Literature has captured my attention, from its ability to directly seize my thoughts and free my imagination. Literature presents worlds beyond our own and continually encourages me to develop and question my thinking. From a young age, I have been a passionate reader, admiring the depth of characters and the variety of emotions that a writer can create. From reading novels, plays and poetry throughout my adult life, I have been drawn to a range of writers and different genres of literature, from historical fiction like Stefan Zweig's 'Beware of Pity', to modern poetry such as Rupi Kaur's 'Milk and Honey'.
During my previous studies of English Literature, I was drawn to poetry after reading
'Standing Female Nude' by Carol Ann Duffy. The poem
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During my studies of Classical Civilisation I found Homer's Odyssey fulfilling to read. My compulsion to gain a deeper understanding of a text, indeed, stems from an admiration of The Odyssey's complexity. I am currently studying on an access course at a local further education college.
As part of this course I am taking an 'Explorations in Literature' module, which I find extremely interesting and beneficial for further study of Literature.
Gothic fiction is my desired genre of literature, with its merging of terror and romance. 'The
Picture of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde is one of my favourite novels in this genre. I enjoy the different themes that Wilde presents, particularly how he expresses vanity to be an original sin. Wilde presents Dorian's beauty as his most cherished attribute; as a consequence, vanity becomes his most crippling vice. Throughout the novel, Dorian is haunted by vanity, seeming to be damned by his actions before he commits them. Wilde invites us to ponder the inescapability of vanity in our own relationship to art, "it is the spectator, and not life that art really mirrors."
Through previous work experience at a local primary school and a care home I have