By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Goblin Market’ is probably the most famous poem Christina Rossetti (1830-94) wrote. It’s a long narrative poem about two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, and how Laura succumbs to temptation and tastes the fruit sold by the goblins of the poem’s title. In this post, we offer a very short analysis of ‘Goblin Market’ in terms of its language, metre, meaning, and themes.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Black Cat’ was first published in August 1843 in the Saturday Evening Post. It’s one of Poe’s shorter stories and one of his most disturbing, focusing on cruelty towards animals, murder, and guilt, and told by an unreliable narrator who’s rather difficult to like. You can read ‘The Black Cat’ here. Below we’ve offered some notes towards an analysis of this troubling but powerful tale.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Spring’ is not one of William Blake’s most famous poems. The poem was first published in Blake’s 1789 collection Songs of Innocence. It’s a glorious celebration of the arrival of spring, exploring the harmony of man with the natural world and some of Blake’s more popular themes: childhood, innocence, and nature being three of the most prominent.
Spring
Sound the flute!
Now it’s mute!
Bird’s delight,
Day and night,
Nightingale,
In the dale,
Lark in sky,—
Merrily,
Merrily merrily, to welcome in the year.
The interesting origins of a curious word
The most widely known and widely used meaning of the word ‘muggle’ is probably the one that J. K. Rowling invented for her Harry Potter series of books: namely, a person who does not possess magical skills. Normally written with a capital M, ‘Muggle’ is used, then, for those non-wizards in the world of Harry Potter. But the word’s origins can be traced back nearly eight centuries.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The meaning of the word ‘blatant’ is, one suspects, blatantly obvious. But how it arrived at its modern meaning is not. The word has a curious history within the world of English poetry, and ‘blatant’ took its time to arrive at its modern definition. Its origin is perhaps one of the most curious in all of the English language.