The learning journey

Eight worlds,
one language.

Each world takes a handful of real lines and asks what they are doing. Answer, then find out why — the reasoning and the evidence arrive together.

8 worlds125 annotated works0 lessons completed

01
Shakespeare & Renaissance drama
The Globe
Gentle
Soliloquy, ambition, and the sound of a voice thinking.
To be, or not to beMacbeth — The Dagger SoliloquyShall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
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02
Romantic poetry
The Fire
Gentle
One self, one landscape, one enormous feeling.
OzymandiasThe TygerOde to the West Wind
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03
Gothic fiction
The Shadow
Steady
The thing in the house is usually the thing in the mind.
Frankenstein — The Creature SpeaksJane Eyre — OpeningThe Raven
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04
Victorian literature
The Street
Steady
Doubt, respectability, and the noise of a city.
Dover BeachMy Last DuchessA Tale of Two Cities — Opening
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05
Modernism
The Fragments
Demanding
A broken world, written in broken lines.
The Waste Land — OpeningThe Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockMrs Dalloway — Opening
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06
Rhetoric & persuasion
The Hall
Steady
How a sentence gets a room to move.
The Gettysburg AddressNo Man Is an IslandA Modest Proposal
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07
Close reading & criticism
The Microscope
Demanding
One line, examined until it gives something up.
Composed upon Westminster BridgeBecause I could not stop for DeathThe Red Wheelbarrow
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08
Poetry, form & metaphor
The Workshop
Steady
Metre, metaphor, and the sentence inside the line.
La Belle Dame sans MerciSonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true mindsShe Walks in Beauty
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