Spring Term Courses (Jan to Mar 09) : Literature

Wed 28 Jan

Wordsworth and the Lakes

This talk will look at how Wordsworth was shaped by his early experiences in his native Cumbria and how those experiences shaped his poetic career.

Yeats and the West of Ireland

Many of Yeats's finest poems were inspired by his home, Thoor Ballylee, in Co. Galway and Lady Gregory's nearby estate, Coole Park.

T S Eliot's America

Although Eliot became a British citizen, he remained an American at heart. His poems contain recollections of his early life in America, and his poetry can be best understood against this background.

Ivor Gurney's Gloucestershire

Gurney was passionately fond of his native Gloucestershire and its neighbouring counties and his songs and poems are infused with this love.

Thomas Hardy's Cornwall

After the death of Hardy's first wife, he set out to revisit the haunts of their courtship on the North Cornwall coast. The memories released a flood of poems, some of them among the most moving in the language.

'The Country of my Heart': D H Lawrence's Nottinghamshire

Although Lawrence lived abroad for much of his adult life, his writing would always be deeply influenced by the Nottinghamshire countryside of his youth.