In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry ‘The Seafarer’ is one of the earliest poems in English literature. Its ‘plot’ can be summarised easily enough: an elderly sailor speaks to us about his alienation from the world. The 124-line […]
The 1890s was a productive time to be inactive and indolent: poets, artists, and intellectuals delighted in ennui, lethargy, and fears that the world was coming to an end. Indeed, for some, that was the perfect excuse to shake up the status quo. Decadence was the signature ‘movement’ of the […]
The sonnet form is one of the oldest and most popular poetic forms in European literature, having been invented in the thirteenth century and used since by poets as varied as Petrarch, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Tony Harrison, Carol Ann Duffy, and Simon Armitage. Below, we offer […]