Introduction – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’

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 are obviously the most memorable image from the poem. Here is the poem we should probably correctly call ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, along with a short analysis of its themes, meaning, and language.

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 1920 book From Ritual to Romance, and the opening words of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

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 powerful tools a writer possesses, and has been used to great effect by writers as diverse as Jane Austen, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence.

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 is a short Japanese poem containing 17 syllables, following a tradition, and a name, that remains unchanged after centuries.’

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, interspersed with personal memories and reveries, which are often highly mysterious or only partly explained. The title The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge says it all: this is no novel in the conventional sense but rather fictionalised ‘notebooks’, diary entries, or journal fragments from one of the most innovative poets of the early twentieth century.