Biography – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

Five Fascinating Facts about Edmund Spenser

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. The word ‘blatant’ was invented in Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queene.

Spenser coined the word ‘blatant’ when he came up with the fictional many-tongued creature, the Blatant beast, in his epic poem. The Faerie Queene is a vast allegorical work of fantasy which mythologises England (using native myths, such as St George, alongside a sort of Chaucerian English) as a great Christian nation, ruled over by ‘Gloriana’ (i.e. Queen Elizabeth I).

Five Fascinating Facts about Menander

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. For over 2,000 years, Menander’s works were lost. Then, in the twentieth century, they were rediscovered.

Menander (c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) was praised by his contemporaries as a great comic playwright – some even said the greatest, beating even Aristophanes into second place. Yet his work was lost during the Middle Ages and remained so until papyrus scrolls containing several of his plays surfaced, and even then only as incomplete manuscripts.

Five Fascinating Facts about Ben Jonson

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. Ben Jonson courted controversy on a number of occasions during his writing career.

Jonson (c. 1572-1637), the adopted son of a bricklayer, was originally apprenticed to his stepfather’s trade, before going off to enlist in the English army (he later claimed he had killed a Spanish champion in single combat). He started writing for the London theatre in his mid-twenties, and his first play to make a real splash was The Isle of Dogs, in 1597.

Five Fascinating Facts about John Bunyan

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. He was nearly shot in the head while on guard duty one night – but fortunately, another soldier had taken his place.

This narrow brush with death helped to convince John Bunyan (1628-88) that he was one of the ‘Elect’ – the chosen few – and to start spreading the word. He most famously did this in The Pilgrim’s Progress, which brings us on to our second John Bunyan fact …

A Very Short Biography of Edith Wharton

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

In his Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives, John Sutherland calls Edith Wharton’s life ‘fascinating’. It certainly is. The novelist best-known for The Age of Innocence led an interesting life, and in this very short biography we aim to cover the most curious aspects of Edith Wharton’s life and work.