Centaurs are surely the most famous human-animal hybrids from classical mythology, along with the Minotaur. But what do centaurs represent? These creatures – part-human, part-horse – turn up in a number of different myths from antiquity, but the meaning of these stories, and what the centaurs symbolise, varies from tale to tale. The myth of
Literature
May 1, 2023, 4:55am It’s a new month, and that means, amongst other things, that a lot of wonderful, exciting, thought-provoking titles are finally being released in paperback. The titles below span a wide range, including authors old and new, established and promising. I hope you’ll find a few to add to your lists! *
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Happier Than Ever’, the title track from Billie Eilish’s second studio album released in 2021, has rapidly become one of her most talked-about tracks. But what is the meaning of this song, and whom is Eilish addressing in the lyrics? ‘Happier Than Ever’: song meaning Originally titled ‘Away from
“Don’t worry about the class. You just concentrate on getting well. The class will still be there when you come back.” Though this statement might read like an email from a kind faculty member to a student sick with COVID-19, it actually hails from a much more historically distant source: the hit television series Murder,
‘Feathers from a Thousand Li Away’ is a short one-page parable which acts as preface to Amy Tan’s 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club. The novel as a whole is a series of interlinked stories about the daughters of Chinese immigrants who came to America, hoping to give their daughters a better life. A li,
The following is from Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers. Yezierska was born in Poland and came to America in 1890 when she was nine years old. By the 1920s she had risen out of poverty and become a successful writer of stories, novels; all autobiographical; and an autobiography, Red Ribbon on a White Horse. Her novel
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The word ‘literary’ can have several meanings. Obviously it’s most familiar as the adjectival form of literature: i.e., it means ‘of or relating to literature’. But it can also be used to refer to somebody’s style (a literary style of writing), or to describe somebody’s personality (he’s a literary
TODAY: In 1885, Austrian and Czechoslovak writer and journalist Egon Erwin Kisch is born. “A hypnagogic horror show.” Brian Dillon on migraines and scotoma, and trying to describe the geometry of blind spots. | Lit Hub Health David Sexton considers Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go: “What this book is about is ordinary, normal and everyday, the
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Long Rain’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied short stories by the American writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). Although Bradbury preferred to describe himself as a ‘fantasy’ writer, this story is most accurately categorised as science fiction. It was originally published (under the title ‘Death-by-Rain’) in
April 28, 2023, 8:23am The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction has been running for 25 years, recognizing the best work of non-fiction each year with a tidy sum of £25,000. This year, to celebrate its quarter century, the prize looked back on its previous 24 winners to crown a “Winner of Winners Award.” The voice
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘What I Have Been Doing Lately’ is a short story by the Antigua-born writer Jamaica Kincaid (born 1949). It was first published in the Paris Review in 1981 before being reprinted in Kincaid’s first published book, At the Bottom of the River, in 1983. The story is narrated by
This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day, the one-day book party held all across the country on the last Saturday in April every year to celebrate indie bookstores large and small. There’s no better time to show your local indie a little love—preferably by going to buy a book in person. But
‘A Litany for Survival’ is a 1978 poem by the American poet Audre Lorde (1934-92). Lorde was a self-described ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.’ In the poem, Lorde addresses other people who are voiceless and marginalised in society, observing that fear rules their lives but it is better to speak up and use one’s voice
Every month, all the major streaming services add a host of newly acquired (or just plain new) shows, movies, and documentaries into their ever-rotating libraries. So what’s a dedicated reader to watch? Well, whatever you want, of course, but the name of this website is Literary Hub, so we sort of have an angle. To
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, as the (slightly ungrammatically reworded) sentiment has it, or ‘Let him without sin cast the first stone’. This quotation can be traced back to Jesus, and to a specific incident described in the Gospel of St John, but what
April 27, 2023, 9:07am Neil Gaiman has his first full-length album coming out, a collaboration with Australian indie string quartet FourPlay called Signs of Life. Gaiman, obviously, has tried his hand at all kinds of writing—adapted myth, tv, comics—and has now written a record’s worth of prose and poetry set to music. As Gaiman told
Marriage is a key theme in literature, of course: a fact which need hardly surprise us when we reflect that many people spend the majority of their lives married to somebody else. Marriage also touches upon other prominent themes, including love, commitment, having children, lust, conflict, and even, in some cases, hatred. Below, we introduce
In college, I wrote a story set in Paris, inspired by my first visit to that city the summer prior. I felt very sophisticated typing out the names of streets and bridges I’d walked, and conjuring, with astonishing ease, the character of a lovesick Impressionist painter living in Montmartre and dabbing at his canvas. I