Close Readings

Most of what we believe we believe on faith, even those beliefs we hold to be based on scientific fact. This assertion lies at the heart of William James's essay ‘The Will to Believe', originally delivered as a lecture and intended not so much as a defence of religion as an attack on anti-religion. James's target was the ‘rugged and manly school of science' and the kind of atheism ‘that goes around thumping its chest offering its biceps to be felt'. In this episode Jonathan Rée and James Wood look at the intellectual environment William James was working in, and against, in the second half of the 19th century, and its parallels in the ‘new atheism' of today. They also discuss the extraordinary upbringing William (and his novelist brother Henry) received and the advice he offered to anyone contemplating suicide in his essay ‘Is life worth living?' Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcip In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscip Read more in the LRB: Helen Thaventhiran: William James's Prescriptions https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n20/helen-thaventhiran/no-dose-for-it-at-the-chemist Michael Wood: William James and modernism https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n18/michael-wood/understanding-forwards Richard Poirier: Williams James's pragmatism https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n19/richard-poirier/copying-the-coyote

‘I want to write a poem of a new class — a Don Juan, without the mockery and impurity,' Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to a friend in 1844, ‘and admitting of as much philosophical dreaming and digression (which is in fact a characteristic of the age) as I like to use.' The poem she had in mind turned out to be her verse novel, Aurora Leigh, published in 1854, and described by Ruskin as the greatest long poem of the 19th century. It tells the story of an aspiring poet, Aurora, born in Florence to an Italian mother and an English father, who loses both her parents as a child and moves to England and the care of her aunt. From there she pursues her poetic ambitions to London, Paris, Italy and back to England while negotiating a traumatic love triangle between the vicious Lady Waldemar, the impoverished seamstress Marian, and the austere social-reformer Romney. In this episode, Clare is joined by Stefanie Markovits and Seamus Perry to discuss the wide range of innovations Barrett Browning deploys to fulfil her commitment to immediacy and narrative drive in the poem, and the ways in which she uses her characters to explore the extent of her own emancipatory politics. Read the poem: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/56621/pg56621-images.html Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrna In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsna Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tennyson described 'In Memoriam' as ‘rather the cry of the whole human race than mine', and the poem achieved widespread acclaim as soon as it was published in 1850, cited by Queen Victoria as her habitual reading after the death of Prince Albert. Its subject is the death in 1833 of Tennyson's friend Arthur Hallam at the age of 22, and in its 131 sections it explores the possibilities of elegy more extensively than any English poem before it, not least in its innovative, incantatory rhyme scheme, intended to numb the pain of grief. From its repeated dramatisations of the experience of private loss, 'In Memoriam' opens out to reflect on the intellectual turmoil running through Victorian society amid monumental advances in scientific thought. In this episode, Seamus and Mark discuss the unique emotional power of Tennyson's style, and why his great elegy came to represent what mourning, and poetry, should be in the public imagination of his time.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldRead more in the LRB:Frank Kermode:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n09/frank-kermode/eliot-and-the-shudder⁠Seamus Perry:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n02/seamus-perry/are-we-there-yet⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘With Potocki,' Italo Calvino wrote, ‘we can understand that the fantastic is the exploration of the obscure zone where the most unrestrained passions of desire and the terrors of guilt mix together.' The gothic is a central seam of the fantastic, and in this episode Marina and Adam turn to two writers in that mode who lived over a hundred years apart but drew on the period of the Napoleonic wars: Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen (the pseudonym of Karen Blixen). Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1805) is a complex sequence of tales within tales, written from the point of view of the early 19th century but describing events in Spain in the 18th century. It's a powerful commentary on the preoccupations of the Enlightenment and the repression of historical guilt. In Seven Gothic Tales (1934), Dinesen confronts some of the most unsettling aspect of sexual guilt and desire with psychological astuteness. Adam and Marina discuss the ways in which, in both works, the gothic was able to explore areas of human experience that other genres struggled to accommodate.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffRead more in the LRB:On Potocki:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n02/p.n.-furbank/nesting-time⁠On 'Out of Africa':⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n12/d.a.n.-jones/the-old-feudalist⁠On Denisen's letters:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n10/errol-trzebinski/perfect-bliss-and-perfect-despair Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer's genius lay not in his ideas but in his heroic indifference, a thinker whose value to the world is as a liberator rather than a teacher, who shows us what philosophy is really for: to forget what we already know. ‘Schopenhauer as Educator' was written in 1874, when Nietzsche was 30, and was published in a collection with three other essays – on Wagner, David Strauss and the use of history – that has come to be titled Untimely Meditations. In this episode Jonathan and James consider the essays together and their powerful attack on the ethos of the age, railing against the greed and power of the state, fake art, overweening science, the triviality of universities and, perhaps above all, the deification of success.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipRead more in the LRB:David Hoy on Nietzsche's life:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n01/david-hoy/different-stories⁠J.P. Stern on 'Unmodern Observations' (or 'Untimely Meditations'):⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n16/j.p.-stern/impatience⁠Jenny Diski on Elisabeth Nietzsche:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n18/jenny-diski/it-wasn-t-him-it-was-her⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In North and South (1855), Margaret Hale is uprooted from her sleepy New Forest town and must adapt to life in the industrial north. Through her relationships with mill workers and a slow-burn romance with the self-made capitalist John Thornton, she is forced to reassess her assumptions about justice and propriety. At the heart of the novel are a series of righteous rebels: striking workers, mutinous naval officers and religious dissenters.Dinah Birch joins Clare Bucknell to discuss Gaskell's rich study of obedience and authority. They explore the Unitarian undercurrent in her work, her eye for domestic and industrial detail, and how her subtle handling of perspective serves her great theme: mutual understanding.