Reading Cold Comfort Farm, a journey around the fads & fancies of 1932
Stella Gibbons attributed much of her novel’s success to ‘coming at exactly the right time.’ We’ll trace the history of ‘loam and lovechild’ novels as we read her parody.
More details ...‘A Man who used to notice such things’: the poetry of Thomas Hardy
Concentrating on Claire Tomalin’s selection (Poems of Thomas Hardy) we shall consider the themes into which Hardy’s poems are grouped and discuss individual poems in more detail.
More details ...The Brontës
This course will study a range of novels by the three Brontë sisters, who wrote some of the most popular novels to emerge in the 19th century and which have had an enduring appeal to the present day.
More details ...Shakespeare – his life and work
Explore Shakespeare via his life, poems and plays. There will be a case study of Hamlet – see “To be or not to be” performed in a variety of films; compare famous paintings of Ophelia; and find out why “the … More details …
Coleridge and his circle in Somerset
This course will explore the emerging Romantic sensibility and the poetry and politics of the 1790s. The focus is on Coleridge, particularly the inspiration he drew from the local landscape and from his friendship with Dorothy and William Wordsworth during … More details …