Critical Readings
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Presented by Akademician.com, Critical Readings examines key literary texts using close reading and critical analysis, and explains these approaches in discussion. Listeners will learn about the texts themselves and about how to approach a text for critical analysis.
Available episodes
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3 days ago
CR Episode 75: Excerpts from Astrophil and Stella
The panel examines a selection of sonnets and a song from Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, considering the formal and tonal connexions between Sidney's poetry and the works of earlier and later poets, including Chaucer, Petrarch, and Shakespeare.
Apr 12, 2021
CR Episode 74: Introduction to Abraham Cowley
The panel discusses a selection of poems covering the entire span of Abraham Cowley's oeuvre: beginning with his college years and the unfinished epic 'Davideis', through his popular collections, and concluding with his late 'Ode to the Royal Society'.
Apr 5, 2021
CR Episode 73: Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso
The panel discusses a selection of John Milton's shorter poems, the oft-paired 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso', and examines their use of Orpheus as a metaphor, and their different attitudes to finding communal delight and solitary pleasure in life.
Mar 29, 2021
CR Episode 72: Irony in the Poetry of Stephen Crane
The panel analyses the use of irony in the poetic works of Stephen Crane, including selections from "War Is Kind" (1899), and discusses the development of realism and imagism in English literature, especially in poetry about the experience of war.
Mar 22, 2021
CR Episode 71: Accepting Complexity in Melville’s Poetry
The panel analyses contradiction in Melville's earliest and latest published poems: three selections from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War--his first collection--and "Art" from Timoleon and Other Ventures, published only four months before his death.
Mar 15, 2021
CR Episode 70: Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard
In a return to the works of Alexander Pope, the panel reads his "Eloisa to Abelard" in full and discusses the complexity of Eloisa's tragic circumstances: her love for Abelard, her vocation as a nun, and the suffering to which they have been subjected.
Mar 8, 2021
CR Episode 69: Keats and The Eve of St. Agnes
The panel discusses the late Romantic shift in focus from nominally Christian, deified Nature to transcendental beauty in three longer works by Keats, including "The Eve of St. Agnes" and excerpts from "Endymion" and the unfinished "Hyperion".
Mar 1, 2021
CR Episode 68: Shelley, Ozymandias, and the Death of Keats
The panel engages in a wide-ranging discussion of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his relation to the early and late Romantic movements, his work to establish the reputation of Keats, his association with radical politics, and his own untimely death, aged 29.
Feb 22, 2021
CR Episode 67: An Introduction to Lord Byron
The panel begins a multi-week review of Romanticism with a review of the movement's (and the author's) effects upon poetry, including readings of three works: "Darkness", "The Destruction of Sennacherib", and excerpts from "The Bride of Abydos".
Feb 15, 2021
CR Episode 66: Poetry and Verse of Robert W. Service
The panel discusses the difference between verse and poetry (including whether such a difference exists), and examines three 'frosty' poems by Service, including "Pullman Porter", "The Prospector", and his famous ballad, "The Cremation of Sam McGee".
Feb 8, 2021
CR Episode 65: Three by Elizabeth Bishop
The panel considers the role of time, colour, militarism, rhyme, repetition, meter, and other formal poetic aspects in three of the more popular and widely-anthologised poems written by Elizabeth Bishop: "Roosters", "The Fish", and "One Art".
Feb 1, 2021
CR Episode 64: An Introduction to Philip Larkin
The panel examines the complicated irony of Philip Larkin's verse, and considers his use of poetic formalism, and themes including rebelliousness, nihilism, love, and impermanence, in "This Be the Verse", "Aubade", "An Arundel Tomb", and "Days".
Jan 11, 2021
CR Episode 63: Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis
The panel continues to welcome in a new year by looking back to an old year--in this case, A.D. 1666, and Dryden's poem "Annus Mirabilis", which ruminates on the wonders of war with Holland, the Great Fire of London, and the heroic conduct of Charles II.
Jan 4, 2021
CR Episode 62: Winter with Longfellow
As the new year dawns, the panel revisits the work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the quintessential Fireside Poet, to reexamine some favourites (Excelsior, The Day Is Done) and some poems which are new to the podcast (Psalm of Life, Paul Revere's Ride).
Dec 28, 2020
CR Episode 61: Poetry and Prose of John Donne
If it must be Donne, let it be done well! The panel reads Donne's selected poetry and prose: a Christmas sermon, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", "The Flea", and selections from both "La Corona" and "Holy Sonnets".
