Occasion of the Season

This month I met with Susanne Wofford, professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University, to talk through the April eclogue. We travelled through a myriad of classical and mythological echoes, and at least one epiphany, to the culminating question of this project: how do we think about the relation between pastoral and epic? Susanne’s answer is excitingly different from the on...

The first of two bumper spring-specials. Buckle up for the season of increasing abundance! This month Archie Cornish and I sat in the boot of my Citroen Berlingo in Ashdown Forest and talked through the March eclogue, to the puzzlement of passing dog-walkers. Archie’s reading of the poem emphasises the value of pastoral attention, the Greek roots of this poem, why Elizabethans were obsessed with b...

This month I talked with Richard Danson Brown , professor of English at the Open University. He illuminated the significance of complaint for the February eclogue, guided me through its anarchic rhythms, and made a spirited defence of Cuddie, the feisty young herdsman to Thenot’s sententious shepherd. I had the pleasure of reading this eclogue with Professor Valerie Minogue, who is also my grandmo...

I talked through the January eclogue with Jessica Beckman , assistant professor of English at Dartmouth College, from whom I learned so much about Colin’s sympathies with nature and the material history of this strange book. If you stay to the end you’ll hear her magnificent reframing of the E.K. question. You’ll also hear a kind of cadenza on the relationship between Spenser’s calendar and Beyonc...

I met up with Hannah Crawforth at her office in King's College London , and we became completely immersed for an hour in all the nostalgia and pride and virtuosity of the December eclogue. Hannah - current president of the International Spenser Society - writes about English Renaissance literature, poetry in general, political thought and, in her first book, etymology . This last makes her a parti...

I talked through the November eclogue with Conor Wilcox-Mahon, from the English department at UCL in London, who has thought hard about this poem in terms of conceptions of nature, and time, and what death means in these contexts. You’ll also hear sounds from All Saints Day (November 1st) at the Basilica of St Francis in Assissi, in Umbria. This episode is, thrillingly, the world premier of a song...

This month I conversed with Sukanta Chaudhuri, Professor Emeritus at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Sukanta is an expert in English Renaissance pastoral poetry, and among many other publications, he has brought forth ‘Renaissance Pastoral and Its English Developments’ and more recently ‘ English Renaissance Pastoral Poetry: An Anthology and Companion ’, from Manchester University Press. It is wo...

This eclogue was cracked open for me by Ashley Sarpong, assistant professor of British literature at Stanislaus State University in California. She revealed so much that’s going in this poem at the level of genre, and much that’s funny and delightful about it. It’s a classic eclogue, structurally, in that it starts with an exchange between two temperamentally contrasting shepherds and ends with a...

This month I spoke to Professor Jeff Dolven, at Princeton University. He reframed the August eclogue for me as an exploration of the playfulness, comradeship, shame and uncertainty of growing up, and a virtuosic experiment in poetic forms. I am also delighted to introduce actress Helen Schlesinger, reading the part of Cuddie, the third shepherd in this eclogue. Helen had to rush off immediately af...

In this month’s episode I talked with Professor Andrew Hadfield, of Sussex University, about the rich complexities of the seemingly simple July eclogue, peppered with fascinating information about Spenser’s social life and worldviews, more of which is to be found in Andrew’s book Edmund Spenser, A Life.  I also visited a beautiful farm where you can take a goat for a walk around the Sussex downs ,...

I am very happy to share the June episode - and once again, just in time! I spoke with Dr Claire Eager - assistant professor of early modern literature at the College of Wooster, in Ohio - about this eclogue in a wonderful conversation that took us through Chaucer and Milton and “the emotionally inaccessible Paradise” and Parnassus and belief and the ethics of despair… Big news! As you’ll see, I n...

Welcome to Occasion of the Season: The Shepheards Calender Podcast - a year-long series in 12 episodes, taking us through Edmund Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender (1579) month by month from May to April.  I am very happy to share Episode One: May, a conversation with Professor Joe Moshenska, from University College, Oxford University. Here a few bonus bits of audio: * a recording of the May eclog...