of a radlett? It’s defined as the ‘single hemisphere of dried pea which is invariably found in an otherwise spotlessly clean saucepan’. Or how about a lulworth, a ‘measure of conversation’ which ‘defines the amount of the length, loudness and embarrassment of a statement you make when everyone else in the room unaccountably stops talking at the same moment’? Or a skoonspruit, the ‘tiny garden sprinkler thing your mouth sometimes does for no apparent reason’?

John Cheever’s ‘The Chaste Clarissa’: An Analysis

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Chaste Clarissa’ (1952) is a story of seduction. Baxter, a promiscuous twice-divorced man, finds himself drawn to a young married redhead named Clarissa while holidaying at Martha’s Vineyard, as is his wont every summer. The story ends with Baxter finally unlocking the key that might – might – just make Clarissa break her marriage vows.

The Curious Story of the Priapus Myth

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Greek mythology is full of randy gods who had, shall we say, rather relaxed attitudes towards things like consent, with Zeus obviously being the grand daddy of them all (not to mention the literal daddy of Apollo, Artemis, Dionysus, Heracles, Hermes, Minos, Persephone, Perseus, and Helen of Troy, to say nothing of nine Muses).

But Zeus, being the king of the gods, clearly set a bad example for the other, lesser gods. And this is perhaps truest of all when it comes to Priapus.