By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
I’ve blogged before about Astrophil and Stella, the first major sonnet sequence in English literature. Written in the early 1580s and published in 1591, five years after the death of its author, Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), this cycle of 108 sonnets and 11 songs catalogues the thoughts and feelings of a ‘star-lover’ (Astrophil) for his ‘star’ (Stella).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
In 1707, the young Alexander Pope wrote a verse epistle on the theme of unhappy love, and written in the Latin vein. The female speaker of the poem is a real-life figure who lived and died centuries before Pope. In the poem, she addresses her male lover, expressing her grief and sadness over their separation from each other.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Readers of The Waste Land encounter texts in four different languages before they even make it to the opening line of the poem. T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem about post-war Europe begins with an epigraph from the Roman writer Petronius, followed by a dedication to Eliot’s fellow poet (and fellow American-in-Europe), Ezra Pound.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The focus of this week’s column is an Elizabethan poet who wrote, among other things, a sequence of love sonnets in the early 1590s and a work often referred to, in short, as Richard III. This writer was born in the Tudor era but actually died, in the 1610s, in the Jacobean period. His name was Giles Fletcher, the Elder (c. 1548-1611).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
I was down in Dorset last week, so I thought I’d blog about that this week. Specifically, I thought I’d look into the significance the Isle of Portland has in the annals of English literature. If you’d be expecting Thomas Hardy to figure prominently, you’d be right – though Portland takes us to one of his lesser-known and more bizarre books.