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaRead more in the LRB:Dinah Birch: The Unwritten Fiction of Dead Brothershttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v19/n19/dinah-birch/the-unwritten-fiction-of-dead-brothersRosemarie Bodenheimer: Secret-keepinghttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n16/rosemarie-bodenheimer/secret-keepingJohn Bayley: Mrs Ghttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n05/john-bayley/mrs-g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philip Larkin was terrified of death from an early age; Thomas Hardy contemplated what the neighbours would say after he had gone; and Sylvia Plath imagined her own death in vivid and controversial ways. The genre of self-elegy, in which poets have reflected on their own passing, is a small but eloquent one in the history of English poetry. In this episode, Seamus and Mark consider some of its most striking examples, including Chidiock Tichborne's laconic lament on the night of his execution in 1586, Jonathan Swift's breezy anticipation of his posthumous reception, and the more comfortless efforts of 20th-century poets confronting godless extinction.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldRead more in the LRB:Jacqueline Rose on Plath:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n16/jacqueline-rose/this-is-not-a-biography⁠David Runciman on Larkin and his father:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n03/david-runciman/a-funny-feeling⁠John Bayley on Larkin⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n08/john-bayley/the-last-romantic⁠Matthew Bevis on Hardy:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n19/matthew-bevis/i-prefer-my-mare Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the stories of Franz Kafka we find the fantastical wearing the most ordinary, realist dress. Though haunted by abjection and failure, Kafka has come to embody the power and potential of literary imagination in the 20th century as it confronts the nightmares of modernity. In this episode, Marina Warner is joined by Adam Thirlwell to discuss the ways in which Kafka extended the realist tradition of the European novel by drawing on ‘simple forms' – proverbs, wisdom literature and animal fables – to push the boundaries of what literature could explore, with reference to stories including ‘The Judgment', ‘In the Penal Colony' and ‘A Report to the Academy'.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffFurther reading in the LRB:Franz Kafka (trans. Michael Hofmann): Unknown Lawshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n14/franz-kafka/short-cutsRivka Galchen: What Kind of Funny is He?https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n23/rivka-galchen/what-kind-of-funny-is-heJudith Butler: Who Owns Kafka?https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n05/judith-butler/who-owns-kafkaJ.P. Stern: Bad Faithhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n13/j.p.-stern/bad-faithNext episode: Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found at Saragossa and stories by Isak Dinesen.Get the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklist Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

T.S. Eliot claimed that he learned his prose style from reading F.H. Bradley, and the poet wrote his PhD on the English philosopher at Harvard. Bradley's life was remarkably unremarkable, as he spent his entire career as a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, where his only obligation was not to get married. Yet in over fifty years of slow, meticulous writing he articulated a series of unusual and arresting ideas that attacked Kantian and utilitarian notions of duty and morality. In this episode, Jonathan and James look at Bradley's polemic against John Stuart Mill, ‘My Station and Its Duties', and other essays in Ethical Studies, which challenge the idea of morality as a product of calm reasoning arrived at by mature, rational minds. For Bradley, morality is a characteristic of communities, determined by people's differing needs at various stages in their lives, and the universal need for self-realisation can only be achieved through those communities.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipRead more in the LRB:Frank Kermode on Eliot and Bradley:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n17/frank-kermode/feast-of-st-thomas Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thackeray's comic masterpiece, Vanity Fair, is a Victorian novel looking back to Regency England as an object both of satire and nostalgia. Thackeray's disdain for the Regency is present throughout the book, not least in the proliferation of hapless characters called George, yet he also draws heavily on his childhood experiences to unfold a complex story of fractured families, bad marriages and the tyranny of debt. In this episode, Colin Burrow and Rosemary Hill join Tom to discuss Thackeray's use of clothes, curry and the rapidly changing topography of London to construct a turbulent society full of peril and opportunity for his heroine, Becky Sharp, and consider why the Battle of Waterloo was such a recurrent preoccupation in literature of the period.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaRead more in the LRB:John Sutherland on Thackeray:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n02/john-sutherland/wife-overboardRosemary Hill on 'Frock Consciousness':https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n02/rosemary-hill/frock-consciousness Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The confessional poets of the mid-20th century considered themselves a ‘doomed' generation, with a cohesive identity and destiny. Their intertwining personal lives were laid bare in their work, and Robert Lowell, John Berryman and Elizabeth Bishop returned repeatedly to the elegy to commemorate old friends and settle old scores.In this episode, Mark and Seamus turn to elegies for poets by poets, tracing the intricate connections between them. Lowell, Berryman and Bishop's work was offset by a deep commitment to the literary tradition, and Mark and Seamus identify their shared influences and anxieties.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldFind further reading in the LRB:Mark Ford: No One Else Can Take a Bath for Youhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n07/mark-ford/no-one-else-can-take-a-bath-for-youKarl Miller: Some Names for Robert Lowellhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n09/karl-miller/some-names-for-robert-lowellNicholas Everett: Two Americas and a Scotlandhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n18/nicholas-everett/two-americas-and-a-scotlandHelen Vendler: The Numinous Moosehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n05/helen-vendler/the-numinous-mooseGet the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklistNext episode: Self-elegies by Hardy, Larkin and Plath. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are strange books, a testament to their author's defiant unconventionality. Through them, Lewis Carroll transformed popular culture, our everyday idioms and our ideas of childhood and the fantastic, and they remain enormously popular.Anna Della Subin joins Marina Warner to explore the many puzzles of the Alice books. They discuss the way Carroll illuminates other questions raised in this series: of dream states, the nature of consciousness, the transformative power of language and the arbitrariness of authority.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffFurther reading in the LRB:Marina Warner: You Must Not Askhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n01/marina-warner/you-must-not-askDinah Birch: Never Seen A Violethttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n17/dinah-birch/never-seen-a-violetMarina Warner: Doubly Damnedhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n03/marina-warner/doubly-damnedGet the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklistNext episode: The stories of Franz Kafka, with Adam Thirlwell.Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.Anna Della Subin's study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mill's 'Autobiography' was considered too shocking to publish while he was alive. Behind his musings on many of the philosophical and political preoccupations of his time lie the confessions of a deeply repressed man who knows that he's deeply repressed, coming to terms with the uncompromising educational experiment his father subjected him to as a child – described by Isaiah Berlin as ‘an appalling success'. In this episode Jonathan and James discuss Mill's startlingly honest account of this experience and the breakdown that ensued in his 20s, and the boldness of his life and thought from his views on socialism and the rights of women to his unwavering devotion to his wife, Harriet Taylor, the co-author of 'On Liberty' and other works.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipFurther reading in the LRB:Sissela Bok on Mill's 'Autobiography':https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n06/sissela-bok/his-father-s-childrenAlasdair MacIntyre: Mill's Forgotten Victoryhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n20/alasdair-macintyre/john-stuart-mill-s-forgotten-victoryPanbkaj Mishra: Bland Fanaticshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n23/pankaj-mishra/bland-fanaticsNext EpisodeF.H. Bradley's 'My Station and Its Duties' can be found online here:https://archive.org/details/ethicalstudies0000brad/page/160/mode/2up Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Wuthering Heights was published in December 1847, many readers didn't know what to make of it: one reviewer called it ‘a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors'. In this episode of ‘Novel Approaches', Patricia Lockwood and David Trotter join Thomas Jones to explore Emily Brontë's ‘completely amoral' novel. As well as questions of Heathcliff's mysterious origins and ‘obscene' wealth, of Cathy's ghost, bad weather, gnarled trees, even gnarlier characters and savage dogs, they discuss the book's intricate structure, Brontë's inventive use of language and the extraordinary hold that her story continues to exert over the imaginations of readers and non-readers alike.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaRead more in the LRB:David Trotter: Heathcliff Redoundinghttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n09/david-trotter/heathcliff-redoundingJohn Bayley: Kitchen Devilhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n24/john-bayley/kitchen-devilAlice Spawls: If It Weren't for Charlottehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n22/alice-spawls/if-it-weren-t-for-charlottePatricia Lockwood: What a Bear Wantshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n16/patricia-lockwood/pull-off-my-headGet the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklist Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Situated on the cusp of the Romantic era, Thomas Gray's work is a mixture of impersonal Augustan abstraction and intense subjectivity. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and continues to exert its influence on contemporary poetry. Mark and Seamus explore three of Gray's elegiac poems and their peculiar emotional power. They discuss Gray's ambiguous sexuality, his procrastination and class anxieties, and where his humour shines through – as in his elegy for Horace Walpole's cat.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldFurther reading in the LRB:John Mullan: Unpranked Lyrehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n24/john-mullan/unpranked-lyreTony Harrison: ‘V.'https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n01/tony-harrison/vGet the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklistRead the texts online:https://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/sorwhttps://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/elcchttps://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/odfcNext episode: Mid-20th century elegies: Betjeman, Lowell, Bishop Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Italo Calvino's novella Invisible Cities is a hypnagogic reimagining of Marco Polo's time in the court of Kublai Khan. Polo describes 55 impossible places – cities made of plumbing, free-floating, overwhelmed by rubbish, buried underground – that reveal something true about every city. Marina and Anna Della read Invisible Cities alongside the Travels of Marco Polo, and explore how both blur the lines between reality and fantasy, storyteller and audience. They discuss the connections between Calvino's love of fairytales and his anti-fascist politics, and why he saw the fantastic as a mode of truth-telling.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffFurther reading in the LRB:Salman Rushdie: Calvinohttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n17/salman-rushdie/calvinoJames Butler: Infinite Artichokehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n12/james-butler/infinite-artichokeJonathan Coe: Calvinoismhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n06/jonathan-coe/calvinoismNext episode: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.Anna Della Subin's study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Circular reasoning is normally condemned by philosophers, but in his 1841 essay ‘Circles', Emerson proposes that not getting anywhere is precisely what we need to do to find out where we already are. In this episode, Jonathan and James consider Emerson's use of the circle to demonstrate an idealistic philosophy rooted in the natural world, in which individuals are bounded by self-created horizons, and the extent to which this fits with Transcendentalist notions of progress and independence. They also discuss what his other essays, including ‘Self-Reliance', ‘Art' and ‘Nature', have to say about the importance of thinking one's own thoughts, and why Emerson had such a powerful influence on writers as varied as Nietzsche, Saul Bellow and Louisa May Alcott.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipRead 'Circles' here:https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/circles/Read more in the LRB:Tony Tanner on the life of Emerson:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n10/tony-tanner/arctic-habitsColin Burrow on the American canon:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n22/colin-burrow/the-magic-bloomschtickNext episode: John Stuart Mill's Autobiography Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas Love Peacock didn't want to write novels, at least not in the form they had taken in the first half of the 19th century. In Crotchet Castle he rejects the expectation that novelists should reveal the interiority of their characters, instead favouring the testing of opinions and ideas. His ‘novel of talk', published in 1831, appears largely like a playscript in which disparate characters assemble for a house party next to the Thames before heading up the river to Wales. Their debates cover, among other things, the Captain Swing riots of 1830, the mass dissemination of knowledge, the emerging philosophy of utilitarianism and the relative merits of medieval and contemporary values. In this episode Clare is joined by Freya Johnston and Thomas Keymer to discuss where the book came from and its use of ‘sociable argument' to offer up-to-date commentary on the economic and political turmoil of its time.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaRead more in the LRB:Thomas Keymer on Peacockhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n03/thomas-keymer/bring-some-madeiraPaul Foot: The not-so-great Reform Acthttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n09/paul-foot/shoy-hoys Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode looks at four poems whose subject would seem to lie beyond words: the death of a child. A defining feature of elegy is the struggle between poetic eloquence and inarticulate grief, and in these works by Ben Jonson, Anne Bradstreet, Geoffrey Hill and Elizabeth Bishop we find that tension at its most acute. Mark and Seamus consider the way each poem deals with the traditional demand of the elegy for consolation, and what happens when the form and language of love poetry subverts elegiac conventions.