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Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature

The highlight of this year has been participating in recordings for The Poetry Show on KUSP Radio, Santa Cruz. This post is indebted to a discussion of Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the Willow Shade’ for our fourth installment which aired on 8th May, the best to date.

We all enjoy solitude at points in our lives. Privacy is not just a right, one might argue, but a human requirement. We all enjoy that little realm when the door is shut firmly behind us and we can lapse into self-sufficiency.

The fundamental problem is how to draw the right balance. Managing solitude can be vital to our psychological wellbeing. It is difficult to maintain relationships that have little contact, and even harder to develop new ones. We live in times where it is easy to get lost and forgotten if we do not project ourselves publicly. It is rare that people will come looking for us.

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The Broken Image

Published May 15, 2011 Literature , Politics , research , Television 3 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Art, Doctor Who, Early Modern, Ekphrasis, Elegy, English Revolution, Icons, Interregnum, Literature, Mirrors, Oliver Cromwell, Privacy, research, Seventeenth Century, Visual Culture

How Doctor Who brings to light one of Andrew Marvell’s most touching moments...

Doctor Who: The Curse of Black Spot #1

There is little more pleasing than the perfect image. There is also real gratification in constructing an image. Over recent months, however, I have come to understand the terrible beauty and power that comes with an image that is broken.

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East Midlands Early Modern Colloquium

Published April 21, 2011 Culture , Leicester , Literature , research 1 Comment
Tags: Censorship, Drama, Early Modern, English Revolution, Icons, Interregnum, John Donne, Kingship, Literature, Print Culture, Public Sphere, Quakers, Religion, research, Self-Discipline, Self-Promotion, Seventeenth Century, Visual Culture, William Shakespeare

Religion, Print and Visual Culture in the Early Modern Period [April 2011].

The second East Midlands Early Modern Colloquium convened at De Montfort University in April 2011 after a three year hiatus. Delegates from Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, and Nottingham Trent joined home convenor Siobhan Keenan at the impressive Clephan Building for an equally impressive set of papers. [Full schedule attached here].

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A Long Winter’s Tale

Published April 17, 2011 Leicester , Literature , Politics , research 2 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Cultural Revolution, Early Modern, English Civil War, English Revolution, Geneva, humour, John Milton, Leicester, Literature, Nigel Smith, Politics, Print Culture, Public Sphere, Reformation, Religion, Seventeenth Century, Teaching

A summary of research activity from January-March 2011. This features a lecture by Nigel Smith at the Andrew Marvell Centre in Hull; a teaching event at the University of York; and the biannual British Milton Seminar at Birmingham Central Library.

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“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts

Published April 11, 2011 Edinburgh , Literature , research 2 Comments
Tags: Andrew Balfour, Andrew Marvell, Art, Circles, Early Modern, Ekphrasis, Elegy, Facebook, George Puttenham, Jigsaw, John Donne, Literature, Mosaic, Oliver Cromwell, Print Culture, Psychology, Robert Browning, Seventeenth Century, Thomas Salusbury

Several years ago, a phrase came into my head on a dark day: “life is a jigsaw”. It was used for a trail of dark introspective thoughts concerning self-image, but it was clearly an analogy that had plenty more to offer.

The phrase is hardly unique to me; Google will attest to that. But my introspective thought has long revolved around shapes. George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (1569), which describes the properties of shapes, reminds us that the study of literature can transgress disciplines and fuse modes of thought creatively.

Original thought is fun to contemplate. Are our lives the equivalent of average undergraduate essays: recasting what has come before in our own way and offering a mere fraction of originality along the way? What constitutes new ideas? What is a ‘philosopher’, for their own chutzpah? Much which challenges subjective realms of thought must owe itself to literature.

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Poetry and Appearing on KUSP, Santa Cruz

Published March 29, 2011 Leicester , Literature 5 Comments
Tags: Art, Ekphrasis, Elegy, Leicester, Literature, Mirrors, Poetry, Privacy, Radio, Santa Cruz

This post embraces loneliness by celebrating togetherness. The conduit is that indefinable, elusive, and enigmatic craft of poetry.

95% loneliness: Poetry

The falling leaf poem, the first in e.e. cummings’ collection 95 poems, inspired the strongest definition of poetry I’ve ever been able to come up with: ‘95% loneliness’. It’s impossibly inadequate, of course. It says nothing of genre, form, or even of certainty; it just vividly suggests something about authorship. For me, it stands the test of time.

Poetry is an enigma that delves beyond certainty. It doesn’t write itself, and whatever brings it about evokes just as many harrowing questions as that which appears on the page.

