Guest Blog: Ernest J. Gaines – At Home in the Pelican State

By Lillie Anne Brown, Florida A&M University The literary work of Ernest J. Gaines intersects history and culture with universal themes of self-respect, human dignity and personal integrity. His novels pay homage to ordinary black citizens who not only deserve respect in their everyday lives but crave it as a matter of order and sensibility. … Read more

Guest Blog: Shakespeare Beyond Doubt

By Professor Stanley Wells, CBE It’s not often, when one publishes a book, that a parody of it appears shortly afterwards – or, indeed, ever – but this has happened with Shakespeare Beyond Doubt, the collection of essays that I edited along with Paul Edmondson and that was published by Cambridge  University Press in  April … Read more

A Short Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

‘I heard this typing. I went down in the basement of the UCLA library and by God there was a room with 12 typewriters in it that you could rent for 10 cents a half-hour. And there were eight or nine students in there working away like crazy.’ This was Ray Bradbury, speaking about the … Read more

Guest Blog: Aldous Huxley’s Island

By David Izzo (Shaw University, Raleigh NC) To be capable of love –this is, of course, about two thirds of the battle; the other third is becoming capable of the intelligence that endows the love with effectiveness in an obscure and complicated and largely loveless world. It is not enough merely to know, and it … Read more