-
“A Rich Man’s Whimsy”: Approaches to Rewilding in Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border
In her 2015 novel The Wolf Border Sarah Hall depicts the phenomena of rewilding, a process in conservation biology whereby extirpated species are reintroduced to their original landscapes in an effort to decrease human intervention in nature’s processes. Set against the backdrop of an alternate Scottish independence referendum, Hall explores… Continue reading
-
“Harlotrye” and “Moralitee”: Sexual & Other Violence in Chaucer’s ‘The Miller’s Tale’ and ‘The Reeve’s Tale’
Excluding ‘The Knight’s Tale’, the first fragment of The Canterbury Tales is characterised by “harlotrye” referring to crude jesting, not exclusively of a sexual nature as harlotry particularly means now. Chaucer represents harlotry as the antithesis of morality, or “virtuous conduct and thought” as in the ‘Miller’s Prologue‘ Chaucer the… Continue reading
-
Close Reading: Opening of ‘The Miller’s Tale’, Geoffrey Chaucer
This carpenter hadde wedded newe a wyf Which that he loved more than his lyf;Of eightene yeer she was of age.Jalous he was, and heeld hire narwe in cage,For she was wilde and yong, and he was oldAnd demed himself ben lyk a cokewold.He knew nat Catoun, for his wit… Continue reading
-
Close Reading: ‘Sonnet 45’, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Mary Wroth
Good now be still, and doe not me torment, With [multituds] of questions, be at rest, And onely let me quarrell with my breast,Which stil lets in new stormes my soule to rent. Fye, will you still my mischiefes more augment? You saye, I answere crosse, I that confest Long… Continue reading
-
Reflection: Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh and Western Cultural Imperialism
Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh explores the lives of four Saudia Arabian friends through emails written by an anonymous member of the friendship group. Described by Marilyn Booth as a novel about the “self-fashioning of the Saui bourgeoisie”, upon publication the novel achieved status in the West as a shining… Continue reading
-
Categorising Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Summer Will Show
In the most basic sense, Summer Will Show can be defined as a lesbian novel as it largely follows the intimate relationship between two women, specifically noting the displacement of the male figure associating them both together. However, the complexity of identity, the surrounding politics, and the deliberate vagueness in… Continue reading
-
Frankenstein and Early 19th Century English Political Thought
Now more commonly associated with the stand-alone Gothic genre, the 1818 version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was written during the Romantic Era and a period of social unrest in Europe, making it a work of Gothic or Dark Romanticism. Still shadowed by the influence of the French Revolution, revolutionary and… Continue reading
-
A Woman and Her Dog: The Experiences of Confinement and Liberation in Virginia Woolf’s Flush
In ‘Flush’, Virginia Woolf explores the ways Elizabeth and Flush experience confinement and liberation, focusing on how certain aspects of their identities inform these experiences. The parallels between Elizabeth and Flush’s experiences have led to the Feminist reading championed by Susan Squier that Flush’s confinement is an allegory of the… Continue reading