By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Many of the war poems of Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) take aim at authority figures, older and more powerful men such as generals and majors who hold the fates of the younger generation in their hands. ‘They’, one of Sassoon’s most famous poems, focuses on religious authority, embodied in the poem by the Bishop. You can read Sassoon’s ‘They’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The sixteenth century saw the sonnet arrive in England, and with that, the sonnet sequence that would lead to Shakespeare’s collection of 154 sonnets about the ‘Fair Youth’ and ‘Dark Lady’. It was also the age of satirical poetry in the form of John Skelton’s poems, and narrative poetry – even epic poetry – which culminated in Edmund Spenser’s vast poem The Faerie Queene. Below, we select, and introduce, ten of the very best sixteenth-century poems written in English.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The fourteenth century was, in many ways, the century in which English poetry truly arrived, with the work of Geoffrey Chaucer and the development of Middle English as a supple, vibrant language for vernacular poetry. In Italy, too, the language of the local, common people was used in verse by the pioneering poet Dante, who chose to write in Italian rather than the high Latin of many religious works. Below, we’ve selected some of the very best fourteenth-century poems, both big and small, epic and lyric.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys Alex Johnson’s new compendium of writers’ loyal furry and feathered friends
When Percy Shelley visited Byron in Ravenna, he found the Don Juan author at home with ‘ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it.’ Shelley goes on to note that on Byron’s staircase he encountered five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane.
Byron, of course, is the poet who kept a pet bear, Bruin, in his rooms at Cambridge while he was a student there (because the college authorities forbade the keeping of a dog). When Byron arrived with the bear at Cambridge, and ‘they asked me what to do with him … my reply was he should sit for a fellowship.’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Venice is a destination on many a bucket list, and the distinctive topography and geography of the city have made it a popular tourist attraction for centuries. And poets throughout the centuries have used Venice as a backdrop for their work, or have sung the city’s praises.