By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
First published in 1819, ‘Rip Van Winkle’ is one of the most famous pieces of writing by Washington Irving, whose contribution to American literature was considerable. ‘Rip Van Winkle’ has become a byword for the idea of falling asleep and waking up to find the familiar world around us has changed.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Ars Poetica’ is one of the most famous poems by the American poet-librarian, Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982). A self-referential reflection on the nature of poetry, ‘Ars Poetica’ (1926) is provocative, suggestive, and – as is often the case with twentieth-century modernist poems – a piece of writing which raises as many questions as it settles.
You can read ‘Ars Poetica’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
After ‘The Raven’, which is undoubtedly Poe’s most popular poem, ‘Annabel Lee’ is perhaps his next best-known and admired. ‘Annabel Lee’ has been called ‘the simplest and sweetest of [Edgar Allan Poe’s] ballads’ (by Poe’s biographer, George Edward Woodberry), but how ‘simple’ the poem is remains to be seen.
Is it a ballad, or narrative poem, or is it a lyric? Before we grapple with some of these questions and offer some words of analysis, here’s a reminder of the text of the poem ‘Annabel Lee’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ (1934) is one of Wallace Stevens’s finest nature poems, but it is also a celebration of the transformative power of art. But there’s a little more to the poem than this glib summary suggests. You can read ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Published in his collection West Running Brook in 1928, ‘Tree at My Window’ is one of Robert Frost’s finest poems. In just sixteen lines, Frost explores the relationship between man and nature, and provides a slightly different take on this relationship from that seen in the work of earlier, Romantic poets. You can read ‘Tree at My Window’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.