Love and Death: ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray

Love and Death: ‘Elegy Written in a Country C...

Up next

Who’s afraid of realism? ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ by Leo Tolstoy

In the late 1870s, shortly after the publication of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy experienced what might be described today as a midlife crisis. In his short autobiographical book A Confession, finished in 1880, he questioned what meaning there is in life that is not annihilated by the ...  Show more

The Man Behind the Curtain: ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley signed off her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein by bidding her ‘hideous progeny go forth and prosper’. In this episode of The Man Behind the Curtain, Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones look at the machinery that Shelley used to assemble her immortal creatu ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

Beci Carver on Thomas Hardy ("The Voice")
Close Readings

A haunting, haunted poem for us today: Beci Carver joins the podcast to discuss Thomas Hardy's poem for his late wife, "The Voice."Beci is a lecturer in 20th-century literature at University of Exeter and the author of Granular Modernism (Oxford UP, 2014). Her articles have appea ...  Show more

616 Madwomen and Literature (with Suzanne Scanlon) | Sylvia Plath | My Last Book with Adhar Noor Desai
The History of Literature

The relationship between literature and "madwomen" has deep roots. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Suzanne Scanlon (Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen) about her efforts to reclaim the idea of the madwoman as a template for insight and transcendence. PLUS Jacke talks to A ...  Show more

742 Edgar Allan Poe (with Richard Kopley) | Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (#12 GBOAT) | My Last Book with Christopher Herbert
The History of Literature

It's October, the perfect month to celebrate the master of mystery and the macabre. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Richard Kopley about his book Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, a comprehensive critical biography that combines a narrative of Poe's enduring challenges (including h ...  Show more

Mortal Pretensions in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (Holy Sonnet 10)
Subtext: Conversations about Classic Books and Films

A recusant Catholic turned Protestant, a rake turned priest, a scholar, lawyer, politician, soldier, secretary, sermonizer, and of course, a poet— John Donne’s biography contains so many scuttled identities and discrete lives, perhaps its no wonder that his great subjects were mo ...  Show more