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

'Hero and Leander' was published in 1598, and anyone who came across it in a stationer’s shop in Elizabethan London would have known that its author was dead, killed in a brawl in Deptford in 1593. Christopher Marlowe’s sensational life as playwright and spy is matched by the wit ...  عرض المزيد

After following up a lead from a birdwatcher, Rachel Carson drew a web of connections that led to one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Silent Spring (1962) investigated the synthetic pesticides that proliferated after the Second World War, which were assiduously ...  عرض المزيد

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 ...  عرض المزيد

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 ...  عرض المزيد

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 ...  عرض المزيد

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 ...  عرض المزيد