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Medieval LOLs: 'Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle'
Season 9 Episode 8
The character of Gawain, one of King Arthur’s leading knights, recurs throughout medieval literature, but the way he’s presented underwent a curious …
1 year, 9 months ago
Human Conditions: ‘Hope against Hope’ by Nadezhda Mandelstam
Season 8 Episode 8
After reciting an unflattering poem about Stalin to a small group of friends, Osip Mandelstam was betrayed to the police and endured five years in ex…
1 year, 9 months ago
On Satire: Jane Austen's 'Emma'
Season 7 Episode 8
What kind of satirist was Jane Austen? Her earliest writings follow firmly in the footsteps of Tristram Shandy in their deployment of heightened sent…
1 year, 9 months ago
Political Poems: 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' by Walt Whitman
Season 11 Episode 7
Whitman wrote several poetic responses to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He came to detest his most famous, ‘O Captain! My Captain!’, and in ‘…
1 year, 10 months ago
Among the Ancients II: Plautus and Terence
Season 10 Episode 7
In episode seven, we turn to some of the earliest surviving examples of Roman literature: the raucous, bawdy and sometimes bewildering world of Roman…
1 year, 10 months ago
Medieval LOLs: Solomon and Marcolf
Season 9 Episode 7
The foul-mouthed, mean-spirited peasant Marcolf was one of the most well-known literary characters in late medieval Europe. He appears in many poetic…
1 year, 10 months ago
Human Conditions: ‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing
Season 8 Episode 7
Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz to discuss The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing’s formally brilliant and startlingly frank 1962 novel. In her portrait o…
1 year, 10 months ago
On Satire: 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' by Laurence Sterne
Season 7 Episode 7
'Tristram Shandy' was such a hit in its day that you could buy tea trays, watch cases and cushions decorated with its most famous characters and scen…
1 year, 10 months ago
Political Poems: 'Strange Meeting' by Wilfred Owen
Season 11 Episode 6
Wilfred Owen wrote ‘Strange Meeting’ in the early months of 1918, shortly after being treated for shell shock at Craiglockhart hospital in Edinburgh,…
1 year, 11 months ago
Among the Ancients II: Lucian
Season 10 Episode 6
The broad theme of this series, truth and lies, was a favourite subject of Lucian of Samosata, the last of our Greek-language authors. A cosmopolitan…
1 year, 11 months ago