The self

Professor Andrew Bennett discusses the idea of authorship. 

Bill Greenwell adapts one of Wordsworth’s poems ‘To daffodils’ in the voice of Thomas De Quincy. 

Dr Mark Rawlinson explores the relationship between War and War Poetry using Owen's famous 'Preface' as the starting point. Dr Mark Rawlinson is a Reader in English Literature at the University of Leicester, working on nineteenth- and twentieth century literature, especially narr ...  Show more

Dr Anne Casey, a poet and writer teaches us the joy of poetry. 

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 contempo ...  Show more

In this episode, we examine the connection between poetry and plague in the early 1590s. An outbreak of the recurring sickness contributed to Shakespeare’s early career as a poet, and that poetry likely included his many sonnets. We also examine how an old acquaintance from Shake ...  Show more