Tag archives: Chaucer

Bigger and stronger hearts: poetry and memory

Oxford University Press is partnered with The Poetry Archive to support Poetry by Heart, a new national poetry competition in England which will see thousands of students aged 14 to 18 competing to become national champion for their skill in memorising and reciting poems by heart. OUP will provide free content from OED Online, the [...]

Posted on: March 21 2013 | Comments: 0 | Categories: English in use, Varieties of English | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Chaucer in the House of Fame

By the time Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400, he had been living for almost a year in obscurity in a house in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, and on his death he was buried in a modest grave in the church’s south transept. The poet’s last few months had not been his happiest. At the [...]

Posted on: January 2 2013 | Posted by: | Comments: 1 | Categories: English in use | Tags: , , ,

Six obsolete endearments for old-fashioned romantics

Some terms of affection, like darling, have endured in the English language from the outset, while others have come and gone in less than a century. The language of love thrives on metaphor, but precisely what connotes affection has changed over time. Some endearments employed by love poets in centuries past, like sparling (a type [...]

Posted on: February 14 2012 | Posted by: | Comments: 10 | Categories: English in use | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,