By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Waste Land is one of the major poems of the twentieth century. Published in 1922, T. S. Eliot’s landmark work of modernism may ‘only’ be just over 430 lines or around 20 pages in length, but its scope and vision are epic in terms of historical and geographical range, spanning from modern-day London to the deserts of the Old Testament.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
There are a number of prominent themes of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Each of the key themes we have identified in the following article, though, throws out some surprising details and interpretations, so it’s worth probing some of the play’s most important themes and subjects in more detail.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Macbeth is, along with the character of Iago in Othello and his earlier portrayal of Richard III, William Shakespeare’s most powerful exploration and analysis of evil.
Although we can find precursors to Macbeth in the murderer-turned-conscience-stricken-men of Shakespeare’s earlier plays – notably the conspirator Brutus in Julius Caesar and Claudius in Hamlet – Macbeth provides us with a closer and more complex examination of how a brave man with everything going for him might be corrupted by ambition and goading into committing an act of murder.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
George Bernard Shaw held All’s Well That Ends Well in high regard, having what Frank Kermode described as a ‘perverse’ admiration for it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called Helena, the heroine of All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare’s ‘loveliest character’ while the Victorian actress Ellen Terry called her ‘despicable’ and a ‘doormat’. Samuel Johnson went so far as to compare Parolles, the play’s chief comic character, with the mighty Falstaff.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Black Cat’ was first published in August 1843 in the Saturday Evening Post. It’s one of Poe’s shorter stories and one of his most disturbing, focusing on cruelty towards animals, murder, and guilt, and told by an unreliable narrator who’s rather difficult to like. You can read ‘The Black Cat’ here. Below we’ve offered some notes towards an analysis of this troubling but powerful tale.