By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Bowl’ is not one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best-known short stories, but it is a notable work which deals with the themes of fame, football, and envy, among other things. Written in 1927 and published a year later in the Saturday Evening Post, ‘The Bowl’ is about a college football player who meets a girl who demands that he give up playing.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Flying Machine’ is a 1953 short story by Ray Bradbury, included in his collection The Golden Apples of the Sun. Often analysed as an allegory for nuclear proliferation during the Cold War, ‘The Flying Machine’ is in fact a subtler story than this critique implies, and so its symbolism requires further analysis and interpretation to be more fully understood. It is a story in which a Chinese emperor discovers a man has developed a machine that enables man to fly, and promptly orders for the machine to be destroyed and its inventor put to death.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What was the Trojan Horse? The Trojan Horse the hollow wooden horse in which Greek soldiers concealed themselves so they could enter Troy without arousing suspicion. The Trojan Horse was offered to the city of Troy as a gift, but when the Trojans took the wooden horse inside the city gates, the Greeks who had secreted themselves within the wooden structure came out and were thus able to attack Troy from within.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Boarded Window’ is a story by the American author Ambrose Bierce, who is also remembered for his witty The Devil’s Dictionary and for his mysterious disappearance in around 1914. Like many of Bierce’s tales, ‘The Boarded Window’ contains elements of the horror genre. The story is about a man living in a cabin in the woods in Ohio. When his wife dies, he falls asleep after preparing her body for burial, only to discover a terrifying intruder making off with it.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
How did hyacinths, the popular flowers, get their name? And what have they to do with homoerotic love, wind, discuses, and Greek mythology? As ever, we’re here to answer these questions, by taking a closer look at the classical myth of Hyacinth and how he came to give his name to the flowers.
Before we offer an analysis of the myth’s meaning and significance, here’s a quick summary of the tragic story.