By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Popular Mechanics’ is one of Raymond Carver’s shortest stories, but although it is sometimes known by the alternative title ‘Little Things’, there is nothing ‘little’ about this tale of filial breakdown and domestic unhappiness.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The American-born poet, playwright, and critic T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) is one of the most important and influential writers of the twentieth century. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Eliot was educated at Harvard before moving to Britain, where he settled, becoming a UK citizen in 1927.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘In the Waiting Room’ is one of the best-known poems by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79). Written in 1971 and published in the collection Geography III in 1976, the poem describes a visit to the dentist which the young Bishop made as a six-year-old girl.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Doctor Chevalier’s Lie’ is a short story by the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904), written in 1891 and published in Vogue magazine in 1893. This brief narrative concerns a doctor who is summoned one night to a brothel, where a young woman has killed herself by shooting herself in the head.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
French poetry is among the most romantic, the most innovative, and the most influential of all poetry. French poets – possibly influenced by the example of the American trailblazer, Walt Whitman – pioneered vers libre or ‘free verse’ in the late nineteenth century, while some of the most avant-garde poetry written at the beginning of the twentieth century was written in French.