Crossref-it.info for mobiles

New: Crossref-it.info for mobiles

We are pleased to announce the launch of m.crossref-it.info - Crossref-it.info optimised* for iPhone, Google Android and WebOS. If you have such a device then simply go to Crossref-it.info on your device and you will be automatically taken to the new website.

What's the difference?

For a start, the new site is fast. Really fast. It'll load quickly even when you're far away from a Wifi hotspot. We've made sure you'll be able to quickly access all the info you want, whenever you want, wherever you are.

Also, it is optimised for touch input. Not having a mouse makes it difficult to "hover" over an A-Z Tooltip, for instance, so we have thought through the entire design of the website to make sure everything works well without using a mouse.

And, finally, we've made sure it plays well with small screens. We've worked to make sure that you get the full Crossref-it.info experience using an interface that works really well with small screen form factors. In fact, it actually works rather well on large touch-screens as well. So whether you have a Sony Ericsson X10 Mini or an Apple iPad, or anything in between, we have worked hard to make sure you will enjoy using Crossref-it.info.

As always, feedback is welcome in the comments!

* This will work on devices running the following three operating systems: iOS, Android, WebOS. Examples of supported devices: Acer - Liquid, Liquid E, Stream; Apple - iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad; Google - Nexus One; Dell - Streak; HTC - Desire, Evo 4G, T-Mobile G1 (Dream), Hero, Incredible, Magic (MyTouch 3G), Wildfire; LG - Ally, Etna, Eve, GT540, GW620, GW880, LU2300, Optimus; Motorola - Cliq, Dext, Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Milestone, Palm (HP) - Pixi, Pixi+, Pre, Pre+; Samsung - Galaxy i7500, Galaxy i5700, Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab; Sony Ericsson - Xperia X10, Xperia X10 Mini, Xperia X10 Mini Pro

Poetry – a male preserve?

Poetry – a male preserve?

Up to around fifty years ago, most people would have struggled when asked to name a famous female poet. The poetry canon was dominated by figures like the Romantics, (blogged about last week), Shakespeare, Donne and Herbert, Pope, Tennyson and Eliot. Unlike today, only a few women poets ever made it into print or continued to be read after their lifetime.

The achievement of the few that did is therefore all the more remarkable. The work of the Brontë sisters (see August blog), Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti has continued to speak to new generations of readers. The latter is perhaps less familiar than her contemporaries. She does not have the romance of illicit relationships, or dramatic landscapes attached to her name.

Quietly powerful

Instead, Rossetti lived quietly in London for most of her life, single and dogged by ill health. Yet her poetry is powerful and direct, illuminating friendship and fear, faith and death. Through her individual perspective she touches on a universal experience.

Allusions explained

Many readers today will not be familiar with the social and religious world that Rossetti inhabited, and feel somewhat daunted at approaching her poetry because of this. One of the reasons that Crossref-it.info came into existence was to provide just the kind of help that allows readers to access works of literature peppered with allusions – in this case biblical ones.

Through her poetry Rossetti was opening up many issues close to her heart; it helps to see what she meant when she referred to paths and ladders, blood and brokenness. The brand new guide to The poems of Christina Rossetti will give students and teachers all the information they need in order to fully enjoy her work.

The Romantic poets

The Romantic poets

The lonely poet

Much of today’s view of what a poem should like is down to the influence of a loose affiliation of poets who were composing in the final quarter of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth. The (charicatured) image of a spiritual wanderer profoundly affected by daffodils and nightingales marked a distinct change from the witty epigrams and clever arguments of the Augustan and Metaphysical poets.

Simple words

Using simple daily vocabulary the Romantic poets drew their reader’s attention to vivid natural images and fleeting emotional states, to the experiences of ordinary lives which spoke to them of awesome Nature.

Blake (pictured), Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Keats were the most famous of the movement. Their odes and lyrics are in many people’s top ten favourite poems today.

Radicals and revolutionaries

However, the Romantic poets weren’t just inspired by the natural world. Blake and Wordsworth started out as revolutionaries who supported the common people’s bid for freedom in France. Byron later fought for the Greeks in their war of independence. Shelley was a political radical who eschewed conventional social structures like marriage. He lived with the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the first notable feminist. Their poems reflect their ideals.

A window on their world

The Romantics were not ‘apart’ from their society, but fully engaged with it. Which is why it helps to get a window on their world to make better sense of what inspired them. As usual, Crossref-it.info can guide you to what you need to know in a helpful and accessible way. Whether you are reading Wordsworth, Keats or their associates, Context links: The Romantic poets will show you where relevant information is, whilst the complete guide on Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience fills out the picture of that London based poet.

Next week another complete guide to an English poet will arrive on your screens. Watch this space!

