By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Often known simply as ‘Daffodils’ or ‘The Daffodils’, William Wordsworth’s lyric poem that begins ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ is, in many ways, the quintessential English Romantic poem. Its theme is the relationship between the individual and the natural world, though those daffodils […]
Tag: Introduction
The Lost Modernist Epic: David Jones’s The Anathemata
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle salutes the lost modernist, David Jones Which poem is being described here? Published in 1952, this long modernist poem might be described as a modern ‘epic’ poem. It is highly allusive, drawing on, among others, Arthurian legend, Jessie Weston’s […]
A Short Introduction to Free Indirect Style
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Free indirect style, alternatively known as free indirect speech or free indirect discourse, is a narrative style which requires some explanation and unpicking, since it is subtle and sometimes difficult to spot in a work of fiction. However, it is one of the most […]
The Haiku: An Introduction
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) What is haiku? Or what is a haiku? Many of the things we think we know about the Japanese poetic form of the haiku are inaccurate, if not downright incorrect. The common perception, or understanding, of haiku might be summarised as follows: ‘The haiku […]
Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: Notes Towards an Analysis
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses Rainer Maria Rilke’s innovative novel Published in 1910, Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a rather experimental novel: a more or less plotless, meandering account of one man’s everyday experiences in Paris in the early twentieth century, […]