Critical Readings
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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.
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23 hours ago
CR Episode 126: The Waste Land, Part III
In this third part of the four-part series on The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, the panel reads "The Fire Sermon" and discusses cities both real and unreal, and how the abnegation of all human desire leads to the hollowing out of the psyche.
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May 2, 2022
CR Episode 125: The Waste Land, Part II
The panel continues with the second of a four-part series on The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, reading "A Game of Chess", with special attention given to the idea of death and rebirth, and to the presence and significance of baptismal imagery.
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Apr 25, 2022
CR Episode 124: The Waste Land, Part I
The panel embarks upon a four-week study of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, beginning with a discussion of the allusive connexions and the imagistic and modernist effects of the poem's opening epigram and its first section, "The Burial of the Dead".
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Apr 11, 2022
CR Episode 123: Henry Vaughan
The panel reads a selection of the poety of the seventeenth-century, Welsh, metaphysical poet, Henry Vaughan, with a particular attention to Vaughan's own religious beliefs, philosophical positions, and connexions to Ben Jonson and George Herbert.
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Apr 4, 2022
CR Episode 122: Owen Meredith
The panel reads a selection of verses from Owen Meredith--Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Earl of Lytton--an eminent Victorian statesman and poet, including an excerpt from the second part of his long, anapestic epic, "Lucile", and two shorter poems.
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Mar 28, 2022
CR Episode 121: The Poetry of Robert Graves
The panel reads the poetry of Robert Graves, from his early war poetry to the work of his later life, with special attention to his theory of The White Goddess, including "A Dead Boche", "A Boy in Church", "The God Called Poetry" and "The Spoilsport".
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Mar 14, 2022
CR Episode 120: The Poetry of D. H. Lawrence
The panel reads four poems by D. H. Lawrence: "Whales Weep Not!", "Moonrise", "When I Read Shakespeare", and "Only Man", and discusses their frank but sensual depictions of sexuality, communication, communion, nature, salvation, and damnation.
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Mar 7, 2022
CR Episode 119: Pope and Wordsworth in Conversation
The panel reads two Pope's 'An Essay on Man' and Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' in conversation with one another--looking at the similarities of their conclusions and the difference in their approaches--as they address the roles of Man, Nature, and God.
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Feb 28, 2022
CR Episode 118: Introduction to Conrad Aiken
The panel reads a selection of three poems by Conrad Aiken--"The Room", "Exile", and "Goya"--and discusses their dreamlike imagery, and the impact of personal tragedy, English Romanticism, and Freudian and Jungian theories, upon Aiken's poetry.
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Feb 21, 2022
CR Episode 117: Milton’s Lycidas
Following on the theme of love and death, the panel reads Milton's pastoral elegy, "Lycidas", dedicated to the memory of Edward King, with special attention to Milton's theology and his critique of both the contemporary English clergy and community.
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Feb 14, 2022
CR Episode 116: Venus and Adonis
For St. Valentine's Day, the panel reads what is likely to have been Shakespeare's first officially published work: his genre-defying Tragi-Comi-Ovidian poem "Venus and Adonis", dedicated to his patron, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton.
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Feb 7, 2022
CR Episode 115: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Part IV
The panel concludes "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" with an examination of the poem's liminal spaces, an evaluation of Gawain's moral virtue, a discussion on the nature of courage, and questions about the role of community in the act of contrition.
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Jan 31, 2022
CR Episode 114: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Part III
The panel reads the third part of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", with particular attention to the juxtaposition of the forest hunting, killing, and skinning/gutting scenes with those of courtly love in the luxurious bedchamber of Sir Gawain.
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Jan 24, 2022
CR Episode 113: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Part II
The panel reads the second part of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", and examines the theological significance of the seasons, the detailed military fortifications of Castle Hautdesert, and the appearance of the beautiful Lady Hautdesert.
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Jan 17, 2022
CR Episode 112: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Part I
The panel reads the first part of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, providing an overview of the formal aspects of the poem, the history of the manuscript (Cotton Nero A.x), theories about authorship, and analysis of the poem's titular, veridian symbolism.
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Jan 10, 2022
CR Episode 111: Light Verse of Ogden Nash
The panels searches for a smile / And dwells with Ogden Nash a while. / Some lines are light and some are scary / But the formal aspects rather vary. / Most of them rhyme in a manner relaxin', / But the metrics range from good to absen'.
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Jan 3, 2022
CR Episode 110: The Poetry of Langston Hughes
In the first podcast of 2022, the panel reads five poems spanning the entire poetic arc of Langston Hughes, from the famous lines of "I, Too" to the scenes of the "Lincoln Theatre", before ending with the Christmas message of "Shepherd's Song".
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Dec 27, 2021
CR Episode 109: H.M.S. Pinafore
In a special, Christmas episode, the panel reads selections from W. S. Gilbert's libretto to H.M.S. Pinafore, and discusses how they are representative of Gilbert's penchant for comic 'topsy-turvy' plots which include keen-eyed social commentary.
