Critical Readings

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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'. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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). Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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)". Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading