Close Readings (subscription‪)‬ London Review of Books

As Mary and Irina discussed in the previous episode of Medieval LOLs, fabliaux had an enormous influence on Chaucer, but outside of his work, only one survives in Middle English. Dame Syrith, a story of lust, deception and a mustard-eating dog, is medieval humour at its silliest and most troubling. Mary and Irina explore the surprising representations of old women, magic and consent in fabliaux, the poem’s possible role as a pedagogical tool, and medieval audiences’ love for the procuress trope.

Further reading

Irina Dumitrescu: Making My Moan
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/irina-dumitrescu/making-my-moan

Tom Shippey: Women Beware Midwives
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n09/tom-shippey/women-beware-midwives

Read Dame Syrith online:
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/salisbury-trials-and-joys-dame-sirth

Get in touch:
poodcasts@lrb.co.uk

In ‘A House for Mr Biswas’, his 1961 comic masterpiece, V.S. Naipaul pays tribute to his father and the vanishing world of his Trinidadian youth. Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz in their first of four episodes to discuss the novel, a pathbreaking work of postcolonial literature and a particularly powerful influence on Pankaj himself. They explore Naipaul’s fraught relationship to modernity, and the tensions between his attachment to individual freedom and his insistence on the constraints imposed by history.

Buy the book: https://lrb.me/naipaulcr

Read more in the LRB:

D.A.N. Jones: The Enchantment of Vidia Naipaul
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n08/d.a.n.-jones/the-enchantment-of-vidia-naipaul

Frank Kermode: What Naipaul Knows
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n17/frank-kermode/what-naipaul-knows

Paul Theroux: Out of Sir Vidia’s Shadow
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/paul-theroux/diary

Sanjay Subramahnyam: Where does he come from?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n21/sanjay-subrahmanyam/where-does-he-come-from

In The Beggar’s Opera we enter a society turned upside down, where private vices are seen as public virtues, and the best way to survive is to assume the worst of everyone. The only force that can subvert this state of affairs is romantic love – an affection, we discover, that satire finds hard to cope with. John Gay’s 1727 smash hit ‘opera’, which ran for 62 performances in its first run, put the highwaymen, criminal gangs and politicians of the day up on stage, and offered audiences a tuneful but unnerving reflection of their own corruption and mortality. Clare and Colin discuss how this satire on the age of Walpole came about, what it did for its struggling author, and why it’s an infinitely elusive, strangely modernist work.

Read more in the LRB:

Frank Kermode: Liveried
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n09/frank-kermode/liveried

E.S. Turner: Delightful to be Robbed
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n09/e.s.-turner/delightful-to-be-robbed

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s deeply disturbing 1847 poem about a woman escaping slavery and killing her child was written to shock its intended white female readership to the abolitionist cause. Browning was the direct descendant of slave owners in Jamaica and a fervent anti-slavery campaigner, and her dramatic monologue presents a searing attack on the hypocrisy of ‘liberty’ as enshrined in the United States constitution. Mark and Seamus look at the origins of the poem and its story, and its place among other abolitionist narratives of the time.

Read more in the LRB:

Matthew Bevis: Foiled by Pleasure
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n16/matthew-bevis/foiled-by-pleasure

Alethea Hayter: Reader, I married you
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v11/n07/alethea-hayter/reader-i-married-you

John Bayley: A Question of Breathing
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n14/john-bayley/a-question-of-breathing

Colin Grant: Leave them weeping
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n15/colin-grant/leave-them-weeping

Fara Dabhoiwala: My Runaway Slave, Reward Two Guineas
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n12/fara-dabhoiwala/my-runaway-slave-reward-two-guineas

In the fifth episode of Among the Ancients II we turn to Greek lyric, focusing on Pindar’s victory odes, considered a benchmark for the sublime since antiquity, and the vivid, narrative-driven dithyrambs of Bacchylides. Through close reading, Emily and Tom tease out allusions, lexical flourishes and formal experimentation, and explain the highly contextual nature of these tightly choreographed, public-facing poems. They illustrate how precarious work could be for a praise poet in a world driven by competition – striking the right note to please your patron, guarantee the next gig, and stay on good terms with the gods.

Further reading:

Leofranc Holford-Strevens: Dithyrambs for Athens
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n04/leofranc-holford-strevens/dithyrambs-for-athens

Barbara Graziosi: Flower or Fungus?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n04/leofranc-holford-strevens/dithyrambs-for-athens

Fabliaux were short, witty tales originating in northern France between the 12th and 14th centuries, often featuring crafty characters in rustic settings and overwhelmingly concerned with money and sex. In this episode Irina and Mary look at two of these comic verses, both containing surprisingly explicit sexual language, and consider the ways in which they influenced Boccaccio, Chaucer and others.

Read more in the LRB:

Irina Dumitrescu: Making My Moan
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/irina-dumitrescu/making-my-moan

Tom Shippey: Women beware midwives
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n09/tom-shippey/women-beware-midwives

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk