Afleveringen

  • 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/closereadings


    Or purchase a gift subscription: https://lrb.me/audiogifts


    Further reading in the LRB:


    Mary Beard: Was he quite ordinary?

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n14/mary-beard/was-he-quite-ordinary


    Emily Wilson: I have gorgeous hair

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/emily-wilson/i-have-gorgeous-hair


    Shadi Bartsch: Dying to Make a Point

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n22/shadi-bartsch/dying-to-make-a-point


    M.F. Burnyeat: Excuses for Madness

    https://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/medlolapplesignup

    In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup

    Get in touch: [email protected]


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?

    Klik hier om de feed te vernieuwen.

  • 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 Wood


    Jonathan 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 Ford


    Mark 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 guests


    Clare, 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-approaches


    And 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/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings


    GIFTS


    If 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/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings


    Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.


    Get in touch: [email protected]


    Further reading and listening in the LRB:


    Reni Eddo-Lodge & Sarah Shin: On Audre Lorde

    https://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-you


    Jesse McCarthy & Adam Shatz: Blind Spots

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/blind-spots


    Sean Jacobs: Chop-Chop Spirit

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n09/sean-jacobs/chop-chop-spirit


    Ange Mlinko: Waiting for the Poetry

    https://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/4dbjbjG

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

    Read more in the LRB:

    Jenny Turner:

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n15/jenny-turner/she-who-can-do-no-wrong

    Frank Kermode:

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n17/frank-kermode/mistress-of-disappearances

    Susan Eilenberg:

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n24/susan-eilenberg/complacent-bounty

    James 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 Peregraine

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n20/paul-muldoon/sweaney-peregraine


    Seamus Perry: We Did and We Didn’t

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n09/seamus-perry/we-did-and-we-didn-t


    John Kerrigan: Hand and Foot

    https://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.


    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/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings


    Further reading in the LRB:


    Peter Parsons: Ancient Greek Romances

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n15/peter-parsons/ancient-greek-romances


    Leofranc Holford-Strevens: God’s Will

    https://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.html


    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/medlolapplesignup

    In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup

    Get in touch: [email protected]


    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. Published while he still went by LeRoi Jones, it provides a composite picture of Baraka’s evolving thought, aesthetic values and literary experimentation. In this episode, Brent and Adam discuss the ways in which Baraka tackled the challenge of writing about music and his intimate connections to the major players in jazz. 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/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings


    Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.

    Get in touch: [email protected]


    Further reading in the LRB:

    Adam Shatz: The Freedom Principle

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/may/the-freedom-principle


    Adam Shatz: On Ornette Coleman

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n14/adam-shatz/diary


    Philip Clark: On Cecil Taylor

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/april/cecil-taylor-1929-2018


    Ian Penman: Birditis

    https://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/4dbjbjG

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

    Further reading in the LRB:

    Seamus Perry:

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n16/seamus-perry/isn-t-london-hell

    John 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/4dbjbjG

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

    Further reading in the LRB:

    Seamus Perry:

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n24/seamus-perry/regrets-vexations-lassitudes

    E.P. Thompson

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n22/e.p.-thompson/wordsworth-s-crisis

    Colin Burrow:

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n13/colin-burrow/a-solemn-and-unsexual-man

    Marilyn Butler

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n12/marilyn-butler/three-feet-on-the-ground

    Thomas Keymer

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n12/thomas-keymer/after-meditation


    Get in touch: [email protected]


    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. 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/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings


    Further reading in the LRB:


    Remembering Peter Green

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/september/peter-green-1924-2024


    Claude Rawson: Blistering Attacks

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n21/claude-rawson/blistering-attacks


    Clare 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/decameronpod


    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/medlolapplesignup

    In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup

    Get in touch: [email protected]


    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/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings


    Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.

    Get in touch: [email protected]


    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/4dbjbjG

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

    Read 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-time

    Colm Tóibín the Wilde family: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n23/colm-toibin/the-road-to-reading-gaol

    Frank 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/4dbjbjG

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

    Read more in the LRB:

    Samuel Hynes: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v11/n05/samuel-hynes/like-the-trees-on-primrose-hill

    Ian 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 rewarding, as well as difficult, reading and discuss Tacitus’ knotty style and approach to history.


    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/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings


    Further reading in the LRB:


    Mary Beard: Four-Day Caesar

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n02/mary-beard/four-day-caesar


    Anthony Grafton: Those Limbs We Admire

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n14/anthony-grafton/those-limbs-we-admire


    Shadi Bartsch: Fratricide, Matricide and the Philosopher

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n12/shadi-bartsch/fratricide-matricide-and-the-philosopher


    Mark Ford: The Death of Petronius

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n24/mark-ford/the-death-of-petronius


    Emily 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: [email protected]


    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/medlolapplesignup

    In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup

    Read more on Boccaccio the LRB: https://lrb.me/decameronpod

    Get in touch: [email protected]


    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 20th 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/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings


    Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.

    Get in touch: [email protected]


    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.

    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

    Read more in the LRB:

    Clare Bucknell: Rescuing Lord Byron

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/clare-bucknell/his-own-dark-mind

    Marilyn Butler: Success

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n21/marilyn-butler/success

    John Mullan: Hidden Consequences

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n21/john-mullan/hidden-consequences

    Thomas Jones: On Top of Everything

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n18/thomas-jones/on-top-of-everything


    Get in touch: [email protected]


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.