Interesting Literature

John Cheever’s ‘The Fourth Alarm’: Summary and Analysis

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.

The Other Lesbian Poets

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Let’s begin, as I’m fond of doing, with a question. Who is being described here? This ancient Greek poet, associated with the island of Lesbos, is regarded by some as the founder of lyric poetry. However, little of their poetry has survived, so we know them more by their classical reputation than by their work.

Beasts and Un-Beasts: On Saki’s ‘The Penance’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Penance’ has everything we expect from a quintessential Saki story: cruel and borderline feral children, misunderstood animals, and some of the wittiest prose ever committed to paper. If you’ve never read Saki before, I previously compiled a list of ten of my favourite stories of his, though ten really isn’t a big enough number. On some level, every short story by Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916) is worth reading (it’s thought he took his pen name Saki from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam).

Why ‘Man Friday’ Wasn’t Man Friday

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Robinson Crusoe probably has more misconceptions surrounding it than just about any other novel in English literature.

For a start, it’s often claimed it was the first novel (it wasn’t). It’s sometimes claimed, with a little more nuance, that it was the first English novel (it wasn’t). It’s also claimed that it was inspired by one man, the real-life, shipwrecked Scot named Alexander Selkirk (it wasn’t). It’s then claimed that Crusoe was shipwrecked on a deserted island (he wasn’t). This last ‘fact’ is immediately refuted by the fact that it was on this supposedly deserted island that Crusoe met his servant Man Friday, who was so named because Crusoe discovered him on a Friday (he didn’t).

Let’s take these misconceptions one at a time.

A Medley of Topical Allusions: Sidney’s Sonnet 30 from Astrophil and Stella

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) is the first substantial sonnet sequence in English literature. Although there had been earlier collections that featured sonnets (George Gascoigne’s A Hundreth Sundrie Flowers, published in 1573, being perhaps the most notable), and Anne Locke’s religious Meditation of a Penitent Sinner: Written in Maner of A Paraphrase upon the 51. Psalme of David (1560) takes the prize for the first ever sonnet sequence written in English, Sidney’s was the first long cycle of sonnets on the theme of love.