Literary Criticism – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Here’s a question for you: which great work did Oscar Wilde write while imprisoned in Reading Gaol? Not The Ballad of Reading Gaol – that was written while he was in exile in France following his release from prison – but De Profundis, his long letter to his former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) sees Wilde reflecting on the nature of sin, crime, love, and hatred in a long poem that has given us a number of famous lines, ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’ being the most memorable. You can read The Ballad of Reading Gaol here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of the poem below.

A Summary and Analysis of W. B. Yeats’ ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Divided into six parts, ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’ is, along with ‘Easter 1916’, probably W. B. Yeats’s best-known political poem. It is also among his longer and more ambitious works. In this post, we’ll offer a summary and analysis of the poem, taking it section by section.

A Summary and Analysis of Wallace Stevens’ ‘The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm’ (1946) is one of Wallace Stevens’s finest later poems. In just sixteen lines and eight couplets, Stevens summons the quiet and calm of solitary reading inside a house. You can read ‘The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.

Dombey and Son: The Themes of Dickens’s Railway Novel

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the comic genius of Dickens in one of his less well-known novel

Dombey and Son is some way from being Charles Dickens’s most popular novel. Indeed, of his fifteen full-length novels, it’s probably down there at the bottom, alongside Barnaby Rudge. The last television adaptation of Dombey and Son was back in 1983 (you can watch this adaptation online here; I used to work with the chap who played Mr Toots, who went on to become a lecturer and Baptist minister).

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Success Is Counted Sweetest’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Success Is Counted Sweetest’ is not as famous as some of Emily Dickinson’s other poems, but she was a prolific poet, and this one is well worth reading. Indeed, it has a peculiar place in Dickinson’s oeuvre, being one of just seven poems which were published during her lifetime. (It’s not quite true that Dickinson was entirely unknown as a poet while she was alive, although it’s certainly true that she was better known as a gardener than as a poet during her own lifetime.)

As is often the case with an Emily Dickinson poem, the language and imagery require a bit of careful analysis and unpicking.