“The Blood Jet Is Poetry”: Sylvia Plath’s Practical Poetics

This essay discusses the nature and function of poetry and poetic inspiration as central themes in the poetry of Sylvia Plath, an aspect of her poetry that has elicited surprisingly little critical attention over the years. Here, I trace the poetological strand in Plath’s poetry through four poems: the early ‘Black Rook in Rainy Weather’ (1956), ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ (1961), and, finally, ‘Ariel’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’ (both October, 1962). These poems all engage with and raise issues that relate to poetics in different ways. Read together, these four poems demonstrate the centrality of poetological themes in Plath’s poetry—how they in different ways represent and debate the genesis, nature, form, and function of poetry.

An investigation into students’ attitudes towards the value of poetry and their knowledge of poetry analysis

Though poetry analysis is a central component of literary studies in higher education, research frequently reports that attitudes of both students and teachers to its incorporation in syllabi are mixed (Weaven & Clark, 2014). Previous research suggests a complex relationship between attitudes to and knowledge of poetry with some studies indicating that negative attitudes might be the result of a lack of competency in analysing such texts (Benton, 1999; Fleming, 1992), and others suggesting the greater the knowledge, the less favourable the attitude (Liao & Roy, 2017; Snapper, 2013). This small-scale quantitative study examines connections between knowledge and attitude in a sample of first-semester Swedish students of English, and investigates potential differences between pre-service teachers, and regular students.

Apropå doft

Trots att mycken forskning menar att språk och tänkande formas av våra sensomotoriska erfarenheter är forskning om hur systemen interagerar och hur vi genom språket kommunicerar sensoriska förnimmelser såsom doft mycket begränsad. Denna uppsats diskuterar hur språkanvändare beskriver doftförnimmelser och visar att vår vokabulär för att beskriva doft är rik och varierad.

“#COVIDSchmovid! #SummerTreats” The usage and functions of schm-reduplications in corona virus related discourse

The aim of this paper is to investigate the uses of schm-reduplications, also known as deprecative reduplications, in current corona virus related discourse. The investigation shows that schm-reduplications, such as covid schmovid, corona schmorona and pandemic schmandemic, are often used in a spirit-lifting function, to show that, despite all the threats and complications posed by the virus and national lockdowns, we are still able to do things and that we also continue to have a sense of humour in our lives. Another common function of schm-reduplications is criticism of other people’s irresponsible behaviour. The functions identified in previous work on schm-reduplications—associations with aspects of irony, scorn, scepticism, disparagement and dismissal—are seldom present in the corona virus related formations.