English Literature Studies Menu - General
Diction, Syntax and Metaphor - a basic guide
Diction (also known as lexis) is the word we use to describe the careful choice of words by a writer. Continues>>
The Key Skills for English Exams
Whether you are studying at GCSE or A Level (or beyond), you will, to some degree or other, be judged on the following skills: Continues>>
Examination Techniques For Unseen Texts
Exams are a game. You can be good at them, or bad at them. You can certainly improve your performance. Continues>>
GCSE English: Thinking About the Ways in Which Language is Used
People use language to convey meaning, but …they also use it to hide meanings. This is why we use critical thinking when we consider language.Continues>>
AS/A Level English
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights...
There is never a correct answer in English. Lots of different critics have different viewpoints, different ideological perspectives and different cultural backgrounds: Continues>>
William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience...
The form of these poems (considered as a whole group) is based around the lyric form. “Lyric” meant originally a set of words designed to be accompanied by a lyre, and is nowadays taken to mean something like ‘words for a song’. Continues>>
English Skills: How to Compare Poems
Being asked to compare two poems can be daunting. It needn’t be. Continues>>
Reading Guides:
William Blake - The Blossom
Two six line stanzas, with repetitions a feature of form which is detailed in "Structure" below. Very short poem. Continues>>
William Blake - The Chimney Sweeper
Very arresting opening, achieved by having an imbalance in impact between the adverbial clause of time ("When my mother died", containing all the interest and drama...Continues>>
William Blake - A Cradle Song
Lots of long vowels (many making the ee and ī sound) create lots of internal rhymes and a kind of droning background to the poem, suitable, of course...Continues>>
William Blake - Nurse's Song
The first line sets up an anapaestic rhythm which spans four feet in the first line of the verse...Continues>>
William Blake - Infant Joy
The most interesting thing about the language in this poem, so far as I can see, is the fact that it is about 50% exclamations...Continues>>
William Blake - The Ecchoing Green
Short lines, suitable for conveying the energy and exuberance of both the children and the older people (for whom the sight of children playing recalls the days of their own energetic times)...Continues>>
William Blake - The Lamb
A dramatic monologue: a child playing teacher to A Lamb, which suggests that the child has been in the lamb’s position before a religious teacher him/herself...Continues>>
William Blake: Songs of Experience
The themes which dominate these poems are tyranny, effected by brutality or by deceit, the lack of freedom and openness in love, and enslavement, especially of children. Continues>>
Shakespeare's Measure for Measure: critical issues
Dryden: “grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused mirth, nor the serious part your concernment”. Continues>>
Meter in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure
In Measure for Measure, when Isabella first enters Angelo’s presence her initial timidity is conveyed by the obliqueness of her approach, the politeness of her rhetoric, Continues>>
Denise Levertov: Notes
Denise Levertov lived in America, though she was born in England. Her parents were Russian and Welsh. Continues>>
English - How to Compare Poems
Being asked to compare two poems can be daunting. It needn’t be. The mental processes a critical...Continues>>
Robert Frost: The Pasture
Work and its value. (The Wood Pile, After Apple Picking, Death of the Hired Man, Mowing, The Tuft of Flowers...Continues>>
Robert Frost: Ghost House
“Purple-stemmed” is very suggestive to me: is it to you? Of what? Why is this modifier given such a powerful position in the poetic line? Continues>>
Robert Frost: Waiting Afield at Dusk
Blank verse, iambic pentameter. Two long sentences, arranged into two blank-verse stanzas. (Not free verse...Continues>>
Robert Frost: Mowing
Sonnet connects octave and sestet with a colon. Worth seeing this as a feature of the use of sonnet form...Continues>>
Robert Frost: The Tuft of Flowers
Couplets draw ideas sharply together in ways that can be provocative.
Good example of how couplets can be effective in the rhyming of “keen” and “view the levelled scene”. Continues>>
