13. Queen Kong

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about the thirteenth poem in the collection, ‘Queen Kong', focusing in particular on: (i) the figure of King Kong, who first appeared in the 1933 film 'King Kong', and in multiple movies since; (ii) the super-strength of Queen Kong, which reminds us of Samson in 'Delilah'; (iii) the reversal of the male hunter/female prey theme we have seen so far in this collection (e.g. 'Thetis'); and (iv) the presentation of love and love-making in the poem – its tenderness, the importance of blowing, touching, scratching, etc.

Course

In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores Carol Ann Duffy’s 1999 collection, 'The World's Wife'. After a brief introduction to the collection as a whole, the course continue with a read-through and analysis of each of the thirty poems in the collection, one by one.

Lecturer

John McRae is Special Professor of Language in Literature Studies and Teaching Associate in the School of English at Nottingham University, and holds Visiting Professorships in China, Malaysia, Spain and the USA. He is co-author of The Routledge History of Literature in English with Ron Carter, and also wrote The Language of Poetry, Literature with a Small 'l' and the first critical edition of Teleny by Oscar Wilde and others.