‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946) is one of the best-known essays by George Orwell (1903-50). As its title suggests, Orwell identifies a link between the (degraded) English language of his time and the degraded political situation: Orwell sees modern discourse (especially political discourse) as being less a matter of […]
A summary of an influential essay – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle ‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is one of T. S. Eliot’s most important and influential essays. It was first published in 1919. In ‘Hamlet and his Problems’, Eliot makes the bold claim that Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, far from being […]
‘Romanticism and Classicism’ by T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) was posthumously published as part of the 1924 collection Speculations but probably written in 1911-12. It’s an important attack on romanticism in art and poetry, and was an influential defence of the ‘philosophy’ (though that may be too grand a word for […]