Oliver Tearle – författare

The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem explores how cultural responses to the trauma of the First World War found expression in the form of the modernist long poem. Beginning with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Oliver Tearle reads that most famous example of the genre in comparison with lesser known long poems, such as Hope Mirrlees’s Paris: A Poem, Richard Aldington’s A Fool I’ the Forest and Nancy Cunard’s Parallax. As well as presenting a new history of this neglected genre, the book examines the ways in which the modernist long poem represented the seminal literary form for grappling with the crises of European modernity in the wake of World War I.

The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem explores how cultural responses to the trauma of the First World War found expression in the form of the modernist long poem. Beginning with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Oliver Tearle reads that most famous example of the genre in comparison with lesser known long poems, such as Hope Mirrlees’s Paris: A Poem, Richard Aldington’s A Fool I’ the Forest and Nancy Cunard’s Parallax. As well as presenting a new history of this neglected genre, the book examines the ways in which the modernist long poem represented the seminal literary form for grappling with the crises of European modernity in the wake of World War I.

T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) was the author of a small number of poems and some genuinely innovative critical and philosophical writings. From this modest output his influence on later writers was considerable: T. S. Eliot described his poems as ‘beautiful’ and Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis were both inspired by his work. T.E. Hulme and Modernism explores his impact on key modernist figures, and also shows where this influence has been misplaced or misinterpreted. Oliver Tearle also here suggests that Hulme’s significance goes beyond his influence on modernism, and that his work provides new ways of thinking about creative and critical writing in the 21st century. What is poetry? What is the purpose of literary criticism? And how might the strange phenomenon of the fragment offer new ways of theorising such issues? In exploring these and other important matters this book pushes at the boundaries of literary criticism and of writing itself.

What caused Dickens to leap out of bed one night and walk 30 miles from London to Kent?How did a small town on the Welsh borders become the second-hand bookshop capital of the world?Why did a jellyfish persuade Evelyn Waugh to abandon his suicide attempt in North Wales? A multitude of curious questions are answered in Britain by the Book, a fascinating travelogue with a literary theme, taking in unusual writers' haunts and the surprising places that inspired some of our favourite fictional locations. We'll learn why Thomas Hardy was buried twice, how a librarian in Manchester invented the thesaurus as a means of coping with depression, and why Agatha Christie was investigated by MI5 during the Second World War. The map of Britain that emerges is one dotted with interesting literary stories and bookish curiosities.

T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) was the author of a small number of poems and some genuinely innovative critical and philosophical writings. From this modest output his influence on later writers was considerable: T. S. Eliot described his poems as ‘beautiful’ and Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis were both inspired by his work. T.E. Hulme and Modernism explores his impact on key modernist figures, and also shows where this influence has been misplaced or misinterpreted. Oliver Tearle also here suggests that Hulme’s significance goes beyond his influence on modernism, and that his work provides new ways of thinking about creative and critical writing in the 21st century. What is poetry? What is the purpose of literary criticism? And how might the strange phenomenon of the fragment offer new ways of theorising such issues? In exploring these and other important matters this book pushes at the boundaries of literary criticism and of writing itself.

How much do you know about the Victorian novelist who outsold Dickens? Or the woman who became the first published poet in America? Do you know what connects Homer’s Iliad to Aesop’s Fables?The Secret Library explores these intriguing morsels of lesser-known history, along with the familiar literary heavyweights we know and love. Bringing together an eclectic literary mix of novels, plays, travel books, science books and joke books, author Oliver Tearle explores how the history of the Western World has intersected with all kinds of books over the last 3,000 years. Delve into this treasure trove of curious literary examples to learn how our history and books are inextricably linked.

According to Oscar Wilde, the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not'. Through a series of close and often unusual readings, this book endeavours to develop Wilde's remark into a detailed and creative theory of reading. Or perhaps that should be misreading: for, as this experimental work of criticism negotiates its way among the works of a number of late-nineteenth-century writers, particularly Robert Louis Stevenson and Wilde himself, Tearle uncovers some of the ways in which we as readers are prone to hallucinations while reading about, of all things, the experience of hallucination. Focusing in detail on a series of neologisms from writing of the period, such as 'handconscience', 'figmentary', and 'aftersense', and moving between a number of disciplines including literature, criticism, science, psychoanalysis, and even linguistics, Bewilderments of Vision endeavours to answer a number of questions, ranging from the urgent to the downright bizarre: What is the link between hallucination and social conscience in writing of the late-nineteenth century? Is there such a thing as textual hallucination? Why does the author of this book see a 'snake' that is not there when he 'reads' Jekyll and Hyde?

Oscar Wilde famously spoke of 'the critic as artist' whilst Terry Eagleton once celebrated 'the critic as clown'. This exciting new volume brings together a range of writings that seek to radically re-imagine the often pale figure of the literary critic. In doing so we here glimpse a host of unfamiliar figures from the critic as pedestrian to the critic as suicide through the critic as revivalist and even the critic as bodger. The result is a book that seeks to locate the truly critical critic -- or, to be paradoxical, the critic as critic; the critic who is a critic of criticism as conventionally understood. This is the final volume of the immensely successful 'Critical Inventions' series.