A playlist bringing together all videos on Oliver Twist, examining Dickens’s treatment of social reform, poverty, and conformity in Victorian England.
A playlist bringing together all videos on Wuthering Heights, exploring the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy and the question of whether they may be half-siblings.
A playlist exploring the opening chapter of Genesis as a work of literature, examining its narrative structure, imagery, and the literary qualities of the King James Bible translation.
An analysis of Oliver Twist examining the tension between social reform and conformity, exploring how Dickens uses the figure of the orphan to critique the Poor Law and Victorian attitudes to poverty and crime.
An analysis of the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, examining the textual evidence for the theory that they may be half-siblings and what this means for our reading of the novel.
An overview of women’s lives and literary culture in 17th-century England, with particular attention to writers including Mary Wroth and Aphra Behn and their place in the early modern literary tradition.
Readings from a selection of Middle English prose and verse texts including the Ormulum, the Agenbite of Inwit, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, illustrating the range and diversity of medieval English writing.