Dec 21, 2020
CR Episode 60: The Ambiguous Andrew Marvell
The panel considers the scholarly consensus that Marvell is poetically and politically ambiguous by reading "To His Coy Mistress", "Clorinda and Damon", "A Dialogue between the Soul and the Body", and "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland".
Dec 7, 2020
CR Episode 59: Contradictory Verse of Robert Herrick
The panel continues a survey of English Civil War poetry with a look at Robert Herrick's deliberately contradictory verses, including his Hesperides, and the famous Carpe Diem poems "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" and "Corinna's Going a Maying".
Nov 16, 2020
CR Episode 58: Religious Poetry of George Herbert
The panel examines the poetical works of George Herbert, discussing the Christian theological implications found in the language of three of his lyric poems, each of which is composed on a religious topic: "Prayer (2)", "Divinity", and "Love (3)".
Oct 26, 2020
CR Episode 57: Cigars and Seaweed of James Russell Lowell
The panel examines selected verse of American fire-side poet James Russell Lowell, with a brief survey including some light verse on cigars and seasons, and some more serious writing on nautical themes featuring sirens, seaweed, and ocean-side lyres.
Oct 19, 2020
CR Episode 56: An Introduction to Robert Lowell
The panel reviews the biography of, and some selected works by, the twentieth-century poet Robert Lowell, including his "Falling Asleep over the Aeneid", "Memories of West Street and Lepke", and "Four Spanish Sonnets", with special attention to form.
Oct 5, 2020
CR Episode 55: Wallace Stevens’ Harmonium
The panel reviews five poems selected from Wallace Stevens' debut collection, Harmonium, and considers the role of Stevens within the larger context of the poetic development of the Romantic movement into its fulfilment with the advent of Modernism.
Sep 28, 2020
CR Episode 54: Pope’s Translation of The Iliad
The panel reads Book I of Alexander Pope's translation of The Iliad, discusses Pope's approach contextually, compares that approach to the modern translations of Fitzgerald and Fagles (amongst others), and considers theoretical commentary on translations.
Sep 21, 2020
CR Episode 53: Masefield’s Midsummer Night
The panel examines the biography of John Masefield before reading and examining excerpts from his Arthurian cycle, Midsummer Night, with special attention on the unique aspects of Masefield's recasting of traditional Arthurian mythological elements.
Sep 14, 2020
CR Episode 52: The Faerie Queene, Mutabilitie Cantos
The panel reviews the epilogue-like Mutabilitie Cantos of the Faerie Queene, reviewing scholarly opinion about their place in the whole poem, and considering the interrelations of the Greco-Roman pantheon to Nature, Time, and the Judeo-Christian God.
Sep 7, 2020
CR Episode 51: The Faerie Queene, Book VI, Cantos 7-12
The panel reviews the second half of Spenser's book of courtesy, with attention given to the scholarly view of C. S. Lewis, Northrop Frye, and others, that Courtesy represents the central portion of the poem and that it is the essential Spenserian virtue., and that courtesy represents the essential virtue.
Aug 31, 2020
CR Episode 50: The Faerie Queene, Book VI, Cantos 1-6
The panel examines the first half of Spenser's book of courtesy, reading its depictions in the light of the historical development of chevalrie/chivalry and courtoise/courtesy, and comparing its depiction of characters to those found in other Arthuriana.
Aug 17, 2020
CR Episode 49: The Faerie Queene, Book V, Cantos 7-12
The panel examines historical criticism of Book V, with particular attention to the mid-twentieth-century development of a moral-allegorical reading in contrast to the earlier historical reading, and considers how the two might best be combined.
Aug 10, 2020
CR Episode 48: The Faerie Queene, Book V, Cantos 1-6
The full panel convenes to discuss Spenser's approach to justice in Book V, with attention given to the challenges Artegall's Solomon-like judgement faces--a dispute between knights, a giant of revolution, and ultimately the Amazon queen Radigund herself.
Aug 3, 2020
CR Episode 47: The Faerie Queene, Book IV, Cantos 7-12
The panel concludes the book of friendship with an examination of the character of Sclaunder, and an account of Spenser's planned poetic cartography--Epithalmion Thamesis--intended to give all the rivers of Britain 'their right names and right passage'.
