Each of these poems comprise of motifs prevalent throughout Duffy's anthology, 'Mean Time'. Mortality and nostalgia are exemplified, in which Duffy often writes about –with love, with heartfelt feeling but never with sentimentality, and she...

In both McEwan’s Atonement and many of Carol Ann Duffy’s love poems, the use of postmodernist devices such as self-reflexivity and intertextuality aid in the exploration of their ideas and the pertinence of questions their work raises. James Wood...

Within both The Handmaid’s Tale and Feminine Gospels, the concept of loss is proven to be prevalent, as a determining role amongst the two pieces of literature. Duffy and Atwood present this idea particularly in regard to the loss of voice,...

“Many of Duffy’s poems echo themes of Larkin’s… loneliness haunts her verse.” This belief clearly expressed by Jody Allen Randolph demonstrates that both poets address negative and lonely themes within their respective poems. The concept of...

Larkin and Duffy are well renowned for their respective styles and have frequently been compared due to the overlap of themes to which they explore and the huge contrast in the ways in which they do so. This can be seen through their exploration...

“No poet, no artist of any art has their meaning alone” T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood. Artists of all kinds use intertextuality to take the original text and transform and reconstruct it to fit into the new interpretation. By connecting two texts...

Contrary to the hegemonic belief that fairytales solely consist of a plot that includes niceties and happy endings, violence exists as one of the universal themes which characterize children’s literature. From a literal interpretation, fairytales...