Critical Readings

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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'. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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'. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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'. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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". Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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! Continue reading

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. Continue reading

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. Continue reading