Illustration from Moonblight (1889) – Internet Archive An esoteric disease which reveals things in their true light; three pairs of disembodied feet galavanting about the countryside – Abigail Walthausen explores the brief but strange literary career of Daniel Carter Beard, illustrator for Mark Twain and a founding father of the Boy Scouts of America. By Abigail Walthausen Although[…]
Portrait of Swedenborg painted in 1817, after Swedenborg’s death, by Carl Frederik von Breda – Wikimedia Commons During the time of his ‘spiritual awakening’ in 1744 the scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg kept a dream diary. Richard Lines looks at how, among the heavenly visions, there were also erotic dreams, the significance of which has been[…]
Detail from a version of Sebastian Münster’s sea monster chart (1544 and after), composed from copies of the vignettes found in Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina from 5 years earlier. (Note the blue Sea Orm curling round the boat in the top right corner) – Wikimedia Commons The terrifying Great Norway Serpent, or Sea Orm, is the most famous[…]
A 1964 Soviet stamp depicts William Shakespeare. “Stamp” via www.shutterstock.com Centuries before the internet, Shakespeare became a global phenomenon. By Dr. Alexa Alice Joubin / 04.23.2015 Professor of English Co-Director, Digital Humanities Institute Director, Dean’s Scholars in Shakespeare George Washington University In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Peter Quince sees Bottom turned into an ass-headed figure, he cries[…]
Fresco showing a woman called Sappho holding writing implements from Pompeii Naples National Archaeological Museum. Wikimedia Commons Sappho sang of desire, passion and love – mostly directed towards women. As new fragments of her work are found, a fuller picture of her is emerging, but she remains themost mysterious of ancient poets. By Dr. Marguerite Johnson / 03.29.2017 Associate Professor of Ancient History and Classical Languages University[…]
John Williams’ 1960 novel has been hailed as part of a pantheon of western masterpieces. Pam Morris, CC BY-SA The ideology of nature is a term that refers to the representation of nature as something that is pure and undefiled. By Dr. Adam Morton / 11.25.2014 Professor of Political Economy University of Sydney Despite the huge and belated[…]
Even if you’ve never read or seen any of Shakespeare’s works, his influence has touched your life. Photo credits, clockwise from top: Kevin Lamarque, public domain, public domain, public domain, public domain, Mike Tsikas, 20th Century Fox, Mike Hutchings In the almost 400 years since Shakespeare’s death, his words have been enlisted by an extraordinary range of[…]
A timeline of Shakespeare’s plays / Creative Commons Defining national culture and identity. By Dr. Eugene O’Brien Senior Lecturer in English Mary Immaculate College There is hardly a more quoted line from Shakespeare in the overall context of Irish Studies than the above question from Henry V. Given the agonies of identity that have plagued Irish[…]
Virgil reads the Aeneid to Octavia and Augustus. Angelica Kauffmann/Hermitage/Wikimedia Commons Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid documents the founding of Rome by a Trojan hero. As with other ancient epics, our hero has to remain resolute in the face of significant divine hostility. By Dr. Chris Mackie / 10.23.2017 Professor of Classics La Trobe University The Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil is an epic poem in[…]
Detail from a portrait Thomas de Quincey by Sir John Watson-Gordon, date unkown – Wikimedia Commons Robin Jarvis looks at Thomas de Quincey’s essay “The English Mail-Coach, or the Glory of Motion” and how its meditation on technology and society is just as relevant today as when first published in 1849. By Dr. Robin Jarvis /[…]
Reading fiction can make you happier, nicer towards others and better focused in your activities. Pixabay/Pexels To counter the unbalanced effects of the digital age, reading literature is the key. By Dr. Massimo Salgaro (left) and Dr. Adriaan van der Weel (right) / 12.18.2017 Salgaro: RFIEA Fellows 2017-2018, IEA Paris, Researcher in Literary Theory, University of Verona van der[…]
Vuk Kostic/www.shutterstock.com Historic heroes like King Arthur have helped audiences through the ages to cope with troubling times. By Dr. Raluca Radulescu / 02.02.2017 Professor of Medieval Literature and English Literature Bangor University King Arthur is one of, if not the, most legendary icons of medieval Britain. His popularity has lasted centuries, mostly thanks to the numerous incarnations of his story that pop[…]
Hera, Athena and Iris in the Trojan War (Iris, at the Behest of Zeus, Warns Athena and Hera not to Assist the Greeks in their War with the Trojans.), by Jacques Réattu, 18th century / The Minneapolis Institute of Arts via Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Theodore L. Steinberg Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus State University of New York, Fredonia[…]
Tang and Shakespeare’s dramas are being blended together in a series of adaptions. Performance Infinity, Author provided Shakespeare was not the only famous dramatist to die in 1616. On the other side of theworld, in China, another theatrical legend was laid to rest. By Dr. Mary Mazzilli / 07.21.2016 Lecture in Theatre and Performance Goldsmiths, University of London In his 400th anniversary year, Shakespeare is still rightly celebrated as[…]
The painting depicts the end of the 1381 peasant’s revolt, mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The image shows London’s mayor, Walworth, killing Wat Tyler. There are two images of Richard II. One looks on the killing while the other is talking to the peasants. / Library Royal via Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Theodore L. Steinberg Distinguished Teaching[…]
Helen McCrory as Medea. Richard Hubert Smith/National Theatre By Dr. Laura Swift / 07.23.2014 Lecturer in Classical Studies The Open University Often when ancient plays are updated to a modern setting it can feel unsatisfactory. Frequently there are elements that grate or become implausible, and you’re left feeling that the director is trying too hard to make the[…]
Gilgamesh explores what it means to be human, and questions the meaning of life and love. Wikimedia Commons The themes of the world’s most ancient epic are still remarkably relevant to modern readers. By Dr. Louise Pryke / 05.07.2017 Lecturer, Languages and Literature of Ancient Israel Macquarie University “Forget death and seek life!” With these encouraging words, Gilgamesh, the star of the eponymous 4000-year-old[…]
Night (1736), the fourth painting from William Hogarth’s Four Times of the Day series — Wikimedia Commons The introduction of street lighting to 17th-century London saw an explosion of nocturnal activity in the capital, most of revolving around the selling of sex. Matthew Beaumont explores how some writers, with the intention of condemning these nefarious goings-on, took to the[…]
Depiction of Lucian for the title page of Works of Lucian (1781) – Internet Archive With his Vera Historia, the 2nd century satirist Lucian of Samosata wrote the first detailed account of a trip to the moon in the Western tradition and, some argue, also one of the earliest science fiction narratives. Aaron Parrett explores how Lucian used this[…]
Macbeth: I’m not all bad. Honest. Studio Canal publicity Shakespeare cast the Scottish king as the ultimate villain, but you shouldn’t believe everything you see on stage or screen. By Dr. Alex Woolf / 10.12.2015 Senior Lecturer in Mediaeval History University of St. Andrews It is among the bloodiest and cruellest of plays. For some, even uttering its name can[…]
The Archangel Raphael with Adam and Eve (an illustration to Milton’s Paradise Lost) by William Blake (1808). Courtesy MFA Boston By Dr. Ed Simon / 03.28.2018 Associate Editor Marginalia Review of Books Paradise Lost (1674) is a consummate example of scientific literature. In it, John Milton effectively mimics the debates that motivated the New Science of his era, and the[…]
Frontispiece image showing man haunted by melancholy, from The Anatomy of Melancholy By Harkiran Dhindsa / 03.30.2016 The original work was first published in 1621, but its popularity among scholars ensured its continued reprints centuries later. The recently digitised copy of this book is from an 1806 edition held by the University of Bristol. Helpfully, the 1806 edition[…]
A dramatic tale of love, betrayal, and vengeance, Medea is continually reinvented for new audiences. By Dr. Mary Louise Hart / 09.11.2015 Associate Curator of Antiquities J. Paul Getty Museum Probably no other ancient play has been produced in modern times as often as Medea. Although it only won third place when it was first performed, it soon[…]
By Dr. Richard Aspin / 08.08.2016 Head of Research Wellcome Library Locally harvested wild herbs were the foundation of medical practice in Shakespeare’s England. Some medicinal plants were cultivated in kitchen and herb gardens, but they differed little from their wild equivalents. Exotic herbs – that is plants from overseas – were beginning to play an increasing[…]
Detail from Thomas Patch’s etching Laurence Sterne, alias Tristram Shandy: “And When Death Himself Knocked at My Door”(1769) — Metropolitan Museum of Art Looking at the engagement with mortality so important to the novelist’s groundbreaking work. By Dr. Ian Campbell Ross / 03.07.2018 Emeritus Professor of 18th-Century Studies Trinity College, Dublin This year brings two notable anniversaries in[…]
The significance of performance in actualization, transmission, and composition. Audience and occasion. Implications for the study of oral literature. Oral art as literature. By Dr. Ruth Finnegan Emeritus Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology The Open University Introduction Africa possesses both written and unwritten traditions. The former are relatively well known—at any rate the recent[…]
D’Israeli as he appears in the frontispiece to Vol.I of the 1880 Armstrong and Son edition of Curiosities of Literature – Internet Archive Marvin Spevack introduces the Curiosities of Literature, the epic cornucopia of essays on all things literary by Isaac D’Israeli: a scholar, man of letters and father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. By the Late Dr.[…]
The 1695 frontispiece to the manuscript pages which, in 1697, were to become the first edition of Perrault’s Histoires ou Contes du temps passé. On the door, behind the old woman telling the tales, is written “Contes de ma mère l’Oye”, Tales of Mother Goose, a subtitle which was to take prominence in the first English[…]
A family visiting the Getty Villa explores ancient art, history, and mythology through frescoes from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. The influence of classical mythology lives on in our culture. Here are some tips for exploring this subject with kids. By Erin Branham / 10.07.2012 Education Specialist for Family Programs Getty Villa Teaching kids[…]
Class portrait, unknown school, somewhere in England (1860s) / Scanned by pellethepoet, Flickr, Creative Commons By Dr. Robert A. Houston / 11.28.2011 Professor of Modern History University of St. Andrews Abstract Between ca. 1500 and ca. 1800 most Western European societies moved decisively from restricted to mass literacy. This article outlines the spectrum of skills[…]