A combined reading and analysis of the opening eighteen lines of Chaucer’s General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, examining the seasonal imagery, the pilgrimage context, and Chaucer’s use of irony.
A full-length introduction to transformational grammar covering basic sentence structure, the present simple tense, negatives, questions, emphasis, and the major word classes.
An exploration of how rigidly Shakespeare adheres to iambic pentameter, examining his use of metrical variation, substitution, and the relationship between rhythm and dramatic meaning.
An analysis of Hamlet’s To Be or Not to Be soliloquy, focusing on its ethical arguments about revenge, mortality, and the paralysis of indecision.
An examination of the claim that Shakespeare coined an exceptional number of English words and expressions, weighing the evidence from contemporary sources and the history of the language.
A concise introduction to what we know about Shakespeare from contemporary sources, tracing the documentary record of his life from his baptism in Stratford in 1564 to his burial there, with reference to contemporary praise from Francis Meres.
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.