Jul 20, 2020
CR Episode 46: The Faerie Queene, Book IV, Cantos 1-6
The panel turns its attention to the Book of Friendship, sometimes described as the 'least interesting' of the sections, and discusses whether it has been unfairly maligned or whether Spenser's intentions can explain the book's perceived deficiencies.
Jul 13, 2020
CR Episode 45: The Faerie Queene, Book III, Cantos 7-12
The panel addresses a reader question before turning to Book III's unwholesome delights and the means by which the virtuous refuse them and the sinful fall prey to them, with special attention to the conduct of Hellenore, Malbecco, and the satyrs.
Jul 6, 2020
CR Episode 44: The Faerie Queene, Book III, Cantos 1-6
The panel adds a new member, and begins a discussion of the first half of The Faerie Queene, Book III, by focusing on the character of Britomart, her historical and mythological characterisation, potential allegorical connexions, and chivalric impact.
Jun 29, 2020
CR Episode 43: The Faerie Queene, Book II, Cantos 7-12
The panel reviews the second half of Book II of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, with particular attention shown to the allegorical representation of the seven deadly sins and the means by which they can be overcome through the virtue of temperance.
Jun 22, 2020
CR Episode 42: The Faerie Queene, Book II, Cantos 1-6
The panel reviews selections from the first six cantos of Book II of Spenser's Faerie Queene, with particular attention to Guyon's interactions with Belphoebe (and her connexion to Diana and Venus), the character of Palmer, and the return of Archimago.
Jun 15, 2020
CR Episode 41: The Faerie Queene, Book I, Cantos 7-12
The panel examines the second half of the first book of The Faerie Queene, with particular attention to the foundations of textual analysis, demonstrating readings grounded in the texts themselves and in the material and tropes available to the author.
Jun 8, 2020
CR Episode 40: The Faerie Queene, Book I, Cantos 1-6
The panel welcomes two additional experts to begin a several-month-long survey of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene in its entirety, in this episode examining Spenser's personal history, his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, and the first half of Book I.
Jun 1, 2020
CR Episode 39: Robert Frost and the Road Not Taken
The panel discusses two of Robert Frost's best-known nature poems, including "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", and their common misreadings, before discussing the unusually urban setting of his "Acquainted with the Night".
Apr 27, 2020
CR Episode 38: Betjeman’s Railways
The panel bridges McGonagall's Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay to a discussion of twentieth-century poet laureate John Betjeman, who had an abiding fascination for railway buildings both architecturally and as a connecting point for human experiences.
Apr 6, 2020
CR Episode 37: William McGonagall and the Tay Bridge
In the first podcast of April, the panel examines the work of a truly exceptional poet--the unparalleled and indefatigable William Topaz McGonagall--and discusses three of his poems related to the Tay Bridge (near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green).
Mar 30, 2020
CR Episode 36: Eliot’s Four Quartets IV – Little Gidding
After a brief delay, the panel concludes its review of Eliot's Four Quartets with a discussion of Little Gidding, focusing on its cyclicality, pentecostal imagery, connexions to Dante's Commedia, and what the poem suggests about the communion of saints.
Mar 2, 2020
CR Episode 35: Eliot’s Four Quartets III – The Dry Salvages
The panel examines 'The Dry Salvages' (rhymes with 'assuages'), the third of Eliot's Four Quartets, and ponders over the speaker's shift away from temporal considerations and towards intercessory prayer and overtly Christian theological symbolism.
Feb 24, 2020
CR Episode 34: Eliot’s Four Quartets II – East Coker
The panel examines 'East Coker', the second of Eliot's Four Quartets, with particular attention to the poet's developing understanding about the search for meaning in life, the connexion to ancestral history, and the necessity of identifying a telos.
Feb 17, 2020
CR Episode 33: Eliot’s Four Quartets I – Burnt Norton
The panel begins a four-week reading of T. S. Eilot's 'Four Quartets', beginning with 'Burnt Norton', and with particular attention to the ways in which the poem develops the ideas of the Eternal Present and the human experience of the passage of time.
Feb 10, 2020
CR Episode 32: Irish Poets II – Fallon, Kavanagh, Heaney
The panel concludes its two-week survey of Irish poets, ending with Peter Fallon's 'The Old Masters', Patrick Kavanagh's 'Address to an Old Wooden Gate', and Seamus Heaney's 'Fosterling'.
