By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Let America Be America Again’ is a 1938 poem by Langston Hughes (1901-67), a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. In the poem, Hughes contrasts the American Dream with the less glorious reality of Depression-era America, a land where many people are poor and social inequality is rife.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Boxer is an enormous cart-horse who possesses the strength of two average horses. The character is one of the most important in George Orwell’s 1945 allegory for Soviet Communism, Animal Farm. Indeed, after the two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, Boxer is arguably the most significant character in Orwell’s fable about Stalinist Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Two of the nine tracks to feature on Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s third album, Architecture and Morality (1981), were about the medieval French saint Joan of Arc. These two tracks, ‘Joan of Arc’ and ‘Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)’, open the second side of the original LP release of the album, and come between the industrial mood-piece ‘Sealand’ (which concludes side one) and the instrumental title track.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Waste Land, first published in 1922, is arguably the most important poem of the whole twentieth century. It remains a timely poem, even though its origins were very specifically the post-war Europe of 1918-22.
Written by T. S. Eliot, who was then beginning to make a name for himself following the publication (and modest success) of his first two volumes of poetry, The Waste Land has given rise to more critical analysis and scholarly interpretation than just about any other poem. Critics and readers are still arguing over what it means.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Good Country People’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied short stories by Flannery O’Connor (1925-64).
The story, which focuses on a woman with a wooden leg who is befriended by a young and innocent-seeming bible salesman, takes in many themes, including innocence versus knowledge and our perceptions of others: perceptions which are often quite false.