By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Blue and Green’ is a pair of short sketches – each only one paragraph in length – which appeared in Virginia Woolf’s 1921 collection, Monday or Tuesday. These two sketches are less ‘stories’ in the traditional sense than impressionistic prose-poems; nevertheless, below we reproduce both ‘Green’ and ‘Blue’, and attempt a short ‘summary’ of each.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Monkey’s Paw’ by W. W. Jacobs (1863-1943) is a miniature classic of the horror genre. In just ten pages, Jacobs provides suspense, a building sense of menace, and real drama, as well as bringing in such themes as family tragedy and the problems with imperialism. Mainly, though, it’s a classic tale of three wishes, which has been parodied and retold many times since (including in The Simpsons).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays, so we’ll keep the ensuing plot summary fairly brief, too, summarising the main plot points and keeping an eye on how they all fit together. Some critics and editors believe that Macbeth, the play as we have it, is a drastically edited-down or cut version of a longer play which would have been performed in Shakespeare’s time.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
All’s Well That Ends Well is one of William Shakespeare’s lesser-known and less highly regarded plays. Before we say more about the play – and how it came to be regarded as one of his ‘problem plays’ – it’s worth recapping the plot of All’s Well That Ends Well as a brief summary. This play, with its use of fairy-tale tropes and complex attitude to marriage and relationships actually has a fairly straightforward plot, thankfully.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Prelude’ is one of Katherine Mansfield’s longest, and finest, short stories. Centring on the Burnell family as they move house in New Zealand, ‘Prelude’ is the opening story in Katherine Mansfield’s first ‘mature’ collection of fiction, Bliss and Other Stories (1920), although the story had first been published two years earlier. Below, we attempt a brief summary of the ‘plot’ of ‘Prelude’, which can be read in full here.