Talks
John GilroyTyger, Tyger or The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere
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John Gilroy retired from his post as Senior Lecturer in English at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge in 2005, but still teaches in its department part-time. He also teaches for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education on both its residential courses and its international summer schools for which he is a course director.
John has lectured widely in Britain and internationally for organisations such as The English-Speaking Union, ‘Inscape’ Fine Art Tours and for GNE. He specialises in literature of the Romantic period and has published on Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Philip Larkin. His latest book, ‘Romantic Literature’, for the new York Connections series will appear in 2010.
Tyger, Tyger
‘The Tyger’ is one of the best known poems in the world. It has been recited by generations of schoolchildren and exercised the minds of academics ever since it was first published by William Blake in 1794. What is the source of this short lyric’s enduring popularity, and what does it mean? The illustrated talk will look at its history and examine some of the interpretations which can be put upon it, as well as placing it in the context of some of Blake’s other work.
The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere
‘The only wonderful man I ever knew’ was how Wordsworth described Samuel Taylor Coleridge on his death in 1834. Almost 40 years previously Coleridge had written a poem which truly lends support to Wordsworth’s remark. Ideas from the ‘Ancient Mariner’ and many of its lines (‘Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink’; ‘Instead of the Cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung’; ‘A sadder and a wiser man’) have become a common property of the English language. The illustrated talk looks at the history of the poem, some of the interpretations it has been given, and offers some reasons for its fame, popularity and endurance.
Both talks are illustrated with slides.