What is allusion? And what role does allusion play in works of literature? It’s a key part of what many writers do, so it’s worth defining ‘allusion’ and exploring some of the issues that arise from its use in literary texts. First, though, a handy one-sentence definition might help: allusion […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle revisits one of Joseph Conrad’s less celebrated masterpieces The narrative style of Joseph Conrad’s 1911 novel Under Western Eyes is unusual. The narrator is not quite an omniscient third-person narrator (certainly, there is much he doesn’t know, as he […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys Jack Vance’s inventive quartet of picaresque fantasy novels I’ll admit that Tales of Dying Earth, the fat bumper edition of Jack Vance’s novels set on an Earth whose sun is about to go out forever, sat on my […]