The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts)

Visiting fellow, Dr Robin Eagles of the History of Parliament Trust discusses his research into Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford

Visiting researcher Dr Rachel Wamsley discusses the renowned Oppenheimer Collection, whose holdings shed light on the printing house as a site of cultural and literary encounter between Jews and Christians in early modern Europe. Close examination of early printed Yiddish books reveals how the same text could assume radically different material forms depending on whether it was marketed to a Jewis...

Dr Noah Arceneaux, Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Media Studies, San Diego State University, Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellow 2016-17, Bodleian Library, talks about the history of wireless broadcasting and the Bodleian Marconi Archive.

Dr Zahra Taheri, Bahari Visiting Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book, speaks about Rumi's life, mystical teaching, doctrine, and poetry. With Music by Dr Peyman Heydarian. With a recitation of poetry by Rumi. Maulana Jalal Al-Din Muhammad, known as RUMI (1207-1273) is the most prominent mystic poet in Persian literature. When he was a child, his family fled Mongol invaders and settled in Konya....

Giovanni Paoloni discusses the influence of the development of the shortwave beam technology on Marconi and the Marconi Company Marconi's wireless revolution, the Bodleian's Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellows, Giovanni Paoloni and Ines Queiroz, present findings from their research into Marconi and the early development of wireless technology. In the early development of wireless, short waves we...

Ines Queiroz explores how technical constraints have shaped strategies for wireless networks development Marconi's wireless revolution, the Bodleian's Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellows, Giovanni Paoloni and Ines Queiroz, present findings from their research into Marconi and the early development of wireless technology. Ines Queiroz explores how technical constraints have shaped strategies for...

Jonathan Lloyd and Tiffany Stern, discuss performing Shakespeare in the past and now Accompanied by actors to help illustrate their points, Jonathan Lloyd, Artistic Director of Pegasus Theatre, and Tiffany Stern, Professor of Early Modern Drama, discuss performing Shakespeare in the past and now.

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Professor of English Literature, Oxford, gives a talk for Shakespeare Oxford 2016 series. When the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth was celebrated in 1864, Robert Browning observed that he and his contemporaries had Shakespeare 'in our very bones and blood, our very selves'. In this talk, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explores some of the ways in which the Victorians tried...

A conversation with Dr Nasrin Askari, Bahari Visiting Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book 2016 and Alasdair Watson, Bahari Curator of Persian Collections, Bodleian Library

Cristina Dondi and her colleagues launch the 15th Century Booktrade. Books printed between 1450 (the year of Gutenberg’s invention of modern printing) and 1500 (conventional cut-off date in scholarship) are known as incunabula. Some 30,000 editions are known today, in some 450,000 surviving copies, located in about 4,000 different public libraries, mostly in Europe and North America. Each survivin...

Join the head gardeners of Stowe and Compton Verney to explore the challenges, changes and rewards of protecting and preserving Capability Brown's landscapes in his tercentenary year.

Lauren Kassell (Reader in the History of Science and Medicine, Cambridge) gives a talk for the Bodleian libraries. If the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet had lived in London, they might have consulted the astrologer-physician Simon Forman, whose casebook is shown in the exhibition Shakespeare's Dead. Lauren Kassell looks into the working life of a medical practitioner in Shakespeare's England...

Vernacular Translations of Plutarch and Political Argument in Renaissance France

Emma Smith (Professor of English Literature, Oxford), gives a talk on Shakespeare memorials. Ben Jonson wrote in 1623 that Shakespeare 'art a Moniment, without a tombe/ And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live'. Centuries later Jorge Luis Borges observed that 'when writers die, they become books', adding, 'which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation'. This lecture considers Shakespeare's...

Professor Katherine Duncan Jones, Senior Research Fellow, Somerville College, gives a talk on Shakespeare's poem, Venus and Adonis. In 1592-93, with London playhouses closed because of plague, Shakespeare wrote his most technically perfect work. Venus and Adonis (1593) is a highly original 'take' on the ancient Greek myth of the doomed Adonis - presented here as a pubertal boy incapable of respond...

Peter McCullough, Professor of English, University of Oxford, gives a talk on John Donne. John Donne's sermon, Death's duell, was part of an early Stuart vogue for funeral sermons. Professor McCullough discusses Donne's contribution to this genre, and looks at how this tradition is connected to the poetic and dramatic representations of death on display in the exhibition, Shakespeare's Dead.

This podcast talks about accidental deaths and the hazards of everyday life in Shakespeare's day Coroners' inquest reports into accidental deaths tell us about the hazards of everyday life in Shakespeare's day. There were dangerous jobs, not just building, mining and farming, but also fetching water, and travel was perilous whether by cart, horse or boat. Even relaxation had its risks, from footba...

This lecture will celebrate Shakespeare's immortality on the exact 400th anniversary of his burial. It will begin from Theseus' famous speech in A Midsummer Night's Dream about the magical, transformative power of poetry. It will argue that Shakespeare inherited from antiquity a fascination with the intimate association between erotic love, magic and the creative imagination, and that this is one...

In this talk Andrew Dunning (Royal Bank of Canada Foundation Fellow) traces the development of the work of Alexander Neckam, one of the earliest known lecturers in Oxford, through manuscripts housed at the Bodleian. Leading up to the creation of the University, the priories of the Augustinian canons were among the most prominent intellectual foundations in twelfth-century Oxford. One of the earlie...

Abbess Baerbel Goercke, Mariensee, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Ulrike Hascher-Burger, Utrecht University, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Alan Coates, Rare Books Assistant Librarian, Bodleain, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Nigel F. Palmer, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Andrew Honey, Book Conservator (Research and Teaching), University of Oxford, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.

Introduction to the Masterclass by Professor Henrike Laehnemann, Chair of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics, University of Oxford. On the 22nd January 2016 the Bodleian hosted a masterclass from Professor Henrike Laehnemann, Chair of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics. The class examined manuscripts made in the Cistercian convent of Medingen during the late 15th century.