John Gray: Shakespeare’s Henry V: The Persons of the Play
All the characters in Shakespeare’s Henry V are discussed here in the order of the cast list in Gary Taylor, ed. Henry V (Oxford: The University Press, 1982): 89-90. Some characters that an audience may consider to be minor turn out to reward close study, not only because they illuminate the protagonist King Henry from their different perspectives, but also for their intrinsic interest. Although some minor characters have few lines–one has none!–they exemplify the infinite variety of human nature. (more…)
John Gray: Using Dictionaries and Why You Need to
Students of my friend and colleague, John Gray, much enjoyed his lectures on English Dictionaries. Reprinted below, these lectures show how you can test your current Dictionary and how you can choose the right Dictionary. They talk about how Dictionaries are made, and describe the evolution of English Dictionaries over the centuries. John’s lectures end with sketches of some famous Dictionary makers: all of them were brilliant scholars; some were great teachers; some were eccentric; some (most?) were cranky; and one was a murderer. (more…)
Virginia Woolf and Quentin Bell: Biographical Reflections
This lecture makes Quentin Bell’s 1972 biography of Virginia Woolf a starting point for a brief discussion of personal and social forces at play in her life. (more…)
Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle
This lecture demonstrates the preoccupation of Lady Oracle with the multiplicity of subjectivity, first in respect of the male, and then in respect of the female characters. As the discussion proceeds, broader interpretations of the novel and its themes emerge. References are to the London edition of Lady Oracle by Virago Press, 1984. (more…)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”: Tools for Interpretation
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a leader of the late nineteenth-century feminist movement in America, and a key theorist. The ideas presented in her book Women and Economics invite comparison with contemporary insights into women’s social and economic positioning. See below for a list of background and critical reading about “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which, together with her feminist utopia Herland, is Gilman’s best-known work. (more…)
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
A Room of One’s Own is so major a document in the development of feminist thought, criticism and writing, and there is so much to say about it, that I hardly know where to begin. Fortunately, there has been much illuminating commentary. (more…)
Everyman in Performance
This essay reconstructs early performances of the best known English morality play, Everyman, on the basis of the earliest surviving text, John Skot’s edition, dated 1528-1529, now in the Huntington Library. (more…)
Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts
As well as offering a broad analysis, this lecture suggests how Toril Moi’s insights in Chapter 1 of Sexual/Textual Politics (London: Methuen, 1985) can be applied to Virginia Woolf’s novel Between the Acts (Worlds Classics Paperback. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). The title of Moi’s chapter, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” is taken from a play by Edward Albee. I hope that the following discussion will encourage you to approach Between the Acts with confidence, so that in the end we can answer Moi’s question by affirming that no one is afraid of Virginia Woolf. (more…)
Stevie Smith’s Poetry
A search of library resources on British poet Stevie Smith reveals that scholarly interest in her poetry has deepened in the nearly half-century that has passed since her death in 1971. The following analyses focus on five poems by a writer who to date has famously defied attempts at categorisation, and who was truly a maverick and a rebel. Stevie Smith’s commitment to being herself makes her an inspiring example of courage and steadfastness for women readers. (more…)
Poems of the Holocaust
This is a brief introduction to three poems generated by the Holocaust–the mass slaughter of European civilians, especially Jews, by Hitler’s Nazi regime before and during World War II (Merriam-Webster). (more…)