The Joys of Teaching Literature, started in September 2010 and with a Spanish version since July 2021, is a blog for ranting and raving about (teaching and researching) English Literature, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, and other aspects of the Anglophone world. I publish a post once a week, usually on Monday. Please, download the yearly volumes from https://ddd.uab.cat/record/116328, or read the volume collecting some of the entries (Passionate Professing: The Context and Practice of English Literature, 2023). The comments option is not available, sorry, but you may contact me through my e-mail address, Sara.Martin@uab.cat. The contents of this blog are protected by a type 4 Creative Common License (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd)).

  • PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: THANKS TO MARY’S LOVE

    The title of my post today is intended to be ambiguous: I mean to say that it is thanks to the love of his wife Mary that Percy Shelley is celebrated as a major poet, and that both he and all poetry readers must thank her for her efforts. As she wrote, ‘He died, and…

  • LORD BYRON: APPROACHING DECANONIZATION

    In a hilarious moment of the two-part documentary The Scandalous Adventures of Lord Byron (2009) presenter Rupert Everett discusses with Donatella Versace–as they wait for her butler to announce dinner at her own luxury Milan home–whether Byron (1788-1824) was really as handsome as so many contemporaneous testimonials claim. At this point, Everett has already seen…

  • SAMUEL COLERIDGE AND THE ROMANTIC POWER OF CURIOSITY

    It has become commonplace to see Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) through the lens of his drug addiction, which is why it is perhaps quite wrong to begin this post in this way. His case, however, must be contextualized and his addiction treated as an ailment similar to that currently killing 130 Americans every day and…

  • COOL AND UNCOOL AUTHORS (ON WILLIAM WORDSWORTH)

    I shared with my ‘English Romantic Literature’ class the video showing Jon Cheryl perform his musical version of William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFexFkJwrAo) and also Michael Griffin’s song ‘London’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAkEyFbGjTc) based on Blake’s eponymous poem. We agreed that both songs are cool and that, by definition, an author whose work can be enjoyed in this…

  • TEACHING THE BASICS ABOUT AN AUTHOR (ON WILLIAM BLAKE)

    Tomorrow I’ll be introducing my class in ‘English Romantic Literature’ to the pleasure of discovering William Blake (1757-1827). I haven’t taught this course in fifteen years and, so, I needed to re-discover Blake myself, re-learn the basics I must transmit. Within limits, careful as usual not to let myself be carried away and use for…