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Dec 20, 2021
CR Episode 108: William Carlos Williams and Minimalism
The panel reads "The Red Wheelbarrow", "This Is Just to Say", and "Gulls" by William Carlos Williams and discusses both their connexion to the Imagist and Modernist movements of the early twentieth century, and their complexity in relation to Minimalism.
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Dec 13, 2021
CR Episode 107: The Poetic Satire of Jonathan Swift
The panel reads three of Jonathan Swift's poems which satirise responses to the inescapable facts of human biology, and focuses on their depictions of privacy and separation, essential human dignity, and cultural attitudes towards sexuality.
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Dec 6, 2021
CR Episode 106: Scott’s The Lady of the Lake
The panel reads extended selections from each canto of Sir Walter Scott's narrative poem, "The Lady of the Lake", highlighting Scott's interest in reviving the medieval, the importance of history to his work, and his use of varying poetic forms.
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Nov 29, 2021
CR Episode 105: The Poetic Arc of Ted Hughes
The panel reads a selection of poems by Ted Hughes compassing the scope of his poetic oeuvre, from the early and animalistic imagery of "The Jaguar" to the modernist scenes of "Here Is the Cathedral", before concluding with the confessional "Last Letter".
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Nov 22, 2021
CR Episode 104: Form and Detail in the Poetry of Richard Wilbur
The panel reads four poems by Richard Wilbur, "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World", "A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra", "Mind", and "Year's End", particularly examining the intricacy of their details and their formal attributes.
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Nov 15, 2021
CR Episode 103: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Songs of Travel
The panel traces themes of wanderlust, resignation, wistfulness, lonliness, and fatalism in six poems excerpted from Stevenson's Songs of Travel, including "The Vagabond", "Bright Is the Ring of Words," "Whither Must I Wander", and "The Woodman".
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Nov 8, 2021
CR Episode 102: Thomas Wyatt in the Tudor Court
The panel reads four poems by the Tudor poet and courtier Thomas Wyatt, whose misfortunes in the Henrician court (not least of all two imprisonments) are traced in sonnets and other verse including "Whoso List to Hunt" and "Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides".
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Nov 1, 2021
CR Episode 101: Sylvia Plath
The panel reads three poems by Sylvia Plath, "Tulips", "Lady Lazarus", and "Daddy", tracing in them themes of self-annihilation, and analysing references to her depression and to the conflicted relationships she had with her father and husband.
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Oct 25, 2021
CR Episode 100: Shakespeare’s Sonnets
The panel reads a selection of sonnets by William Shakespeare, and considers their Symposium-like comparisons and contrasts of the different kinds and representations of love, in terms ranging from eloquent to earthy, and from concrete to abstract.
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Oct 18, 2021
CR Episode 99: Hero and Leander
The panel reads Christopher Marlowe's most famous poem, Hero and Leander, discussing its rich and provocative imagery, classical allusions, and levels of metaphor, and addressing the scholarly opinion of the apparently unfinished state of the work.
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Oct 11, 2021
CR Episode 98: The Defence of Guenevere
The panel reads a single, long poem--"The Defence of Guenevere"--by the Victorian artisan, translator, novelist, and poet William Morris, giving special attention how Guenevere uses and mis-uses evidence and emotion in order to support her case.
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Oct 4, 2021
CR Episode 97: Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Love and Death
The panel reads four poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, including three sonnets, and discusses the excellence of her formal expertise and poetic style, particularly in contrast to less favourable mid-20th century critical responses to her body of work.
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Sep 27, 2021
CR Episode 96: Robert Browning’s Dramatic Verse
The panel reads three poems of the greatly esteemed Victorian poet, Robert Browning, including "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's", "Andrea del Sarto", and "Love among the Ruins", giving especial attention to the dramatic features of his works.
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Sep 20, 2021
CR Episode 95: Frank O’Hara and Modernism
The panel reads three poems by mid-twentieth century American poet, Frank O'Hara, and examines his connexions to other forms of artistic modernism and post-modernism, including not only prose poetry, but abstract expressionism, cubism, and Dadaism.
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Sep 13, 2021
CR Episode 94: The Macabre Verse of Edward Gorey
The panel follows the work of Poe and Lear to the macabre and surreal art of Edward Gorey, looking at four of his early, and most famous, works including The Gashlycrumb Tinies (an abecedarium), The Evil Garden, The Insect God, and The Doubtful Guest.
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Aug 30, 2021
CR Episode 93: Edward Lear’s Complete Nonsense
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough.
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Aug 23, 2021
CR Episode 92: The Gothic Romanticism of Edgar Allan Poe
The panel reads a selection of Poe's most significant verse, including "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee", and considers not only how Poe's use of Gothic and Romantic themes shapes the content and form of his poems, but also surprising mediæval connexions.
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Aug 16, 2021
CR Episode 91: Complexity in Geoffrey Hill
The panel reads a small selection of poems by Geoffrey Hill, with a focus on his use of paradoxical language, complex metaphors, and highly imagistic description--and, contrasts Hill's work with that of the mid-20th century poet, Philip Larkin.
