A summary of a classic short George Herbert poem, by Dr Oliver Tearle
George Herbert (1593-1633) was one of the greatest devotional poets of his age – indeed, of any age. As well as famous poems such as the justly celebrated poem of religious doubt and personal freedom, ‘The Collar’, Herbert wrote many other great poems about God. ‘A Wreath’ is not perhaps among his most famous poems, so some remarks about its meaning might help here.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Pearl is one of the jewels in the crown of medieval English poetry: a real gem of a poem. Part-elegy, part dream-vision (a popular kind of poem in medieval literature: see Piers Plowman for another prominent example), and part Christian allegory, the poem is by an unknown author who may or may not have been (but probably was) the same writer who gave us Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
In our pick of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s best poems, we included ‘God’s Grandeur’, a sonnet celebrating ‘the grandeur of God’. Hopkins was one of the greatest religious poets of the entire nineteenth century, and this poem shows how he attained that reputation. Below is the poem, along with an analysis of some of its themes and linguistic features.
Fun facts about William Shakespeare’s timeless love story, Romeo and Juliet
1. Shakespeare makes Juliet a thirteen-year-old girl when she goes to be with Romeo.
We know that Romeo and Juliet is about young love – the ‘pair of star-cross’d lovers’, who belong to rival families in Verona – but what is odd about Shakespeare’s play is how young he makes Juliet. It’s one of the most curious facts about the character of Juliet.
By Dr Oliver Tearle
‘Jabberwocky’ is perhaps the most famous nonsense poem in all of English literature. Although the poem was first published in Lewis Carroll‘s novel Through the Looking Glass in 1871, the first stanza was actually written and printed by Carroll in 1855 in the little periodical Mischmasch, which Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) compiled to entertain his family. Below is ‘Jabberwocky’ (sometimes erroneously called ‘The Jabberwocky’), followed by a brief analysis of its meaning. ‘Nonsense’ literature it may be, but let’s see if we can make some sense of the glorious nonsense.