Monologue Archive

Great resource of monologues organised by gender and age. These are extracted from plays rather than standalone monologues, so use with some caution as style models -- some are from poems and from considerably older texts too. Still, you can get a good sense of the range of what's possible.

http://www.monologuearchive.com

Reinventing the book with Shakespeare

Ebooks can become rich collections of resources incorporating text-crunching computation. Here's an example using Shakespeare texts. 

Why a 17th-Century Text Is the Perfect Starting Point for Reinventing the Book
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/why-a-17th-century-text-is-the-perfect-starting-point-for-reinventing-the-book/263034/

I, You, He or She?

A very readable account of the choice of point of view in fiction, from the perspective of a writer who does the choosing.

I, You, He or She – Some Thoughts on Point of View
http://www.michaelpryor.com.au/articles/i-you-he-or-she-some-thoughts-on-point-of-view/

Bill Nash, "Vakum clenere"

This'll be funny when you've studied some Middle English at A2, I promise.

http://ajohnny.tumblr.com/post/8320439473/bill-nash-vakum-clenere

First 10 Pages

This one's of most use if you've got an interest in Literature - this blog seeks to read and analyse the first 10 pages of a range of books, and comment on the language and approach used to open the novel.  Cool stuff.

 

http://first10pages.com/

Poems are a form of texting

Okay, she's pushing it a bit; but both are forms of communication within strict limits which require conciseness. She'd be on firmer ground with tweeting, I think. And it's certainly so that lyrics and rap have connections with poetry - though a skilled lyric is less requirement for success than a musical hook or two.

Carol Ann Duffy: 'Poems are a form of texting'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/sep/05/carol-ann-duffy-poetry-texting-competition

Hamlet and the region of death

There won't be much literature on this blog, but every now and then some will come along. This article is about 'quantitative literary studies' - for example, analysing Hamlet by looking at who has adjacency pairs with who, and seeing what networks of conversational interaction occur. It leads to some interesting conclusions about the play's structure and characters....

Hamlet and the region of death
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/05/29/hamlet_and_the_region_of_death/?page=full