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.
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 illustrated reading of Hopkins’s Spring and Fall, accompanied by images of autumn that complement the poem’s meditation on childhood, sorrow, and mortality.
A combined reading and analysis of the first sonnet of Swinburne’s Hermaphroditus, exploring its classical mythology, themes of gender and beauty, and its place in the Victorian Aesthetic movement.
A combined reading and analysis of Hopkins’s Spring and Fall, exploring its themes of childhood innocence, the awareness of mortality, and Hopkins’s distinctive sprung rhythm.
A combined reading and analysis of Hardy’s The Oxen, a Christmas poem exploring nostalgia, lost faith, and the yearning for a simpler rural past.
A combined reading and analysis of Hardy’s The Darkling Thrush, examining its themes of hope and despair at the turn of the century, and the unexpected song of the thrush in a winter landscape.
A combined reading and analysis of Hardy’s The Voice, a moving elegy exploring grief, memory, and the haunting presence of a lost love.