Feb 3, 2020
CR Episode 31: Irish Poets I – Allingham, Joyce, MacNeice
The panel begins a two-week survey reading Irish poets, beginning with William Allingham's 'The Fairies', James Joyce's 'A Prayer', and Louis MacNeice's 'Prayer before Birth'.
Jan 27, 2020
CR Episode 30: Fun in the Snow with Thomas Hardy
The panel reads three poems by Thomas Hardy (including some with an appropriately hibernal theme), discusses Hardy's role in contemporary literature, and plans some short story readings for the summer, along with one especially long poem.
Jan 13, 2020
CR Episode 29: Introduction to W. B. Yeats
The panel considers multiple, potentially competing, readings of three poems from the early, middle, and late work of W. B. Yeats, covering three of his poetic interests: faerie, Irish political events, and a longing for spiritual engagement.
Jan 6, 2020
CR Episode 28: W. H. Auden’s Funeral Blues
The panel examines three poems by W. H. Auden, including his much-anthologised and potentially ironic 'Funeral Blues', the literary biography 'A Thanksgiving', and the seasonally-appropriate conclusion to 'For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio'.
Dec 30, 2019
CR Episode 27: Longfellow’s Excelsior
The panel reads and surveys three poems by Longfellow: 'The Cross of Snow', 'The Day Is Done', and 'Excelsior', and makes a case for Longfellow's narrative and emotive expression, in contrast to modern critical demands for abstraction and complexity.
Dec 16, 2019
CR Episode 26: Emily Dickinson on Death
The panel looks at three poems by Dickinson (nos. 280, 311, and 712) which all centre on a theme of mortality and endings, and discusses their important relevance to modern life, with its focus on perpetual youth and its delusions of immortality.
Dec 2, 2019
CR Episode 25: Selections from Songs of Innocence and Experience
The panel examines four poems by William Blake from Songs of Innocence (Night, The Chimney Sweeper) and Songs of Experience (The Chimney Sweeper, A Poison Tree), and discusses Blake's mysticism, child-like wonder, and poetic depictions of Christianity.
Nov 25, 2019
CR Episode 24: Keats on a Grecian Urn and to a Nightingale
The panel examines 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and 'Ode to a Nightingale' by Keats, focusing on the role of transience, mortality, stasis, truth, beauty, and nature--and imagining whether Keats frames his poems within an 'epistemology of aesthetics'.
Nov 18, 2019
CR Episode 23: Dante Gabriel Rosetti on Sleep
The panel discusses two 'sleep poems' of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: "Sleepless Dreams" from The House of Life, and the early poem "My Sister's Sleep", with special attention, for composition purposes, given to the formal structure of the two poems.
Nov 11, 2019
CR Episode 22: Goblin Market
The panel begins a fortnight-long feature on the Rossettis with an examination of Christina Georgina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market', including a reading of most of the poem with focus on the poem's elusive metaphors and multiple potential readings.
Nov 4, 2019
CR Episode 21: Christabel, Part II
The panel concludes their reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Christabel" by considering the function of Leoline's overabundant grief, examining the nature of Geraldine's magical influence, and speculating about possible conclusions to the poem.
Oct 28, 2019
CR Episode 20: Christabel, Part I
The panel welcomes James Smoker, a Coleridge scholar at the University of St. Andrews, to discuss Coleridge, Christian Theology, the British Romantics, and the first part of Christabel.
Oct 21, 2019
CR Episode 19: Coleridge’s Dream Poems
The panel discusses theological readings of three of Coleridge's most famous poems, all of which share the occasion of sleep as central to their action: 'Kubla Khan; or, the Vision in a Dream'; 'The Pains of Sleep'; and, 'This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison'.
Oct 14, 2019
CR Episode 18: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part II
The panel discusses the second half of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, with particular attention given to the theology of the Mariner's sin, contrition, and absolution, and the relation of that theology to and within the Romantic conception of Nature.
Oct 7, 2019
CR Episode 17: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part I
The panel discusses the first three parts of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, proposing the Ancient Mariner as a figure in transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, and including overviews of Critical moves and an analogy to T. S. Eliot.
Sep 30, 2019
CR Episode 16: Lyrical Ballads, Part II
The panel begins to cross over from Wordsworth to Coleridge in the second of three episodes focused on Lyrical Ballads, addressing the role of nature, emotional state, and parenthood in both Wordsworth's "The Mad Mother" and Coleridge's "The Nightingale".
