The History of Literature

Jacke plays a clip from Nabokov discussing his famous novel Lolita, in which the frantic narrator Humbert Humbert recounts his passionate (and illegal, immoral, and illicit) love for a young girl. After hearing from the author, Jacke plays clips from three History of Literature Podcast interviews: Jenny Minton Quigley, Jim Shepard,, and Joshua Ferris. Additional listening: Episode 318 - Lolita (wi...

What narrative techniques did Freud borrow and employ? What was the effect? And what did it mean for the literary critics who followed? Following his look at the life and major works of Sigmund Freud, Jacke describes Freud and his followers' at-times fraught relationship with fiction and fiction writers, with a particularly close look at Freud's famous work "Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria...

Still recovering from his immersion in Sigmund Freud, Jacke looks instead to one of the world's great literary cities: Odessa. More than 300 writers have lived in, traveled through, and/or written about Ukraine's "pearl of the Black Sea" - what did they find so compelling? And what did they write about afterwards? PLUS we continue our conversation with Scottish novelist Margot Livesey, who has bee...

As the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Although many of his claims and theories are still hotly debated, for decades his ideas dominated writers and thinkers around the world - and they continue to exert a major influence on how we view ourselves and our society. In this episode, we look at Freud's life and some...

Mark Twain was an enormously successful writer and a horrendous businessperson, with a weakness for gadgets and inventions that cost him a fortune.. In this episode, Jacke takes a look at his efforts to start his own publishing company, which started off strong but quickly descended into bankruptcy and ruin. What was he trying to accomplish? And what were the books that brought him down? After tha...

In this episode, Jacke takes a look at Victor Hugo (1802-1885), whose poetry, plays, and novels made him one of the leaders of the nineteenth-century Romantic movement. In addition to his famous novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, we also look at some of his lesser known works; his family background; the legend of his conception in a Roman temple atop a mountain; his belief in t...

"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now." Such is the opening of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973), the novel that won the National Book Award but repulsed the Pulitzer Prize Committee. Pynchon's special blend of paranoia and postmodernism made him one of the hallmark authors of the Cold War era. In this episode, Jacke takes a lo...

"I am never too busy to think of S&S," Jane Austen wrote to her sister, referring to her 1811 novel by its initials, "I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her suckling child." Sense & Sensibility was Jane Austen's first published novel. First begun when she was in the throes of her doomed dalliance with Thomas Lefroy, the novel contains the familiar Austen project of a Hero, a Heroine...

What's it like to be in love with a genius? How does one express oneself? Jacke takes a look at a beautiful 1926 love letter that Vita Sackville-West sent to Virginia Woolf. Then Professor Lauren S. Cardon, author of FASHIONING CHARACTER: Style, Performance, and Identity in Contemporary American Literature, stops by for a discussion of how authors use fashion choices to reveal character - and how...

Jacke takes a look at Nikolai Gogol's early stories about his native Ukraine, including two famous descriptions of Ukrainian nights. Then Jacke turns things over to Eve and Julie from the Book Dreams Podcast, as they interview a scholar about a surprising find: in 2019, a librarian in Bristol discovered four scraps of parchment bearing the names "Merlin" and "Arthur." Their guest, Dr. Laura Chuhan...

In November of 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln boarded a train for Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His heart was heavy with the cost of two years of a bitter civil war, his body fatigued and feverish from what was likely the onset of smallpox. In the midst of personal grief and political turmoil, he drafted and delivered one of the greatest political speeches ever written. In roughly 270 words, the...

Mike Palindrome, the President of the Literature Supporters' Club, joins Jacke to select the top 10 literary terms and devices of all time. PLUS Jacke reads a letter to a young writer from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Additional listening ideas: Fan of Fitzgerald? Try our episode on The Great Gatsby or revisit the time Jacke and Mike looked for 10 new arguments in the Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald debate. More...

"Goodnight comb and goodnight brush...And goodnight to the old lady whispering hush...Goodnight moon.." Telling the "story" of a darkening room at bedtime, Goodnight Moon (1947) has gone from near obscurity to selling close to a million copies a year. But if you thought - as Jacke did - that the author of this odd, quiet book was probably something of a quiet old lady whispering hush herself, you...

