BSJ

The Butler Scholarly Journal

Category: Literature

  1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: A response to Gove’s English syllabus reforms

    Michael Gove recently caused somewhat of a furore with the announcement of his plans to remove American Literature from the GCSE English Literature syllabus, discarding John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in favour of Austen and Dickens. One fellow English Literature student wailed, ‘Now kids will never know about Atticus Finch, and that is just wrong!’ Much as their melodramatic anguish made me laugh, I could neither refute that their point was valid nor that I was equally infuriated by Gove’s decision. That is not to say that Charles Dickens is anything short…

  2. Slaughterhouse-Five: A Crisis of Representation?

    Literature can be something we use for pleasure and escapism. We find narratives comforting because they convey meaning onto events which may otherwise seem illogical and upsetting; stories may use certain common tropes to settle the reader with something familiar and often offer some form of satisfying closure when they come to an end. What we sometimes forget is that literature can also be the site of cultural, societal, and political criticism in ways which may be jarring and unsettling. Literature which seeks to really make us think often consciously breaks away from typical narrative forms in order to challenge…

  3. Interview: The Lion and the Lamb

    John Henry Clay is a novelist and lecturer in medieval history at Durham University. The Butler Scholarly Journal caught up with him to discuss his highly acclaimed debut novel, The Lion and the Lamb (July 2013). The Butler Scholarly Journal: What drew you to mid-4th century Roman Britain as a setting for your first novel, The Lion and the Lamb? John Henry Clay: I first came across the period as an archaeology undergraduate, and something about it caught my imagination. It was the ‘Golden Age’ of Roman Britain, a world of palatial country villas and bustling cities, with a highly…

  4. Time Documentary

    This is the first documentary produced by the Butler Scholarly Journal on the topic of ‘Time’. What is time? When did time begin? Is time travel possible? These questions are discussed by Matt Armitage and Jack Bryan in terms of physics, by Hannah Buckley in terms of philosophy, and Ruby Lawrence in terms of English Literature. Produced by Carmen Horrocks Edited by Bryn Coombe

  5. Fictions of Terrorism: Authorship and Consolation

    It is no small wonder that so many novelists have capitalised on the unique emotional intensity and intrigue surrounding the various manifestations of that elusive concept, ‘terrorism’. Acts of terrorism can be brutal and devastating, ‘manifestoes written in the blood of others’ (Régis Debray) which are intended to shock and disturb. Few people of our generation will forget the first time they heard of the appalling 9/11 attacks, and responses to terrorism can be similarly disturbing; a Brazilian commuter was killed by British police subsequent to the London Underground bombings of July 2005 (Matthew Carr). The relationship between terror and fiction is perhaps an…