398 Fernando Pessoa

Daniel A. Olivas, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, is a fiction writer, poet, playwright, book critic, and attorney. In this episode, Jacke talks to Daniel about his lifelong devotion to literature and its ability to humanize the targets of anti-immigration sentiment. In the i ...  Show more

In the fourth century B.C., Plato famously posited a philosopher-king as the ideal ruler for his imagined Republic. Five hundred years later, the Roman Empire was led by Marcus Aurelius, the man often viewed as the best example of this Platonic ideal. In this episode, Jacke talks ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Portuguese poet Pessoa (1888-1935) who was largely unknown in his lifetime but who, in 1994, Harold Bloom included in his list of the 26 most significant western writers since the Middle Ages. Pessoa wrote in his own name but mainly in the name ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics. The Poetics is, as far as we know, the first ever work of literary theory. Written in the 4th century BC, it is the work of a scholar who was also a biologist, and treats literary works with the detached analytical eye of a ...  Show more

In his latest book In Writing (Hamish Hamilton) psychoanalyst and regular LRB contributor Adam Phillips celebrates the art of close reading and asks what it is to defend literature in a world that is increasingly devaluing language. Through a vivid series of readings of writers h ...  Show more

En la vida, muchas veces adoptamos filosofías, expresiones e incluso comportamientos que no obedecen a nuestros contextos inmediatos; tal vez por mayor empatía con unas u otras, lo cual nos lleva a construir nuestras propias identidades. Otras veces nos quedamos con nuestros pasa ...  Show more