A short story and illustration by Lee Jia-An
“This story is influenced by my reading of Borges, whose works I’ve been researching for my dissertation. I’m interested in the idea of mirrors and repetition in Borges’s short stories and how repetition is indicative of the Eternal Return. This short story is about repetition and how the secrets that we keep hidden from the gaze and the mirror are still echoes of each other. One day, we’ll have to bury them and leave them behind.”
By Professor Mark Turner, PGR Lead
It is a pleasure to announce to the KCL English community that the Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA) has awarded the 2021 Ellen Craft Essay Prize to one of our PhD students, Katie Arthur, for her brilliant essay, ‘Arousing Disgust: Visceral Configurations of Obscenity through Literal, Literary, and Governmental Bodies in William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1959)’.
Continue reading 2021 Ellen Craft Essay Prize Awarded to PhD Student Katie Arthur
What do we really think about Shakespeare? As one of the world’s most iconic writers, we all have certain preconceptions and biases about him and his work which can impact how we watch, read and study them. The Bard Takes Podcast follows a Shakespeare Studies student exploring these preconceptions and the truth behind Shakespeare’s work, with guests including staff and students from King’s College London, Shakespeare’s Globe and beyond.
Continue reading Bard Takes: A new podcast supported by KCL English Department
by Nell Prince
In his third memoir, May Week Was In June, Clive James writes of his inability to stick to the syllabus:
Out of the three terms of my second and last year as an undergraduate, one and a half had gone by before I could bring myself even to sit down and assess the magnitude of what I had not yet done in the way of preparing to satisfy the examiners. When I finally faced the issue, I quickly realised that I would have a better chance of satisfying them if I offered them my body.
– TRACY SEELEY
There is perhaps no greater comfort nor reward granted by reading than resonance. It is an indescribable liberation to have our feelings corroborated; to sift through the works of writers centuries past and happen upon an unassuming strand of words that instantly articulates the inarticulable, that echoes an acute emotion lying dormant within. These discoveries serve as whispers through time, as a consoling hand-squeeze in the ether. In my first year studying on the Strand, Virginia Woolf’s 1930 essay Street Haunting: A London Adventure offered me this solace.
Continue reading Alienation on the Strand; Solitude in Street Haunting
