- This project is creating a website dedicated to the theme “Great Writers inspire – learning from the past”. On the site you will be able to find freely available content related to individual authors and literary themes. We are using this blog to let you follow the progress of the project and explore the material as it is being made available. Feel free to send us your comments and suggestions! Want to be inspired? Explore the podcasts on the Great Writers Inspire podcast page.
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Monthly Archives: March 2012
Ben Jonson: Renaissance Playwright, Renaissance Man
Ben Jonson was an early modern playwright whose popularity rivalled that of Shakespeare or Marlowe. He spent multiple stints in prison, wrote masques in which the Queen of England and Prince of Wales performed, and was crowned England’s first poet … Continue reading
Listen: Francis Leneghan on Beowulf
The title of this collaborative project, ‘The Great Writers Project’, naturally brings up several questions, most importantly of which is, ‘What is a Writer?’ In his talk on the Old English poem Beowulf, Francis Leneghan discusses that very concern. The … Continue reading
Posted in ebooks, resource
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Releasing and reusing Creative Commons material
In this post I’m going to briefly cover some of the basics of Creative Commons (CC) licensing and some of the pitfalls to avoid when doing it. I work in Oxford University Computing Services, in a number of little projects … Continue reading
Posted in project news
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Aphra Behn: A “Life dedicated to Pleasure and Poetry”
Aphra Behn was a bold, salacious, and pioneering individual. If Frances Burney made women writers respectable, it was Aphra Behn who put them on the map. Young Woman In 1640 Aphra Behn was born Eaffrey Johnson of Canterbury, the daughter of … Continue reading
You Read My Mind
I just wanted to draw your attention to some fascinating research on the act of reading… http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all Neuroscientists have discovered that reading stimulates several different parts of the brain, not just our language-processing centres. When we read metaphors such as … Continue reading
Posted in reflection
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Watch and Listen: David Fallon on William Blake
In this podcast (video/audio), Dr David Fallon introduces the poetry, painting, and engraving of William Blake (1757-1827), focusing on the imaginative and visionary aspects of Blake’s work and his desire to break the public’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles’. Blake is best known … Continue reading
Posted in resource, writer
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Watch and Listen: Faith Binckes on Katherine Mansfield
In this podcast (video/audio), Dr Faith Binckes explains why modernist short story writer and critic Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is a great writer, highlighting her involvement with the 1911-1913 periodical Rhythm, edited by her second husband John Middleton Murry. Katherine Mansfield … Continue reading
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Happy International Women’s Day!
To celebrate International Women’s Day, I thought I’d share two of my favourite websites dedicated texts written by women: ‘Woolf Online’: http://www.woolfonline.com/ This website provides contextual materials and free online access to a selection of Woolf’s texts. There are some … Continue reading
Posted in resource
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John Webster: A Darker Playwright for Renaissance England
In the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, a young boy seen feeding a live mouse to a cat identifies himself as John Webster. When Will Shakespeare asks the boy what he thought of Titus Andronicus, Webster replies, “I like it … Continue reading
Olive Schreiner: A Great Podcast
Last week I finally found the time to have a look at the Great Writers Inspire podcasts. There’s such a varied selection, from famous writers such as Dickens and Shakespeare, to lesser known authors such as Stephen Duck, J.M. Coetzee, … Continue reading
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