The English Miscellany

During bereavement we often want to express the sense of love and loss but find ourselves lost for words. In this case poetry can have a very powerful emotional and spiritual effect. Poems can also challenge and provoke different ways of thinking about difficult experiences. But it is often quite difficult to find a poem that is suitable for a public service that expresses both celebration and loss. In this blog I have selected several poems that may help you to mark your sense of loss, and aid reflection, commemoration and celebration. I have tried to encompass a variety of moods, tones and approaches to reflect the different phases of grief. Gitanjali -  Rabindranath Tagore I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards. Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil. Today the summer has come at my window with its

The Guardian recently selected Richardson's Clarissa as No. 4 on its list of the Top 100 great Novels of all time. Are such lists a snap-shot of current reading habits. Perhaps the choice of this 984,870 word text from 1748 is pure nostalgia. In my view, however, it sometimes makes sense to spend the entire week on Clarissa , or Middlemarch , or Tom Jones , or Bleak House , or War and Peace ; at other times several sonnets command the same investment of spirit, intellect and emotion. Clearly the great epics also repay re-reading, or at least selective re-sampling, of favourite passages and turning points. With regard to Clarissa , the reading process is an ordeal, a pleasure, and a discipline (rather like Foucault on sex). Reading an abridged version is perhaps like the difference between a one night stand and a longterm relationship... It's a different question how well these longer novels function academically in an over-crowded superfast highwa

One of the advantages of Academia is that it is a quick and efficient way to share your work and connect with scholars across the world, whether employed in public or private universities, or working elsewhere as independent or retired scholars. Although the statistics provided by Academia are not a measure of scholarly ‘impact’ they do help to illustrate the academic ‘reach’ of this site and its efficacy in empowering the free dissemination of scholarship. Admittedly, the statistics do not evaluate whether those academic ties are ‘strong’ or ‘weak’; but they do indicate the range of connectedness and suggest the vibrancy of a public sphere that is far greater than the physical international conference circuit, which is often unaffordable for the majority of less affluent academics across the globe. As an example, my work has connected with scholars in the following countries: Venezuela, Ukraine, Mauritius, Mexico, Czech Republic, Albania, Armenia, Argentina, Aze

Toronto: University College, 1858 Its marble towers of urbanitas ; its fertile meadows of pastorale ; its lofty epic contests; its festivals of comedy and its fleet footed intoxicated lyrics ;   the grins and grimace of the satyr and the harsh winter land of tragedy ; this other academia and that ... “It was a perfect title, in that it crystallized the article's niggling mindlessness, its funeral parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems.” ― Kingsley Amis. "There is this tremendous body of knowledge in the world of academia where extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful people have taken the time to examine on a really profound level the way we live our lives and who we are and where we've been. That brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in academia and never sees the light of day." — Malcolm Gladwell. "If I stay in academia, I might end up going someplace random." — Lauren Wil