Sep 23, 2019
CR Episode 15: Lyrical Ballads, Part I
The panel discusses Romanticism and begins a three-week examination of selected poems from Lyrical Ballads, the experimental collection by Wordsworth and Coleridge. This week's selections are Wordsworth's "The Female Vagrant" and "Tintern Abbey".
Sep 16, 2019
CR Episode 14: Gray’s Elegy
As the panel continues the transition from the Augustans to the Romantics, they turn their attention to the notoriously self-critical Thomas Gray, who refused the Poet Laureateship and died at the age of fifty-four, leaving only thirteen published poems.
Sep 9, 2019
CR Episode 13: The Deserted Village
The panel continues its focus on the poetry of the Augustan era of British letters, this time examining Goldsmith's poetic response to the increase of British wealth and the destruction posed by cultural shifts and legislation such as the Inclosure Acts.
Sep 2, 2019
CR Episode 12: Astræa Redux
Having concluded Paradise Lost, the panel moves from the poetry of Milton to the opposing views of one of his contemporaries, examining John Dryden, and his panegyric Astræa Redux, written to celebrate the restoration of Charles II to the throne.
Aug 26, 2019
CR Episode 11: Paradise Lost, Books XI and XII
The panel concludes Paradise Lost with an examination of Adam's hope and despair, differences between Michael and Raphael, biblical kingship, the worthy triumph of Christ, and--finally--the quality of Milton as an author and Paradise Lost as a work.
Aug 19, 2019
CR Episode 10: Paradise Lost, Book X
The panel tackles the difficult problems of Adam's guilt, the nature of heavenly justice and its parallels with English Common Law, Milton's conception of the natural order, and Adam's acceptance of guilt and act of contrition for the sin of disobedience.
Aug 12, 2019
CR Episode 9: Paradise Lost, Book IX
The panel discusses the ninth book of Paradise Lost, with a special focus on Milton's depictions of gender roles, guilt and innocence, division of labour, and free will, to determine how the balance of Original Sin is divided amongst Adam and Eve.
Aug 5, 2019
CR Episode 8: Paradise Lost, Book VIII
The panel considers whether the Garden of Eden required a robust space exploration programme (yes), whether Angels are real (yes), whether human beings turn into angels when they die (no), whether Dr. Cooper is an Anglophile (no)... oh, and Milton, too!
Jul 29, 2019
CR Episode 7: Paradise Lost, Book VII
The panel examines the moment of creation, the etymological development of atheism and chaos, divine warnings against transgressing the proper bounds of intellectual curiosity, and the potentially physical nature of Creation's hymn of praise to its Maker.
Jul 22, 2019
CR Episode 6: Paradise Lost, Book VI
The panel welcomes Zac Watson as special guest to discuss questions about Paradise Lost, before examining the War in Heaven, Classical cosmogeny, Satan's parodic inventiveness, angelic biology, and an unlikely connexion to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.
Jul 15, 2019
CR Episode 5: Paradise Lost, Book V
Clinton and Dr. Cooper examine the fifth book of John Milton's Paradise Lost, with a particular focus on Milton's Arian Christology and whether Satan is a reactionary against a revolutionary God who is rhizomatic in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari.
Jul 8, 2019
CR Episode 4: Paradise Lost, Book IV
The panel examines John Milton's prosody (particularly in the light of Dr. Johnson's comments) and reflects upon his troublesome Christology and potentially Arian leanings, before proffering the merest hint of a speculation about Milton's Mariology.
Jul 1, 2019
CR Episode 3: Paradise Lost, Book III
The panel discusses the third book of John Milton's Paradise Lost, with special attention on aspects including the ambiguously diabolical imagery of the opening, and Milton's philosophical approaches to the problem of evil, free will, and predestination.
Jun 24, 2019
CR Episode 2: Paradise Lost, Book II
The panel discusses Book II of John Milton's Paradise Lost, with a focus on the fallen angels as an inversion of divine imagery, the politics and plots of Pandaemonium, the natures of Sin and Death, and a possible instance of Miltonian heresy.
Jun 17, 2019
CR Episode 1: Paradise Lost, Book I
In the first episode of Critical Readings, the panel begins a twelve-week discussion of Milton's Paradise Lost, with discussion focused on the poem's nature as an epic and the apparent ideological conflict between Milton's politics and his protagonist. and his fallen anti-hero.