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Solitariness: A Sweet Side-Note

Published February 27, 2011 Literature , Politics , Television Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Censorship, Cultural Revolution, Doctor Who, English Civil War, English Revolution, Literature, MPs' Expenses, Print Culture, Privacy, Public Sphere

Rory guards the Pandorica

I’ll be thy Champion to defend
Thy person from all these dangers and harms;
No Army’s so sure as a real friend,
Nor castle defends like a lover’s arms.
But if I can’t daunt ‘em,
By valour and might
Your face shall enchant ‘em,
For beauty can fight.
There’s no armour can men free
From the naked pow’r of such beauties as thee.

Alexander Brome, from To his Mistres affrighted in the wars (1661)

I recently thought a little about what modern interpretations of Shakespeare can offer. What, then, of accidental crossovers – when something from early-modern literature leaps out as being particularly well-suited to a new moment?

People ask (and I often ask myself) why I am fascinated by literature of the English Civil War but so little other war literature. I’ve found three main reasons, for which the above completes the triad.

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Teaching Shakespeare at Leicester, and Private Observations

Published February 21, 2011 Culture , Literature 4 Comments
Tags: David Tennant, Drama, Education, Hamlet, Kingship, Leicester, Literature, Teaching, William Shakespeare

On 21st February, I led a class on Shakespeare for Leicester University’s International Office to a number of international visitors. Perhaps, in this case, it was to my fortune that Leicester are relatively thin on the ground when it comes to early-modernists at postgraduate level (although there is plenty to be said for the diversity that the department offers). It was my first university teaching role for two years, and there were some audio-visual treats in store.

The class was built around a potent combination that I have discussed before: Shakespeare in Love, and the 2009 Hamlet (feat. David Tennant), which gave me an opportunity to reignite my flame for film, play and performance respectively.

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An MP Turning Down a Secret Bribe? Bipolar Privacy

Published January 22, 2011 Literature , Politics , research 1 Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Early Modern, Literature, MPs' Expenses, Nigel Smith, Politics, Privacy, Restoration, Secrecy, Seventeenth Century

There are two sides to privacy: the bright side and the dark side. It is often politics which brings these to the fore. In 2009, the scandal surrounding MPs expenses showed the ugly art of secrecy breeding secrecy, and the ramifications are only now beginning to take effect.

Yet key public figures constantly find themselves involved with, or victim of, private and secretive practices. The prime minister’s communications chief, Andy Coulson, still suspected by many of complicity in secret phone-tapping, has just resigned. As has shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, citing private issues, after a member of his security team was alleged to have had an affair with his wife.

Mr Brightside

Andrew Marvell was MP elect for Hull for almost two decades from 1659. Interestingly, his inclination towards secrecy and privacy has rarely complicated the view of him as an honest, dedicated, and incorruptible public servant. And I was pleased to recently stumble across an anecdote about Marvell from the mid-eighteenth century that celebrates (as well we might today) the value of an honest politician. It relates to expenses, no less!

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A Green Thought: Private Minds

Published January 10, 2011 Literature , research , Writing 4 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Dorian Gray, Dysmorphophobia, Literature, Oscar Wilde, Privacy, research, Secrecy, Self-Confidence, Solitude, Writing

It is a great shame that it is so difficult to make personal experience count in professional or academic writing.

The first time I attempted genuine research was looking at Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray through the lens of dysmorphophobia, or body dysmorphic disorder. Of course, it wasn’t random reading of somatoform disorder textbooks that brought this match to my attention, but personal experience. And, to be honest, personal experience does not always match what textbooks or research papers have to say.

There’s a scene where Dorian’s portrait is revealed, and Dorian is momentarily ecstatic with it, then inexplicably miserable. It’s one of many emotional episodes that seem so tangibly familiar to me, yet so difficult to map credibly and analytically into academic writing. This is probably why, despite being my most unique piece of work, it has never become anything more than a reference in a personal newspaper article on the subject of BDD.

The same scenario surfaces for Andrew Marvell. Continue reading ‘A Green Thought: Private Minds’

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Writing Privacy

Posts Tagged 'Literature'

Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature

The Broken Image

East Midlands Early Modern Colloquium

A Long Winter’s Tale

“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts

Poetry and Appearing on KUSP, Santa Cruz

95% loneliness: Poetry

Solitariness: A Sweet Side-Note

Teaching Shakespeare at Leicester, and Private Observations

An MP Turning Down a Secret Bribe? Bipolar Privacy

Mr Brightside

A Green Thought: Private Minds

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