By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
English poetry is a broad field, so any attempt to tell its history in a short blog post is going to have to paint pretty broad brush strokes. But one way of avoiding too many sweeping generalisations about ‘big’ movements in poetic history can be minimised, perhaps, by looking only at a handful of specific short poems by famous poets.
What’s the connection between wine, poetry, Gone with the Wind, and soccer? In a couple of previous posts, on George Meredith and Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, we’ve endeavoured to find five interesting things about two of Victorian literature’s neglected figures. Now it’s the turn of Ernest Dowson – decadent poet. Some of these are particularly surprising. 1. … Read more