An aubade, deriving from the medieval French word for dawn, is a lyric poem with no prescribed form in which the poet typically celebrates the beauty of his mistress as the sun rises and he must leave her bed: John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” is a well-known example. Philip Larkin’sContinue Reading
An “aubade” is a morning love song (it is the opposite of a serenade, which takes place in the evening). Sometimes it is written about when lover’s separate at dawn. Or, as in this poem, a song or poem announcing dawn; the lover in this scenario is death, when theContinue Reading
Philip Larkin (1922–1985) was one of the most significant English poets of the 20th century, renowned for his poignant, ironic, and often melancholic reflections on modern life. Born in Coventry, England, Larkin studied at Oxford University and later became a librarian, a profession he held for over three decades atContinue Reading
All of Lamb’s major trademarks as an essayist are to be found in this work: overall, a relaxed and colloquial voice and a genteel sensibility incorporating elements of humour, whimsy, strong personal recollection and touches of pathos. All these mark him out as one of the great exponents of theContinue Reading
Humour may be described as an extreme sensitiveness to the true proportion of things and pathos that appeals to our feelings of compassion and evokes sympathy. Charles Lamb is a great artist in showing humour and pathos in a single row. He had as keen a perception of the funnyContinue Reading
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) was an eminent English essayist, poet, and critic, best remembered for his charming and deeply personal essays collected in Essays of Elia. Born in London, Lamb spent much of his life working as a clerk at the East India Company. Despite his modest professional life, he leftContinue Reading
John Keats (1795–1821) was one of the leading figures of the second generation of English Romantic poets, alongside Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. Though his literary career was brief—spanning only about six years—Keats produced a body of work that has become a cornerstone of English poetry, celebrated for itsContinue Reading
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian writer whose work has had a profound influence on modern literature. Born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka was raised in a middle-class Jewish family. He studied law and worked for an insurance company, writing fiction in his spare time.Continue Reading
A short story is a short work of fiction, a prose writing about imagined events and characters. Generally speaking a short story combines five key elements – character, setting, plot, conflict, and theme. Most short stories are focused on a single character, a central protagonist – human or animal –Continue Reading
James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish modernist writer renowned for revolutionizing the art of fiction through his experimental use of language, stream-of-consciousness technique, and deep psychological insight. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Joyce’s complex relationship with his homeland remained a central theme in much of his work, even though he spentContinue Reading
