By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The line ‘to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’, with its quartet of infinitives, is one of Tennyson’s most memorable quotations. The line concludes one of his finest dramatic monologues (a literary mode Tennyson, along with his fellow Victorian poet Robert Browning, did much to invent and develop), ‘Ulysses’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Turn the other cheek’ is a well-known phrase associated with Christianity. But what is the meaning of the expression, and where does it originate?
Let’s take a closer look at the origins of ‘turning the other cheek’, by turning to one very famous passage from the Gospel of Matthew, in the New Testament. For the phrase ‘turn the other cheek’ appears (albeit not in those exact words) in the Sermon on the Mount, which is regarded as a cornerstone of Jesus’ teaching.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The phrase ‘salt of the earth’ has entered common speech (and writing), and many people who use the phrase now may be unaware of its religious origins. Indeed, even those who suspect the phrase originates in biblical scripture may not be familiar with the specific passage in which the expression first appears.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
In 1890, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was serialised in Lippincott’s Magazine. The following year, when the novel was published in book form, Wilde added a famous ‘Preface’ which consisted of a series of statements and axioms about literature and art.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Robin Redbreast in a Cage / Puts all Heaven in a Rage.’ This couplet constitutes the other most famous quotation from ‘Auguries of Innocence’ after ‘To see the world in a grain of sand’. But what is the meaning of this quotation?