By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The story of Theseus and the Minotaur is one of the most famous and enduring myths of ancient Greece. Among other things, the tale helped to inspire the central premise of one of the most popular series of dystopian novels and films of the […]
Tag: Summary
A Short Analysis of Tennyson’s ‘Dark House, by Which Once More I Stand’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Dark House, by Which Once More I Stand’ is one canto (the seventh) from a much longer work of poetry, In Memoriam A. H. H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92). The poem shows Tennyson revisiting the home of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, whose […]
A Summary and Analysis of the Echo and Narcissus Myth
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The story of Echo and Narcissus is one of the most famous in all of classical mythology. But really, what we’re dealing with is a case of several different myths being put together. Narcissus has become synonymous with self-love, with the adjective ‘narcissistic’ and […]
A Short Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s ‘This Is a Photograph of Me’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood (born 1939) is best-known as a novelist, as the author of books such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake. But she began her career as a poet. ‘This Is a Photograph of Me’, today’s poem, is taken […]
A Summary and Analysis of the Myth of the Sirens
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The Sirens were half-woman and half-bird, although they are sometimes wrongly associated with mermaids (so half-woman and half-fish), probably because of their proximity to the sea (although they were strictly land-based, they tended to hang about down on the shore so they could attract […]