Thoughts about teaching, literature, and teaching literature
This is part 4 of a four part series of posts looking at An Inspector Calls. It is written with students in mind. This post looks at the interactions between Eric and the Inspector as well as the end of play. The Inspector and Eric After having left earlier in the play Eric now returns.It... Continue Reading →
What is it about? A father, the speaker, watches his son play football at school. As his son walks away from him he becomes worried that their relationship has fundamentally changed, since his son is growing up and becoming more independent. However, the speaker comes to realise that this is an experience all parents have... Continue Reading →
In this post, which is Part 3 of a four part series, we look at the Inspector's interactions with Gerald and Mrs Birling. The series is written with students in mind. The Inspector and Gerald At the end of Act One the Inspector reveals that Eva often went by a different name (Daisy Renton) and... Continue Reading →
This is Part 2 of a 4 part analysis of An Inspector Calls, written with students in mind. In this part we explore the arrival of the Inspector as well as his early interactions with Mr Birling and Sheila. Part 1 explored the initial moments of the play and the introduction of various key characters.... Continue Reading →
The below covers the start of the play and includes comments and thoughts on the initial introduction of some of the key characters, before the Inspector's arrival Setting the Scene The play opens with a set of detailed and specific stage directions and Priestley’s use of stagecraft, here, introduces the audience to some of the... Continue Reading →
The poem begins with the weather mimicking the emotion of the couple: ‘The clouds had given their all –’. At a literal level, this image is referencing how the clouds have expended all of their rain. However, at a more symbolic level it reflects how the couple are emotionally exhausted and how the relationship is... Continue Reading →
Most, if not all, English Literature specifications at GCSE and A Level require the student to make points of connection between two texts, something either explicitly stated in the specification or implied through the format of the question. Given its prevalence, making apt and stylistically fluid textual comparisons is an aspect of essay writing that... Continue Reading →
I spend a lot of time at GCSE and A Level explicitly teaching and modelling various types of sentences that I want students to use in essays. These provide a very powerful way in which students can frame and signpost their analysis; a syntactic anchor to hold down their argument. In this post, I want... Continue Reading →
Context & Plot Byron's fellow Romantic poet William Wordsworth once remarked that poetry was the ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ and one notices that in this poem the speaker is certainly coming to terms with ‘powerful feelings’.Byron was known to be an especially licentious and promiscuous individual and thus it is no surprise to find... Continue Reading →
Context, Plot and Connections Despite being best known as a novelist, Hardy also had a fruitful poetic career. This particular poem is very typical of his general style as evident in other works: it is bleak, melancholy and pessimistic.What is the poem about? The speaker recalls a memory of when he and his lover stood... Continue Reading →
codexterous 