This page provides information on the poems and poets, prose and writers that you will encounter in the academic field of English Literature. Also, via the links below, you’ll find all you need if you are interested in analysing poetry and prose.

ENGLISH LIT.
The English language
“Elizabethan era” / “Love letters”
Anthology / Chronology / Terminology
Glossary of works, writers & literary devices:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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📕 Reading lists 📗 Poets of note 📘 Writers of note
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How to analyse poetry & prose
French in English / Latin in English
Phrases & idioms (with their etymology)

Poetry

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POETRY
From the Latin, ‘poetria’
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It means, writing that’s made intense by using distinctive style, rhythm and (usually) line length restrictions.

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Poets of Note

Aesop Angelou, Maya Blake, William Byron, Lord Catullus, Gaius Coleridge, Samuel T. Cummings, E. E. Dickinson, Emily Dryden, John Frost, Robert Heaney, Seamus Homer Horace Kaur, Rupi Keats, John Larkin, Philip Marlowe, Christopher Ovid Poe, Edgar Allen Raleigh, Walter Sappho Shakespeare, William Shelley, Percy Silverstein, Shel Spenser, Edmund Virgil

Alighieri, Dante Burton, Sir Richard Chomsky, Noam Conrad, Joseph Dawkins, Richard de Cervantes, Miguel Dickens, Charles Dostoevsky, Fyodor Forster, E. M. García Márquez, Gabriel Greene, Graham Harari, Yuval Hemingway, Earnest Hobsbawm, Eric Huxley, Aldous Kafka, Franz Lawrence, D. H. Miller, Henry Nin, Anaïs Orwell, George Pinker, Steven Proust, Marcel Saïd, Edward Steinbeck, John Tolstoy, Leo Updike, John Waugh, Evelyn Zola, Émile

Prose

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PROSE
From the Latin, ‘prosa oratio’
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It means, writing that’s in ordinary form; i.e., not academic or legal etc. It is different from poetry in that it does not conform to any rhyming schemes or line length restrictions.

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Writers of Note

Alighieri, Dante Burton, Sir Richard Chomsky, Noam Conrad, Joseph Dawkins, Richard de Cervantes, Miguel Dickens, Charles Dostoevsky, Fyodor Forster, E. M. García Márquez, Gabriel Greene, Graham Harari, Yuval Hemingway, Earnest Hobsbawm, Eric Huxley, Aldous Kafka, Franz Lawrence, D. H. Miller, Henry Nin, Anaïs Orwell, George Pinker, Steven Proust, Marcel Saïd, Edward Steinbeck, John Tolstoy, Leo Updike, John Waugh, Evelyn Zola, Émile

Aesop Angelou, Maya Blake, William Byron, Lord Catullus, Gaius Coleridge, Samuel T. Cummings, E. E. Dickinson, Emily Dryden, John Frost, Robert Heaney, Seamus Homer Horace Kaur, Rupi Keats, John Larkin, Philip Marlowe, Christopher Ovid Poe, Edgar Allen Raleigh, Walter Sappho Shakespeare, William Shelley, Percy Silverstein, Shel Spenser, Edmund Virgil

Things to Read

Well, Narratively I guess would be a good (online) first port of call. This portal has a good selection of short stories, novellas and flash fiction.

Genres include:

Crime & Punishment

Sex & Relationships (a.k.a. War & Peace)

Technology (esp. “sexting”)

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Book reviews are a form of literary criticism.* The books I review are those I read and/or hear are seminal. Reading, some say is, the best thing about being a human.

01. — Fiction 📙 Aeneid 📙 Aeschylus 📙 The Arabian Nights 📙 Brave New World 📙 The Carnal Prayer Mat 📙 The Divine Comedy 📙 Iliad 📙 The Kama Sutra 📙 King James Bible 📙 Milk and Honey 📙 1984 📙 Odyssey 📙 The Perfumed Garden

02. — Non-fiction 📙 Amusing Ourselves to Death 📙 English as a Global Language 📙 Future Shock 📙 Guns, Germs, and Steel 📙 Hammer of Witches 📙 Imagined Communities 📙 Manufacturing Consent 📙 On Bullshit 📙 Orientalism 📙 Public Opinion 📙 Pursuits of Wisdom 📙 Sapiens 📙 The Adventure of English

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END NOTES

* Book reviews defined
Book reviews can be of various modes and various lengths (from a single paragraph to a substantial essay). Short-form are those in which a book is merely described (also know as a ‘summary review’). Long-form are those in which a book is analysed based on content, style, and merit etc. A book review may be an opinion piece or scholarly review; it is a descriptive and critical/evaluative account and provides a summary of the content, assesses the value of the book (and will often recommend it (or not) to other potential readers). On the other hand, a book report is an attempt to write an objective summary of the main ideas and arguments that a given book’s author has set out.