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldRead the poems here:Ben Jonson: On My First Sonhttps://lrb.me/jonsoncrldAnne Bradstreet:In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreethttps://lrb.me/bradstreetcrldGeoffrey Hill: September Songhttps://lrb.me/hillcrldElizabeth Bishop: First Death in Nova Scotiahttps://lrb.me/bishopcrldRead more in the LRB:Blair Worden on Ben Jonsonhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/blair-worden/the-tribe-of-benBlair Worden on puritanismhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/blair-worden/the-tribe-of-benColin Burrow in Geoffrey Hill:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n04/colin-burrow/rancorous-old-sodHelen Vendler on Elizabeth Bishophttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n05/helen-vendler/the-numinous-mooseNext episode:Two elegies by Thomas Gray:https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyardhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44302/ode-on-the-death-of-a-favourite-cat-drowned-in-a-tub-of-goldfishes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Swift's 1726 tale of Houyhnhnms, Yahoos, Lilliputians and Struldbruggs is normally seen as a satire. But what if it's read as fantasy, and all its contradictions, inversions and reversals as an echo of the traditional starting point of Arabic fairytale: ‘It was and it was not'? In this episode Marina and Anna Della discuss Gulliver's Travels as a text in which empiricism and imagination are tightly woven, where fantastical realms are created to give different perspectives on reality and both writer and reader are liberated from having to decide what to think.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffFurther reading in the LRB:Terry Eagleton:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n16/terry-eagleton/a-spot-of-firm-governmentClare Bucknell: Oven-Ready Childrenhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n02/clare-bucknell/oven-ready-childrenThomas Keymer: Carry Up your Coffee Boldlyhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n08/thomas-keymer/carry-up-your-coffee-boldlyNext episode: Marco Polo's Il Milione and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.Anna Della Subin's study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In The Essence of Christianity (1841) Feuerbach works through the theological crisis of his age to articulate the central, radical idea of 19th-century atheism: that the religion of God is really the religion of humanity. In this episode, Jonathan and James discuss the ways in which the book applies this thought to various aspects of Christian doctrine, from sexual relations to the Trinity, and consider why Feuerbach would never have described himself as an atheist. They also look at George Eliot's remarkable translation of the work, published only thirteen years after the original, which not only ensured Feuerbach's influence in the Anglophone world but invented a new philosophical vocabulary in English for German thought.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipFurther reading in the LRB:James Wood: What next?https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n08/james-wood/what-s-nextTerry Eagleton: George Eliothttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n18/terry-eagleton/biogspeak Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On one level, Mansfield Park is a fairytale transposed to the 19th century: Fanny Price is the archetypal poor relation who, through her virtuousness, wins a wealthy husband. But Jane Austen's 1814 novel is also a shrewd study of speculation, ‘improvement' and the transformative power of money.In the first episode of Novel Approaches, Colin Burrow joins Clare Bucknell and Thomas Jones to discuss Austen's acute reading of property and precarity, and why Fanny's moral cautiousness is a strategic approach to the riskiest speculation of all: marriage.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaClare Bucknell is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and hosted the Close Readings series On Satire with Colin Burrow. The Treasuries, her social history of poetry anthologies, was published in 2023.Thomas Jones is a senior editor at the LRB and host of the LRB Podcast. With Emily Wilson, he hosted the Close Readings series Among the Ancients.Next episode: ‘Crotchet Castle' by Thomas Love Peacock.Further reading from the LRB:John Mullan: Noticing and Not Noticinghttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n22/john-mullan/noticing-and-not-noticingColm Toíbìn: The Importance of Auntshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n06/colm-toibin/the-importance-of-auntsW.J.T. Mitchell: In the Wildernesshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n07/w.j.t.-mitchell/in-the-wilderness Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Milton wrote ‘Lycidas' in 1637, at the age of 29, to commemorate the drowning of the poet Edward King. As well as a great pastoral elegy, it is a denunciation of the ecclesiastical condition of England and a rehearsal for Milton's later role as a writer of national epic. In the first episode of their new series, Seamus and Mark discuss the political backdrop to the poem, Milton's virtuosic mix of poetic tradition and innovation, and why such a fervent puritan would choose an unfashionable, pre-Christian form to honour his friend.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldRead more in the LRB:Colin Burrow (on the 'two-handed engine'):https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n05/colin-burrow/shall-i-go-onFreya Johnston (on Samuel Johnson's criticism):https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n08/freya-johnston/own-your-ignoranceMaggie Kilgour (on the young Milton):https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n20/maggie-kilgour/pens-and-heads Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Thousand and One Nights is an ‘infinite text'; it has no fixed shape or length, no known author, and is transformed with each new translation. In this first episode of Fiction and the Fantastic, Marina Warner and Anna Della Subin explore two particularly mysterious stories taken from Yasmine Seale's new translation of the Nights. ‘The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad' highlights the pleasures of dreaming, the power of language and the imagination's essential role in eroticism. ‘Abdullah of the Sea and Abdullah of the Land' demonstrates how the fantastic can help us imagine new ways of living.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffFurther reading in the LRB:Marina Warner: Travelling Texthttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n24/marina-warner/travelling-textSteven Connor: One's Thousand One Nightinesshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n06/steven-connor/one-s-thousand-one-nightinessesWilliam Gass: A Book at Bedtimehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n21/william-gass/a-book-at-bedtime Marina Warner: ‘The Restless One'https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/june/the-restless-oneNEXT EPISODE: ‘Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift, out on Monday 10 February.Get the book: https://lrb.me/sealenightsffMarina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.Anna Della Subin's study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The series begins with Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (1843), an exploration of faith through the story of Abraham and Isaac. Like most of Kierkegaard's published work, Fear and Trembling appeared under a pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, and its playful relationship to the reader doesn't stop there. Described as a ‘dialectical lyric' on the title page, the book works through a variety of formats in its attempt to understand the nature of faith and the apparently unsolvable paradox that the father of the Abrahamic religions was prepared to murder his own son. James and Jonathan consider whether Kierkegaard thinks we can understand anything, and what Fear and Trembling has in common with the works of Dostoevsky and Kafka.