Interesting Literature

An Interesting Character Study: Prospero from The Tempest

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The character of Prospero is one that many notable actors over the centuries have taken on, ever since Richard Burbage – the lead actor in Shakespeare’s company, who had also been his first Hamlet and first Richard III – took to the stage in 1611 and (probably) played the role of Prospero in the play’s earliest productions. Some of the most noteworthy Prosperos have included Patrick Stewart, John Gielgud, Michael Redgrave, Michael Hordern, and even (in a slightly different version of the character) Helen Mirren. What makes Prospero, one of Shakespeare’s last great theatrical characters, such a celebrated role?

A Short Analysis of William Blake’s ‘The Little Boy Lost’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Little Boy Lost’ appeared in William Blake’s 1789 volume Songs of Innocence, where it’s followed by ‘The Little Boy Found’, its companion-poem. Before we proceed to some words of analysis, here’s a reminder of ‘The Little Boy Lost’, one of Blake’s most popular lyric poems.

10 of the Best Poems about the Colour Blue

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Previously, it was the turn of green and red; now, it’s time to ponder some of the greatest blue poems. Blue is the colour of the bluebell, of the oceans, and of a particular strain of melancholy (we talk of suffering from a bout of ‘the blues’), so it’s of little surprise that poets have written beautifully about the colour blue. Here are ten of the very finest poems about blue things.

10 of the Best Poems about Everyday Life

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The poetry of the everyday has come to the fore in the last century or so. Movements such as imagism and modernism, in particular, helped to make poetry focusing on everyday life and the ordinariness of modern urban living not only possible, but meaningful: in just a few lines, these poems dealing with very normal scenarios manage to contain significance that goes way beyond the ‘ordinary’ and often touches upon the revelatory.

Here’s our pick of ten of the very best poems about everyday life.

Fantasy Book Review: Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a formative early work of fantasy fiction

In the early 1950s, shortly before J. R. R. Tolkien published his landmark novel The Lord of the Rings, the Danish-American author Poul Anderson wrote two short fantasy novels which would have less of an influence on the course of fantasy fiction, but which now read as considerably more ‘modern’, in many ways, than Tolkien’s three-books-in-one epic.