By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs’ is a well-known phrase, derived from one of the classical writer Aesop’s best-known fables. A fable, of course, is a short story with a moral, and the story usually involves animals. ‘The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs’ fits all of these criteria. But what is the moral of this fable, and what does the phrase mean, exactly?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ is an essay by T. S. Eliot; it began life as an address Eliot gave to the Shakespeare Association on 18 March 1927 before being published on 22 September of that year. Although it is Eliot’s poetry that has endured, and his reputation as a perceptive and provocative critic has dwindled slightly since the 1920s, this short essay demonstrates the precise qualities that made Eliot such an original and valuable thinker.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The story of Jesus casting out the demons from a man and into a herd of swine is well-known, but where it happened, and what it means, are more contentious questions and deserve fuller analysis and discussion.
The longest and most detailed account of Jesus and the Gadarene swine is found in the Gospel of Mark, 5:1-20. This is hardly surprising, since of all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) which tell this story, Mark is the one most focused on Jesus’ supernatural talents for driving away evil spirits and exorcising demons.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
First published in 1899, Heart of Darkness – which formed the basis of the 1979 Vietnam war film Apocalypse Now – is one of the first recognisably modernist works of literature in English fiction. Its author was the Polish-born Joseph Conrad, and English wasn’t his first language (or even, for that matter, his second).
As well as being a landmark work of modernism, Conrad’s novella also explores the subject of imperialism, and Conrad’s treatment of this subject has been met with both criticism and praise.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have / Immortal longings in me’: so begins Cleopatra’s final speech in Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra. Her ‘immortal longings’ are her longings for immortality, her desire to leave behind the mortal world and enter the next.