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipFurther reading in the LRB:Jonathan Rée: Dancing in the Service of Thought https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard1James Butler: Reading Genesis https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard2Roger Poole: A Walk with Kierkegaard https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard3Terry Eagleton: A Long Way from Galilee https://lrb.me/cipkierkegaard4James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English.NEXT EPISODE: 'The Essence of Christianity' by Ludwig Feuerbach, out on Monday 3 February.LRB AUDIOBOOKSDiscover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre:https://lrb.me/audiobookscip Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Clare Bucknell and Thomas Jones introduce their new Close Readings series, Novel Approaches. Joined by a variety of contemporary novelists and critics, they'll be exploring a dozen 19th-century British novels from Mansfield Park to New Grub Street, paying particular (though not exclusive) attention to the themes of money and property.The first episode will come out on Monday 27 January, on Austen's Mansfield Park.Clare Bucknell is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and hosted the Close Readings series On Satire with Colin Burrow. The Treasuries, her social history of poetry anthologies, was published in 2023.Thomas Jones is a senior editor at the LRB and host of the LRB Podcast. With Emily Wilson, he hosted the Close Readings series Among the Ancients.The full list of texts for the series:Mansfield Park (1814) by Jane AustenCrotchet Castle (1831) by Thomas Love PeacockWuthering Heights (1847) by Emily BrontëVanity Fair (1847) by William Makepeace ThackerayNorth and South (1854) by Elizabeth GaskellAurora Leigh (1856) by Elizabeth Barrett BrowningAnthony Trollope (TBD)Mill on the Floss (1860) by George EliotOur Mutual Friend (1864) by Charles DickensWashington Square (1880)/Portrait of a Lady (1881) by Henry JamesKidnapped (1886) by Robert Louis StevensonThe Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) by Thomas HardyNew Grub Street (1891) by George Gissing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Ford and Seamus Perry introduce Love and Death, a new Close Readings series on elegy from the Renaissance to the present day. They discuss why the elegy can be a particularly energising form for poets engaging with their craft and the poetic tradition, and how elegy serves an important role in public grieving, remembering and healing.The first episode will come out on Monday 20 January, on Milton's ‘Lycidas'.Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College, London, and Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marina Warner is joined by Anna Della Subin to introduce Fiction and the Fantastic, a new Close Readings series running through 2025. Marina describes the scope of the series, in which she will also be joined by Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis. Together, Anna Della and Marina discuss the ways the fiction of wonder and astonishment can challenge social conventions and open up new ways of living.The first episode will come out on Monday 13 January, on The Thousand and One Nights.Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.Anna Della Subin's study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014.The first four texts:The Thousand and One Nights (Yasmine Seale's translation)Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's TravelsThe Travels of Marco Polo (no particular translation) and Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (William Weaver translation)Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Wood and Jonathan Rée introduce their new Close Readings series, Conversations in Philosophy, running throughout 2025. They explain the title of the series and why they'll be challenging a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of literature and philosophy. The first episode will come out on Monday 6 January, on Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for the New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self.Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English.The full list of texts for the series:Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and TremblingLudwig Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, translated by George EliotRalph Waldo Emerson, ‘Circles' and other essaysJohn Stuart Mill, An AutobiographyA.C. Bradley, ‘My station and its duties'Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator'William James ‘The Will to Believe'Martin Heidegger, ‘The Thing'Jean-Paul Sartre, Theory of the EmotionsSimone de Beauvoir, Ethics of AmbiguityAlbert Camus, The FallIris Murdoch, Sovereignty of Good Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the final episode of Political Poems, Mark and Seamus discuss ‘Little Gidding', the fourth poem of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Emerging out of Eliot's experiences of the Blitz, ‘Little Gidding' presents us with an apocalyptic vision of purifying fire. Suggesting that humanity can survive warfare only through renewed spiritual unity, Eliot finds a model in Little Gidding, a small village that for a time in the 17th century served as an Anglican commune before its closure under Puritan scrutiny. Mark and Seamus explore how Eliot's poetics heighten our sense of the liminal and mystical, and how, by ‘scrambling our brains', Eliot's brilliant rhetoric subsumes his bizarre politics.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjGIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Further reading in the LRB:Frank Kermode: Disintegrationhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n02/frank-kermode/disintegrationHelen Thaventhiran: Things Ill Done and Undonehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n17/helen-thaventhiran/things-ill-done-and-undoneTobias Gregory: By All Possible Arthttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n24/tobias-gregory/by-all-possible-art Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For their final conversation Among the Ancients, Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones turn to the contradictions of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Said by Machiavelli to be the last of the ‘five good emperors' who ruled Rome for most of the second century CE, Marcus oversaw devastating wars on the frontiers, a deadly plague and economic turmoil. The writings known in English as The Meditations, and in Latin as ‘to himself', were composed in Greek in the last decade of Marcus' life. They reveal the emperor's preoccupations with illness, growing old, death and posthumous reputation, as he urges himself not to be troubled by such transient things.Non-subscribers can hear the full version of this episode with ads. To listen ad-free and in full to other episodes of Among the Ancients II, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsOr purchase a gift subscription: https://lrb.me/audiogiftsFurther reading in the LRB:Mary Beard: Was he quite ordinary?https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n14/mary-beard/was-he-quite-ordinaryEmily Wilson: I have gorgeous hairhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/emily-wilson/i-have-gorgeous-hairShadi Bartsch: Dying to Make a Pointhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n22/shadi-bartsch/dying-to-make-a-pointM.F. Burnyeat: Excuses for Madnesshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n20/m.f.