In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle steps into the yellow wood of a famous American poem Robert Frost’s two best-known poems both involve a speaker stopping in, or by, a wood: one takes place at the end of the day, in winter (his ‘Stopping by […]
Satirical poetry has a long pedigree in English literature, from the verse satires of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to contemporary poems satirising modern life. In this post, we select and introduce ten classic satirical poems in English, from the genre known as ‘the verse satire’ to more contemporary examples […]
‘The Knight’s Tale’ is the first tale told in Geoffrey Chaucer’s long work The Canterbury Tales. Following his introduction in the General Prologue, the Knight proceeds to tell this tale of romantic rivalry between two friends – a story which would later inspire a Shakespeare play (of which more below).