Love is all around! On podcasts as well as holidays... In this episode, Jacke talks to USA Today bestselling author Mimi Matthews about her love for the Victorian era and how that fueled her latest work, the historical romance The Siren of Sussex, in which an ambitious equestrienne teams up with a devastatingly handsome half-Indian dressmaker to take London society by storm - unless their professi...

C. Subramania Bharati (1882-1923) is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Known to his fellow Tamils as the "Mahakavi" ("Supreme Poet"), his works modernized and rejuvenated Tamil literature. Bharati, who knew several languages, also wrote in English, and it is in these writings that one can see and appreciate his range of interests, the depth of his thinking, and his passionate adv...

Ian Fleming (1908-1964) always wanted to be a writer. Not an "author," as he put it, and not someone in the "Shakespeare stakes," but someone who wrote for money and pleasure. In developing his enduring character James Bond, he managed to accomplish both. In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the life and career of the most famous spy novelist in history. PLUS we look at an American spy novel, Sa...

When the poet Gwendolyn Brooks "writes out of her heart, out of her rich and living background, out of her very real talent," said The New York Times, "she induces almost unbearable excitement." From her "headquarters" in Chicago, Brooks spent her life writing poems about the joys and struggles of the Black Americans on the streets around her. A consummate artist with full command of her craft, al...

In this episode, Jacke talks to Jeremy Tiang about his new translation of The Wedding Party, a Chinese classic contemporary novel written in the early 1980s by Liu Xinwu, one of the originators of what has been termed "scar literature." PLUS we feature a sneak preview of our conversation with Professor Mira Sundara Rajan, who has edited a collection of writings in English by famed Indian poet C. S...

Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood... Oh sure, we all know the stories, but do we know their origins? What do they tell us about the "Germans" of the nineteenth century - and how do they compare with the fairy tales told in France or Italy, or the ones we tell today? In this episode, Jacke takes a look at Germanic linguists...

Yes, John Milton was important, and yes, Paradise Lost has been part of the canon since the 17th century - but why should we read anything by John Milton today? Do we imbibe his poetry like medicine? Is it a slog through cerebral but sterile prose? Or is there something wilder, more compelling, more alive? In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer Joe Moshenska, author of Making Darkness Light: A...

Jacke had big plans to make this episode all about the poetry of William Butler Yeats...and then listener feedback to the last episode overtook him. So instead of lazing about on the Lake Isle of Innisfree, he returns to the subject of Sophocles and the power of literature, as introduced in the conversation with Bryan Doerries, the Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions. After checking in...

As the Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions, Bryan Doerries has joined his colleagues in using dramatic readings and community conversations to confront topics such as combat-related psychological injury, end-of-life care, radicalized violence, incarceration, gun violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, the refugee crisis, and addiction. In this episode, he joins Jacke to talk about...

Born in Wales to parents of Norwegian descent, Roald Dahl (1916-1990) grew up to become one of England's most famous writers. Although Dahl was an accomplished writer of short stories for grownups, he is today known best for his well-loved children's novels, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, BFG, Matilda, and Danny, the Champion of the World. Dahl also had a fascinati...

Dragons! From ancient civilizations to modern-day movies, humans have spent millions of hours imagining these popular mythological creatures - and millions of words describing them. Jacke's guest, Scott G. Bruce has compiled the best of these words, explaining how dragons have appeared in literature. Avatars of the Antichrist? Servants of Satan? Cuddly pets? Couriers of the damned? Loyal allies? I...

Poet Robert Hayden (1913-1980) surprised Jacke with his description of freedom in his sonnet "Frederick Douglass"; in this episode, Jacke considers the nature of freedom and attempts to determine exactly what Hayden meant. PLUS Professor Scott G. Bruce stops by to talk about his work editing The Penguin Book of the Undead: Fifteen Hundred Years of Spiritual Encounters. Help support the show at pat...