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Aug 9, 2021
CR Episode 90: Canterbury Tales XII – The Parson’s Tale and Chaucer’s Retraction
The panel concludes its summer reading of The Canterbury Tales with a look at penitence, sin, and freedom in The Parson's Tale, and then considers whether Chaucer's Retraction (Boece excluded!) is an appropriate end to the Tales and to Chaucer's oeuvre.
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Aug 2, 2021
CR Episode 89: Canterbury Tales XI – The Second Nun’s, Canon’s Yeoman’s, and Manciple’s Tales
In the penultimate episode covering the Canterbury Tales, the panel discusses the potential links between Fragments VIII and IX, the morals of the tales included in them, particularly Cecilia's active piety and the Manciple's reserved discretion.
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Jul 26, 2021
CR Episode 88: Canterbury Tales X – The Monk’s and the Nun’s Priest’s Tales
The panel discusses the final two tales in Fragment VII: the tragic vignettes of unfortunate individuals described in The Monk's Tale, and the jolly (and much beloved) fable of the rooster Chanticleer and the wily Fox in the Nun's Priest's Tale.
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Jul 19, 2021
CR Episode 87: Canterbury Tales IX – The Shipman’s, Prioress’, and Chaucer’s Tales
The panel considers vice in the Shipman's tale and piety in the Prioress' tale, before moving on to examine Chaucer's humble self-depiction in his rollicking minstrel song, The Tale of Sir Thopas, and in his dialogue on Prudence, The Tale of Melibee.
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Jul 12, 2021
CR Episode 86: Canterbury Tales VIII – The Physician’s and Pardoner’s Tales
The panel looks at the honor-before-death connexion between Fragment V and Fragment VI as exemplified by Virginia in the Physician's Tale, and then considers the multiple levels of moral instruction on offer in the boldly hypocritical Pardoner's Tale.
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Jul 5, 2021
CR Episode 85: Canterbury Tales VII – The Squire’s and Franklin’s Tales
The panel discusses Fragment V, with attention given both to scholarly theories about whether Chaucer deliberately left the Squire's tale interrupted and unfinished, and to Chaucer's use of estates satire in his depiction of the Franklin and his tale.
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Jun 28, 2021
CR Episode 84: Canterbury Tales VI – The Clerk’s and Merchant’s Tales
The panel discusses Fragment IV, containing two tales that deal with men who deliberately engage in unequal marriages to both good and ill results, and considers what these tales demonstrate about historical critiques of progress and the human condition.
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Jun 21, 2021
CR Episode 83: Canterbury Tales V – The Wife of Bath’s, Friar’s, and Summoner’s Tales
Clinton Collister joins the panel to discuss Fragment III and its potential connexions to The Man of Law's Tale (Fragment II), with a focus on the role of justice, legalism, crime, intent, contractual obligations, and the judicial purpose of punishment.
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Jun 14, 2021
CR Episode 82: Canterbury Tales IV – The Man of Law’s Tale
The panel examines The Man of Law's Tale and scholarly arguments about whether it is suited to its putative teller, and consider the tale's depictions of crime and justice (temporal and divine), constancy, providence, misadventure, and religious strife.
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Jun 7, 2021
CR Episode 81: Canterbury Tales III – The Miller’s, Reeve’s, and Cook’s Tales
Leaving behind the Knight's noble depictions of courtly love, the panel descends through bawdy, sexual misadventures in the form of 'quites'--narrative responses--offered by the drunken Miller and the vengeful Reeve, and the Cook's incomplete tale.
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May 31, 2021
CR Episode 80: Canterbury Tales II – The Knight’s Tale
In the second part of the Canterbury Tales series, the panel reads selections from The Knight's Tale, with a focus on how the three shines--to Venus, to Mars, and to Diana--serve as an interpretive device, and on the connexion to Boethian philosophy.
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May 24, 2021
CR Episode 79: Canterbury Tales I – General Prologue
In the first week of the Canterbury Tales series, the panel reviews the biography of Geoffrey Chaucer, introduces the Canterbury Tales in general, and then reads selections from the General Prologue, with emphasis on Chaucer's development of character.
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May 17, 2021
CR Episode 78: Kipling, “If”, and The Great War
The panel discusses selections from the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, including his most famous poem, "If", and three poems related to The Great War and, its mechanised social aftermath: "Gethsemane", "The Benefactor", and "The Secret of the Machines".
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May 10, 2021
CR Episode 77: Ben Jonson’s Critical Eye
The panel discusses Ben Jonson's role as critic and author of the Elizabethan age, and reads four of his poems, including several of his Epigrams, before concluding with his rhapsodic ode written in memory of his friend, William Shakespeare.
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Apr 26, 2021
CR Episode 76: Excerpts from Leaves of Grass
The panel reads excerpts from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, including poems from the inscriptions, Song of Myself, Children of Adam, and Calamus, considering the formal nature of the 'American Epic', and Whitman's use of individualism and universalism.
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Apr 19, 2021
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.
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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.
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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".
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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".
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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".
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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".
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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.
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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).
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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".
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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".
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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".
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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)".
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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".
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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