-burnyeat/excuses-for-madness Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the final episode of their series in search of the medieval sense of humour Irina and Mary look at one of the most remarkable women authors of the Middle Ages, Gwerful Mechain, who lived in Powys in the 15th century. Mechain was part of a lively literary coterie in northeast Wales and in her poem Cywydd y Cedor (‘Ode to the Vagina') she challenged the conventional approach of her fellow male poets to praise every part of a woman's body apart from her genitalia. Her witty, combative verses, intended for public performance, deployed a brilliant mastery of the complex metrical tradition of medieval Welsh poetry to discuss the most intimate physical experiences.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignupIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignupGet in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As our Close Readings series come to an end this year, you're probably wondering what's coming in 2025. We're delighted to announce there'll be four new series starting in January:‘Conversations in Philosophy' with Jonathan Rée and James WoodJonathan and James challenge a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of philosophy and literature, as they consider how style, narrative, and the expression of ideas play through philosophical writers including Kierkegaard, Mill, Nietzsche, Woolf, Beauvoir and Camus.Reading list here:https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/posts/conversations-in-philosophy‘Fiction and the Fantastic' with Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis.Marina and guests will traverse the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, dread and hope, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin.Reading list here:https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/posts/fiction-and-the-fantastic‘Love and Death' with Seamus Perry and Mark FordMark and Seamus explore the oscillating power of outrage and grief, bitterness and consolation, in poetry in English from the Renaissance to the present day. Their series will consider the elegies of Milton, Hardy, Bishop, Plath and others at their most intimate and expressive.Reading list here:https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/posts/love-and-death‘Novel Approaches' with Clare Bucknell, Thomas Jones and other guestsClare, Tom and guests discuss a selection of 19th-century (mostly) English novels from Mansfield Park to New Grub Street, looking in particular at the roles played in the books by money and property.Reading list here:https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/posts/novel-approachesAnd the subscription will continue to include access to all our past Close Readings series.If you're not already a subscriber, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsGIFTSIf you enjoy Close Readings, why not give it to another book lover in your life?Find our audio gifts here: https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/gifts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the final episode of Human Conditions, Brent and Adam turn to Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider, a collection of prose with exceptional relevance to contemporary grassroots politics. Like Du Bois, Césaire and Baraka, Lorde's work defies genre: as she argues in this collection, ‘poetry is not a luxury' but an essential tool for liberation. Throughout her work, Lorde sought to find and articulate new ways of living that encompassed her whole self – as a Black woman, poet, essayist, novelist, mother and lesbian. Brent and Adam discuss Lorde's radical poetics and politics, and the case for poetry, anger, vulnerability, love and desire as the arsenal of revolution.This podcast was recorded on 21 August 2024.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsBrent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.ukFurther reading and listening in the LRB:Reni Eddo-Lodge & Sarah Shin: On Audre Lordehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/at-the-bookshop/reni-eddo-lodge-and-sarah-shin-on-audre-lorde-your-silence-will-not-protect-youJesse McCarthy & Adam Shatz: Blind Spotshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/blind-spotsSean Jacobs: Chop-Chop Spirithttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n09/sean-jacobs/chop-chop-spiritAnge Mlinko: Waiting for the Poetryhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n14/ange-mlinko/waiting-for-the-poetry Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the final episode of their series, Colin and Clare arrive at Muriel Spark, who would never have considered herself a satirist though her writing was as bitingly satirical as any 20th-century novelist's. A Far Cry from Kensington has a deceptively simple plot: Agnes Hawkins, working for a publisher in London in the 1950s, insults Hector Bartlett, a would-be author, by calling him a ‘pisseur de copie'. Bartlett seeks revenge with the help of Hawkins's fellow lodger, Wanda, with tragic results. Yet the true plot of any Spark novel is difficult to pin down, not least when the word ‘plot' is deployed so frequently by her characters to imply conspiracy and misinformation. Colin and Clare discuss Spark's kaleidoscopic view of reality and the ways in which both Catholicism and Calvinism play through her work.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjGIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsRead more in the LRB:Jenny Turner:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n15/jenny-turner/she-who-can-do-no-wrongFrank Kermode:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n17/frank-kermode/mistress-of-disappearancesSusan Eilenberg:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n24/susan-eilenberg/complacent-bountyJames Wood:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n17/james-wood/can-this-be-what-happened-to-lord-lucan-after-the-night-of-7-november-1974 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As an undergraduate, Seamus Heaney visited Station Island several times, an ancient pilgrimage site traditionally associated with St Patrick and purgatory. Decades later, Heaney worked through competing calls for political engagement and his long-lapsed Catholicism in ‘Station Island', a poem he described as an ‘exorcism'.A dreamlike reworking of Dante's Purgatorio, ‘Station Island' describes Heaney's encounters with the ghosts of childhood acquaintances, literary heroes and victims of the Troubles. Seamus and Mark explore Heaney's unusually autobiographical poem, which wrestles with the inescapability of politics.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Further reading in the LRB:Paul Muldoon: Sweaney Peregrainehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n20/paul-muldoon/sweaney-peregraineSeamus Perry: We Did and We Didn'thttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n09/seamus-perry/we-did-and-we-didn-tJohn Kerrigan: Hand and Foothttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n11/john-kerrigan/hand-and-foot Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apuleius' ‘Metamorphoses', better known as ‘The Golden Ass', is the only ancient Roman novel to have survived in its entirety. Following the story of Lucius, forced to suffer as a donkey until the goddess Isis intervenes, the novel includes frenetic wordplay, filthy humour and the earliest known version of the Psyche and Cupid myth. In this episode, Tom and Emily discuss Apuleius' anarchic mix of the high and low brow, and his incisive depiction of the lives of impoverished and enslaved people.This is an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsFurther reading in the LRB:Peter Parsons: Ancient Greek Romanceshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n15/peter-parsons/ancient-greek-romancesLeofranc Holford-Strevens: God's Willhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n10/leofranc-holford-strevens/god-s-will Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you're looking for advice on sustaining a marriage, or robbing a grave, or performing liver surgery, then a series of self-help stories by a 14th-century Spanish prince is