Interesting Literature

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.

The Curious Story of The Smiths’ ‘Cemetry Gates’

By Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Queen Is Dead is one of those classic albums on which even the minor tracks take on a kind of epic grandeur.

Undoubtedly the Smiths’ masterpiece (although all four band members expressed a preference for their swansong, Strangeways Here We Come, for the title of ‘best’), this 1986 album contains ten tracks ranging from the classic pop single (‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’), the slow balladesque album track (‘I Know It’s Over’), the uptempo bit of fluff (‘Frankly, Mr Shankly’, ‘Vicar in a Tutu’), and the downright ‘filler’ number (‘Never Had No One Ever’, ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’).

Giles Fletcher’s Licia: A Forgotten Elizabethan Sonnet Sequence

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The focus of this week’s column is an Elizabethan poet who wrote, among other things, a sequence of love sonnets in the early 1590s and a work often referred to, in short, as Richard III. This writer was born in the Tudor era but actually died, in the 1610s, in the Jacobean period. His name was Giles Fletcher, the Elder (c. 1548-1611).

Spenser, Scott, and the Erroneous Origins of ‘Derring-Do’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Some words arise purely by accident. Indeed, even names are sometimes formed because of a mistake: the most famous example is probably Imogen, which is thought to have come about because the Celtic name Innogen (meaning ‘maiden’ or ‘daughter’) was misread as ‘Imogen’.

It’s all Shakespeare’s fault: the name ‘Innogen’ is listed in early stage directions for Much Ado about Nothing, where she’s the silent wife of Leonato and the mother of Hero. But she has no spoken lines and is completely cut from most modern editions of the play, so most people haven’t heard of her. What they do remember is the character Imogen (as it’s usually spelt) who appears in Cymbeline. But ‘Imogen’ was probably originally ‘Innogen’.

A fairly imocuous nnistake, you might say.

The Literary Legacy of the Isle of Portland

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

I was down in Dorset last week, so I thought I’d blog about that this week. Specifically, I thought I’d look into the significance the Isle of Portland has in the annals of English literature. If you’d be expecting Thomas Hardy to figure prominently, you’d be right – though Portland takes us to one of his lesser-known and more bizarre books.