EP22 - Until the World Is Mended | A Reflection On J.R.R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is one of the most beloved writers in the English tradition, though that popularity is a source of frustration to many supposedly sophisticated critics...
24 Jun 20241h 33min
EP21 - Twin Compasses | Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. John Donne came of age in a high culture whose notions of love were shaped by writers like Philip Sidney. Donne’s own love poetry, though, was very diff...
21 Jun 20241h 26min
EP20 - Star and Star Lover | Sidney, Astrophil and Stella
Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella. Over the course of the sixteenth century English poets experimented with the sonnet form invented by their Italian neighbours, and the Petrarchan conventions ...
6 Jun 20241h 21min
EP19 - Into the Storm | Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Part Two)
John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” (Part Two). Today we conclude our examination of Keats’ poem, looking at three pairs of stanzas that describe the strange courtship of Porphyro and Madeline and th...
15 Mai 20241h
EP18 - The Numb Fingers | Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Part One)
John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Part One). The first of a two-part episode that considers John Keats’ gorgeous poem. Set in a dreamy medieval world of castles, blood feuds and esoteric folk ritu...
25 Apr 20241h 14min
EP17 – Bred in the Bone | Auden, September 1, 1939
On the day the Nazis invade Poland, beginning the Second World War, a poet nurses a drink in a New York bar. The unwarlike Auden has just immigrated to the United States from England, yet he feels a ...
20 Mar 20241h 19min
EP16 - Family Breakfast | O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First
Flannery O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First. Sheppard is a high-minded liberal. Norton is his disappointing young son, who seems indifferent to Sheppard’s moral crusades. In the opening paragraph...
21 Aug 20231h 37min