a good place to start. Tales of Count Lucanor, written between 1328 and 1335 by Prince Juan Manuel of Villena, is one of the earliest works of Castilian prose. The tales follow the familiar shape of many medieval stories, presented as a kind of medicine to improve the lives of its readers by example. Yet in his preface Manuel makes an unusual assertion about the individuality of all people, a philosophy that, as Mary and Irina discuss in this episode, leads to bizarre and opaque moral messages intended more to make the reader think for themselves than reach a universal conclusion.Find a translation of the Tales here: https://elfinspell.com/CountLucanor1.htmlNon-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignupIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignupGet in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Black Music, a collection of essays, liner notes and interviews from 1959 to 1967, Amiri Baraka captures the ferment, energy and excitement of the avant-garde jazz scene. Brent and Adam, both jazz critics, discuss Baraka's intimate connections to major players in the scene, and how his work squarely tackles the challenge of writing about music. Published while he still went by LeRoi Jones, the collection provides a composite picture of Baraka's evolving thought, aesthetic values and literary experimentation. Whether you're familiar with the music or totally new to the New Thing, Black Music is an essential guide to a period of political and artistic upheaval.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Subscribe to Close Readings:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsBrent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.ukFurther reading in the LRB:Adam Shatz: The Freedom Principlehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/may/the-freedom-principleAdam Shatz: On Ornette Colemanhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n14/adam-shatz/diaryPhilip Clark: On Cecil Taylorhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/april/cecil-taylor-1929-2018Ian Penman: Birditishttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n02/ian-penman/birditis Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1946 Evelyn Waugh declared that 20th-century society – ‘the century of the common man', as he put it – was so degenerate that satire was no longer possible. But before reaching that conclusion he had written several novels taking aim at his ‘crazy, sterile generation' with a sparkling, acerbic and increasingly reactionary wit. In this episode, Colin and Clare look at A Handful of Dust (1934), a disturbingly modernist satire divorced from modernist ideas. They discuss the ways in which Waugh was a disciple of Oscar Wilde, with his belief in the artist as an agent of cultural change, and why he's at his best when describing the fevered dream of a dying civilisation.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjGIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsFurther reading in the LRB:Seamus Perry:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n16/seamus-perry/isn-t-london-hellJohn Bayley:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n20/john-bayley/mr-toad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wordsworth was not unusual among Romantic poets for his enthusiastic support of the French Revolution, but he stands apart from his contemporaries for actually being there to see it for himself (‘Thou wert there,' Coleridge wrote). This episode looks at Wordsworth's retrospective account of his 1791 visit to France, described in books 9 and 10 of The Prelude, and the ways in which it reveals a passionate commitment to republicanism while recoiling from political extremism. Mark and Seamus discuss why, despite Wordsworth's claim of being innately republican, discussion of the intellectual underpinnings of the revolution is strangely absent from the poem, which is more often preoccupied with romance and the imagination, particularly in their power to soften zealotry.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjGIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsFurther reading in the LRB:Seamus Perry:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n24/seamus-perry/regrets-vexations-lassitudesE.P. Thompsonhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n22/e.p.-thompson/wordsworth-s-crisisColin Burrow:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n13/colin-burrow/a-solemn-and-unsexual-manMarilyn Butlerhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n12/marilyn-butler/three-feet-on-the-groundThomas Keymerhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n12/thomas-keymer/after-meditation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we tackle Juvenal, whose sixteen satires influenced libertines, neoclassicists and early Christian moralists alike. Conservative to a fault, Juvenal's Satires rails against the rapid expansion and transformation of Roman society in the early principate – immigration, sexual mores and eating habits all come under fire. But where his contemporary Tacitus handled the same material with restraint, Juvenal's work explodes with vivid and vicious depictions of urban life, including immigration, sexual mores and eating habits. Emily and Tom explore the idiosyncrasies of Juvenal's verse and its handling in Peter Green's translation, and how best to parse his over-the-top hostility to everyone and everything.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsFurther reading in the LRB:Remembering Peter Greenhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/september/peter-green-1924-2024Claude Rawson: Blistering Attackshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n21/claude-rawson/blistering-attacksClare Bucknell & Colin Burrow: What is satire?https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/on-satire-what-is-satire Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mary and Irina resume their discussion of Boccaccio's Decameron, focusing on three stories of female agency, deception and desire. Alibech, an aspiring hermitess, is tricked into indulging her powerful sexual urges; Petronella combines business and pleasure at the expense of her husband and lover; while Lydia demonstrates her devotion by killing hawks and pulling teeth. As Mary and Irina discuss, these stories exemplify the ambiguous depiction of women in the Decameron, where the world is powered by rapacious female lusts, sex has no consequences and conventional morality is suspended.Read more on the Decameron in the LRB: https://lrb.me/decameronpodNon-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignupIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignupGet in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brent Hayes Edwards talks to Adam about Aimé Césaire's 1950 essay Discourse on Colonialism, a groundbreaking work of 20th-century anti-colonial thought and a precursor to the writings of Césaire's protégé, Frantz Fanon. Césaire was Martinique's most influential poet and one of its most prominent politicians as a deputy in the French National Assembly, and his Discourse is addressed directly at his country's colonisers. Adam and Brent consider Césaire's poetry alongside his political arguments and the particular characteristics of his version of négritude, the far-reaching movement of black consciousness he founded with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Subscribe to Close Readings:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsBrent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By the end of 1895 Oscar Wilde's life was in ruins as he sat in Reading Gaol facing public disgrace, bankruptcy and, two years later, exile. Just ten months earlier the premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest at St James's Theatre in London had been greeted rapturously by both the audience and critics. In this episode Colin and Clare consider what Wilde was trying do with his comedy, written on the cusp of this dark future. The ‘strange mixture of romance and finance' Wilde observed in the letters of his lover, Alfred Douglas, could equally be applied to Earnest, and the satire of Jane Austen before it, but is it right to think of Wilde's play as satirical? His characters are presented in an ethical vacuum, stripped of any good or bad qualities, but ultimately seem to demonstrate the impossibility of living a purely aesthetic life free from conventional morality.