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Medieval LOLs: Fabliaux
Season 9 Episode 4
Fabliaux were short, witty tales originating in northern France between the 12th and 14th centuries, often featuring crafty characters in rustic sett…
2 years, 1 month ago
Human Conditions: ‘The Human Condition’ by Hannah Arendt
Season 8 Episode 4
In the fourth episode of Human Conditions, the last of the series with Judith Butler, we fittingly turn to The Human Condition (1956). Hannah Arendt …
2 years, 1 month ago
On Satire: The Earl of Rochester
Season 7 Episode 4
According to one contemporary, the Earl of Rochester was a man who, in life as well is in poetry, ‘could not speak with any warmth, without repeated …
2 years, 1 month ago
Political Poems: 'Easter 1916' by W.B. Yeats
Season 11 Episode 3
Yeats’s great poem about the uprising of Irish republicans against British rule on 24 April 1916 marked a turning point in Ireland’s history and in Y…
2 years, 2 months ago
Among the Ancients II: Herodotus
Season 10 Episode 3
Some of the most compelling stories of the Classical world come from Herodotus‘ Histories, an account of the Persian Wars and a thousand things besid…
2 years, 2 months ago
Medieval LOLs: Old English Riddles
Season 9 Episode 3
Riddles are an ancient and universal form, but few people seem to have enjoyed them more than English Benedictine monks. The Exeter Book, a tenth cen…
2 years, 2 months ago
Human Conditions: ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ by Frantz Fanon
Season 8 Episode 3
Begun as a psychiatric dissertation, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) became a genre-shattering study of antiblack racism and its effect…
2 years, 2 months ago
On Satire: Ben Jonson's 'Volpone'
Season 7 Episode 3
What did English satirists do after the archbishop of Canterbury banned the printing of satires in June 1599? They turned to the stage. Within months…
2 years, 2 months ago
Political Poems: W.H. Auden's 'Spain 1937'
Season 11 Episode 2
In their second episode, Mark and Seamus look at W.H. Auden's ‘Spain’. Auden travelled to Spain in January 1937 to support the Republican efforts in …
2 years, 2 months ago
Among the Ancients II: Aesop
Season 10 Episode 2
Supposedly an enslaved man from sixth-century Samos, Aesop might not have ever really existed, but the fables attributed to him remain some of the mo…
2 years, 3 months ago