Critical Readings

The panel reads "The Red Wheelbarrow", "This Is Just to Say", and "Gulls" by William Carlos Williams and discusses both their connexion to the Imagist and Modernist movements of the early twentieth century, and their complexity in relation to Minimalism.Continue reading

The panel reads three of Jonathan Swift's poems which satirise responses to the inescapable facts of human biology, and focuses on their depictions of privacy and separation, essential human dignity, and cultural attitudes towards sexuality.Continue reading

The panel reads extended selections from each canto of Sir Walter Scott's narrative poem, "The Lady of the Lake", highlighting Scott's interest in reviving the medieval, the importance of history to his work, and his use of varying poetic forms.Continue reading

The panel reads a selection of poems by Ted Hughes compassing the scope of his poetic oeuvre, from the early and animalistic imagery of "The Jaguar" to the modernist scenes of "Here Is the Cathedral", before concluding with the confessional "Last Letter".Continue reading

The panel reads four poems by Richard Wilbur, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World", "A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra", "Mind", and "Year's End", particularly examining the intricacy of their details and their formal attributes.Continue reading

The panel traces themes of wanderlust, resignation, wistfulness, lonliness, and fatalism in six poems excerpted from Stevenson's Songs of Travel, including "The Vagabond", "Bright Is the Ring of Words," "Whither Must I Wander", and "The Woodman".Continue reading

The panel reads four poems by the Tudor poet and courtier Thomas Wyatt, whose misfortunes in the Henrician court (not least of all two imprisonments) are traced in sonnets and other verse including "Whoso List to Hunt" and "Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides".Continue reading

The panel reads three poems by Sylvia Plath, "Tulips", "Lady Lazarus", and "Daddy", tracing in them themes of self-annihilation, and analysing references to her depression and to the conflicted relationships she had with her father and husband.Continue reading

The panel reads a selection of sonnets by William Shakespeare, and considers their Symposium-like comparisons and contrasts of the different kinds and representations of love, in terms ranging from eloquent to earthy, and from concrete to abstract.Continue reading

The panel reads Christopher Marlowe's most famous poem, Hero and Leander, discussing its rich and provocative imagery, classical allusions, and levels of metaphor, and addressing the scholarly opinion of the apparently unfinished state of the work.Continue reading