February is often reduced to a commercialized version of romance—roses, chocolates, and fleeting sentiment. But historically and aesthetically, February belongs to something deeper. It belongs to Romanticism. Not romance in the superficial sense, but the 19th-century movement that elevated emotion, nature, longing, solitude, imagination, and the sublime. In art, literature,…
Anne Brontë, the most radical of the sisters, defied the norms of the role of women to the best of her ability at her time.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) is often thought of as the quintessential Victorian poet: solemn, moral, deeply religious (or spiritually conflicted), and a poetic voice enshrined in the nation’s imagination. But behind that public persona lies a more turbulent, restless, and fascinating inner life — one that has lately received renewed attention…
Let’s travel into a tiny portion within the world of Gothic literature. When one thinks of Gothic literature, shadowed corridors, and the haunting echo of a beating heart beneath floorboards, one name inevitably rises from the depths—Edgar Allan Poe. Far beyond being simply a writer of the macabre, Poe was…
For this week’s blog post, I’d thought I’d detour a bit into the art of writing. As a writer, I have an interest in writers and their skills with the written word, including poets of the past, and wanted to incorporate writers and poets into my blog posts. John Donne…