Dark Comedy

Dark Comedy

Painful laughter

If you are a fan of shows like Little Britain you’ll be familiar with the fact that, amongst sublimely funny situations of punctured pride and physical slapstick, lurk darker elements that make us laugh. The Fat Club sketches are essentially about bullying and racism, the W.I. ladies are grotesque snobs, the breast-feeding adult is disturbing.

Twelfth Night

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is defined as a comedy and regularly performed today. It includes the comic pathos in Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s aspirations to valour, the broad comedy of mistaken identities, the witty repartee of Maria etc. But in the taunting of Malvolio, and the perpetrators’ obvious enjoyment of his torture, we encounter that darker seam of what makes people laugh.

How Shakespeare’s audience understood the play

Through the antagonism between Sir Toby Belch and Malvolio on stage, Shakespeare was reflecting a cultural sea change. Elements of society, influenced by extreme reformed Protestantism in Europe and Scotland, were challenging the laissé-faire attitudes of the nobility and established church in England.

Malvolio represents the aspiring middle classes who wanted their own share of social influence and prestige – a share that others were reluctant to allow. It was a conflict that would ultimately erupt in the mid seventeenth century with the English Civil War.

Helpful links

You don’t need to know all this to enjoy the comic plot, but if you end up studying Twelfth Night for A Level, marks are awarded for your understanding of how the play was originally received and understood. The newly launched Context links: Twelfth Night will fill you in with all you need to know if you visit Crossref-it.info.

If you can get to see the forthcoming production of the play, part of the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, at Robinson College Gardens, 2-28 August (www.cambridgeshakespeare.com), even better!

Passionate Poetry

Passionate poetry

Reading poetry requires some mental space. We need to be able to resist the demands of a hectic lifestyle and allow the words to penetrate our minds and hearts. So what better time to pick up a volume during the less pressured days of the summer holidays!

The brevity of much poetry means that we encounter ideas and emotions distilled into their purest form. It is powerful stuff, particularly when it speaks of the strongest human feelings.

The poetry of the Brontës

The Brontë sisters are famous for their vivid and tumultuous novels, such as The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. But many of the themes and passions we come across in these stories exist in condensed form in the sisters’ surviving poems. It is hard to read, for example, Cold In The Earth and not think of Cathy’s love for Heathcliff which endures beyond the grave.

Another level of interest is added when we find out about the actual lives and loves of the three sisters, and see how they translated the stuff of their daily environment into these moving poems. An ideal way of discovering what they knew and what motivated the Brontës is launched this week at Crossref-it.info. Go to Context links: Selected poetry of the Brontës.

But best of all, find a quiet place on a lazy summer’s day and read these distillations of passion for yourself!

Chaucer for today

Chaucer for today

The General Prologue and The Nun's Priest's Tale

Sections of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales frequently feature on A Level syllabuses. The Tales and the descriptions of their tellers are funny and inventive, particularly coming to life when read aloud as they were originally intended. Because Chaucer was portraying the jobs and personality types familiar to his medieval hearers it helps to get a window into the world that they knew.

• How much of a say did women have in that society?
• Why were people in the Middle Ages so fussed about death and judgement?
• Why did they accept that some were superior to because of their birth?
• Why was the Church so influential in people’s day to day lives?

Quick solutions to the questions

The latest helpful student resources from Crossref-it.info this week are focused on The General Prologue and The Nun's Priest's Tale and link you to all the most helpful sections of the website. If you are studying or teaching either work look out for:

Context links: The General Prologue

Context links: The Nun's Priest's Tale

The pointlessness of tragedy

The pointlessness of tragedy

Productions of Othello

Whenever I see Shakespeare’s Othello I am always struck by how such trivial incidents – like the dropping of a hanky, the repetition of apparently innocent phrases – can result in such a momentous downfall of the protagonist and those around him. Played well, it can be almost unbearable to watch.

Yet there is an appeal to this agony, which is why the play endures and takes new generations of theatre go-ers down its tortuous paths. It is never performed as regularly as Hamlet or King Lear for example, so, if you are studying Othello in the coming year do watch out for these productions:

• Currently running until 21 August is a (semi) open air performance by Stamford Shakespeare at the Rutland Open Air Theatre, Tolethorpe Hall, Stamford, 15 June – 21 August (01780 756 133 / 763 203). www.stamfordshakespeare.co.uk
• An interesting adaptation of the Othello story is being done by the Veni Vidi Theatre Company at Lauderdale House, London, between the 10 – 13 August (020 8348 8716).

Getting a fix on the play

Unlike some of Shakespeare’s other plays, which can exist within a world of their own, Othello is set in a specific political situation. Racial and class resentment festers amidst the fears and upheaval generated by armed conflict.

To help you understand this world, Crossref-it.info has this week launched a handy guide tailored to the play, which takes you to all the most helpful sections of the website. Look out for Context links: Othello. If you find yourself studying the play in the coming academic year, this one stop resource will really help you to understand the reactions Shakespeare’s original audience might have had to the tragedy.