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjGIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsRead more in the LRB:Colm Tóibín on Wilde's letters: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n08/colm-toibin/love-in-a-dark-timeColm Tóibín the Wilde family: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n23/colm-toibin/the-road-to-reading-gaolFrank Kermode: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n19/frank-kermode/a-little-of-this-honey Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his long 1938 poem, Louis MacNeice took many of the ideals shared by other young writers of his time – a desire for relevance, responsiveness and, above all, honesty – and applied them in a way that has few equivalents in English poetry. This diary-style work, written from August to December 1938, reflects with ‘documentary vividness', as Ian Hamilton has described, on the international and personal crises swirling around MacNeice in those months. Seamus and Mark discuss the poem's lively depiction of the anecdotal abundance of London life and the ways in which its innovative rhyming structure helps to capture the autumnal moment when England was slipping into an unknowable winter.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjGIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsRead more in the LRB:Samuel Hynes: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v11/n05/samuel-hynes/like-the-trees-on-primrose-hillIan Hamilton: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n05/ian-hamilton/smartened-up Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Annals, Tacitus' study of the emperors from Tiberius to Nero, covers some of the most vivid and ruthless episodes in Roman history. A masterclass in political intrigue (and how not to do it), the Annals features mutiny, senatorial backstabbing, wars on the imperial frontiers, political purges and enormous egos. Emily and Tom explore the many ambiguities that make the Annals such rewarding as well as difficult reading, as they discuss Tacitus' cynicism, knotty style and approach to history.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract form this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsEmily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jones is an editor at the London Review of Books.Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the preface to the Decameron Boccaccio describes Florentine society laid waste by bubonic plague in the mid-14th century. But before he gets to that he has a confession for the reader: he has been hurt by love, a love ‘more fervent than any other love', and intends his work as a guide to life and love for young women in particular. In the first of two episodes on Boccaccio's hundred novelle of sex, dishonesty and foolishness, Mary and Irina consider why both the preface and first story – about the disreputable merchant Cepparello – start with a confession, before looking at the later tale of the gardener Masetto and his noble efforts tending to the needs of every nun in a convent in Lamporecchio.Subscribe to Close Readings:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignupIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignupRead more on Boccaccio the LRB: https://lrb.me/decameronpodGet in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brent Hayes Edwards and Adam discuss the ‘ur-text of Black political philosophy', W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk. Spanning autobiography, history, biography, fiction, music criticism and political science, its fourteen essays set the tone for black literature, political debate and scholarly production for the course of the twentieth century. Souls was an immediate bestseller, the subject of furious debate and a foundational work in the new field of sociology.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Subscribe to Close Readings:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsBrent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few poets have had the courage (or inclination) to rhyme ‘Plato' with ‘potato', ‘intellectual' with ‘hen-peck'd you all' or ‘Acropolis' with ‘Constantinople is'. Byron does all of these in Don Juan, his 16,000-line unfinished mock epic that presents itself as a grand satire on human vanity in the tradition of Cervantes, Swift and the Stoics, and refuses to take anything seriously for longer than a stanza. But is there more to Don Juan than an attention-seeking poet sustaining a deliberately difficult verse form for longer than Paradise Lost in order ‘to laugh at all things'? In this episode Clare and Colin argue that there is: they see in Don Juan a satire whose radical openness challenges the plague of ‘cant' in Regency society but drags itself into its own line of fire in the process, leaving the poet caught in a struggle against the sinfulness of his own poetic power, haunted by its own wrongness.Read more in the LRB:Clare Bucknell: Rescuing Lord Byronhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/clare-bucknell/his-own-dark-mindMarilyn Butler: Successhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n21/marilyn-butler/successJohn Mullan: Hidden Consequenceshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n21/john-mullan/hidden-consequencesThomas Jones: On Top of Everythinghttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n18/thomas-jones/on-top-of-everythingSUBSCRIBEIf you're not already a subscriber to Close Readings, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjGIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsGet in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘Goblin Market' was the title poem of Christina Rossetti's first collection, published in 1862, and while she disclaimed any allegorical purpose in it, modern readers have found it hard to resist political interpretations. The poem's most obvious preoccupation seems to be the Victorian notion of the ‘fallen woman'. When she wrote it Rossetti was working at the St Mary Magdalene house of charity in Highgate, a refuge for sex workers and women who had had non-marital sex. Anxieties around ‘fallen women' were explored by many writers of the day, but Rossetti's treatment is striking both for the rich intensity of its physical descriptions and the unusual vision of redemption it offers, in which the standard Christian imperatives are rethought in sisterly terms. Seamus and Mark discuss how post-Freudian readers might read those descriptions and what the poem says about the place of the ‘market' in Victorian society.Read the poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-marketThis episode features a full reading of 'Goblin Market' by Shirley Henderson and Felicity Jones at the Josephine Hart Poetry Hour. Watch the reading here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMnHW9MevJkFind more about the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation here: https://www.thepoetryhour.com/foundationSubscribe to Close Readings:In Apple Podcasts, click 'subscribe' at the top of this podcast to unlock all the episodes;In other podcast apps here: https://lrb.me/ppsignupRead more in the LRB:Penelope Fitzgerald: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n05/penelope-fitzgerald/christina-and-the-sidJacqueline Rose: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n20/jacqueline-rose/undone-defiled-defacedJohn Bayley: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n06/john-bayley/missingness Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.