Close Reading
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Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Education in As You Like It
A confession: every time I watch the play – and no matter who is playing the part – I fall in love with Rosalind all over again.
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First 100 Words: ‘Jane Eyre’
in 100 WordsIt’s not screaming ‘meet the heroine’ at me. My main question? ‘How am I supposed to feel about this person?
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28.08 J Sheridan Le Fanu
I’ve been in thrall to the vampire for long as I can recall … but not all of them are created equally. Carmilla is a favourite, and should be one of yours, too.
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From the Archives: 23.08.18
Never mind Romeo’s chat-up lines – can you be a great writer if you’re not at least a good reader?
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26.08 John Buchan
Is there anything more unsettling than not knowing what’s real and what isn’t?
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24.08 John Polidori
Aristocratic, urbane, seductive, and at home in respectable society. Oh, and monstrous. Polidori’s contribution to THAT literary house party is too often overlooked.
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Sharp Dressed Man: Costume in King Lear
I’ve learned to embrace my own scruffiness, but at the same time I HATE the idea that my students live in a world where, increasingly, appearance equals personality or worth. When you put the right clothes on the wrong person … ?
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First 100 Words: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
in 100 WordsI feel like I’ve gone to the doctor to hear my test results, and they’re sitting opposite me with an expression you only usually see undertakers wearing.
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20.08 HP Lovecraft
Cthulhu’s done spectacularly well for an entity that seems to sleep like a teenager the day after a house-party. But sometimes the horror is far more personal and intimate … and all the weirder for it.
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The Boys of Summer: Holidays in Much Ado About Nothing
As a student, are you / were you ever bored during the summer holidays? If you’re planning a holiday, how long would be ‘too long’? What, then, IS a holiday?