Summary – Page 127 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of ‘Thaw’ by Edward Thomas

A short introduction to the poem ‘Thaw’ by Edward Thomas (1878-1917), written by Dr Oliver Tearle

‘Thaw’ is one of the shortest poems Edward Thomas wrote, and he was a master of the short poem. In a brief flurry of poetic creativity between late 1914 and his death in 1917, Thomas produced some of the finest poems of the early twentieth century. Here is ‘Thaw’, along with a brief analysis of its language and imagery.

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

A Short Analysis of Marvell’s ‘The Mower to the Glow-Worms’

A brief summary and analysis of the Andrew Marvell poem ‘The Mower to the Glow-Worms’

Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘The Mower to the Glow-Worms’ is one of the little jewels in the crown of seventeenth-century poetry. Marvell (1621-78) was one of the Metaphysical Poets and ‘The Mower to the Glow-Worms’ is one of his finest poems. Here is the poem, followed by a short summary, along with an analysis of its language and imagery.

Ye living Lamps, by whose dear light
The Nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the Summer-night,
Her matchless Songs does meditate;

An Interesting Summary of Thomas Hardy’s A Laodicean

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

In our pick of Thomas Hardy novels, we included A Laodicean, not because we consider it among his very best (it isn’t) but because it’s such an unusual novel in his oeuvre.

An Interesting Review of The Third QI Book of General Ignorance

The most interesting things about literary classics we learnt from the new QI book

Here at Interesting Literature we’re fans of the BBC TV show QI, hosted by Stephen Fry and created by John Lloyd, the producer of such British comedy classics as Blackadder and Spitting Image. We’re lucky enough to count the makers of the programme among our Twitter friends, and they’ve even cited us as the source for some of the facts in one of their previous books (namely the fascinating fact-filled 1,411 QI Facts To Knock You Sideways). We also love the QI spirit: for those of you who don’t know the show, the idea is to look more closely at widely held beliefs (and ‘facts’) in order to discover how true they really are. A cornerstone of the QI ‘philosophy’ is the notion of debunking misconceptions, something that can be traced back at least as far as Sir Thomas Browne, the seventeenth-century natural philosopher, who is the subject of one of our earlier posts (and who, quite neatly, was the first person to use the word ‘misconception’). Like Snopes.com (named, by the way, after a family from William Faulkner‘s novels), the QI spirit entails examining and then, where necessary, correcting the ‘truths’ we hold so dear.

A Short Analysis of T. E. Hulme’s ‘The Embankment’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) was an influential poet and thinker in the first few years of the twentieth century. He left behind only a handful of short poems – our pick of which can be read here – but he revolutionised the way English poetry approached issues of rhyme, metre, and imagery. Few before Hulme had thought seriously to liken the moon to a child’s balloon or the ruddy face of a farmer, but Hulme was resolute that poetry, in the hands of the Victorians, had become stale and old, and needed to be reinvented.