By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Songs about the open road have been around since … well, at least since Walt Whitman wrote his ‘Song of the Open Road’ in 1856. In popular music, too, songs in praise of cars, roads, driving, and the power and speed of automotive engineering have a pretty considerable pedigree.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The phrase ‘poetic justice’ is well-known, but its origins are perhaps less familiar to most people. The expression refers, of course, to a situation whereby someone gets what they deserve for their actions. But the ‘poetic’ part of the phrase also suggests that there may be an ironic aspect to the justice served (and deserved).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
In 1922, the year that his poem The Waste Land was published, T. S. Eliot wrote something that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from the high priest of modernist difficulty and (according to his first wife, Vivienne, at least) a man who could be a bit of a snob. It’s also a fascinating essay because, over a century after he wrote it, Eliot’s words about technological developments in entertainment leading to a feeling of boredom amongst ordinary people now seem to be eerily prescient of our own times.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Here’s a question for you: which costume drama shows Colin Firth emerging soaking wet from a lake?
If you answered, ‘Pride and Prejudice, obviously’, then read on. The BBC television adaptation of Austen’s novel from 1995 does feature a rather damp Mr Darcy, played by Firth, but we never actually see him emerging from the lake. But this hasn’t stopped many people from being absolutely sure the scene’s there.
It isn’t. And needless to say, the whole thing is missing from Austen’s book.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Fourth Alarm’ was published in 1970. This is significant given how much this John Cheever story reflects the sexual revolution of the 1960s (especially the last few years of that busy decade) and the changing attitudes to gender and sex that this brought. It features nudity, theatre, someone writing on a pair of naked buttocks, and a lack of regard for social mores. What’s not to love?
As if that wasn’t enough of an incentive to read it, it’s also blessed with that rare quality which often makes a short story even more appealing as a prospect: it’s one of Cheever’s shortest. It does everything it needs to in just six pages.
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