Close Readings

Close Readings
LRB CLOSE READINGS

Full access to all our Close Readings series

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Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series. How To Subscribe In Apple Podcasts, click 'subscribe' at the top of this podcast feed to unlock the full episodes. Or for other podcast apps, sign up here: https://lrb.me/closereadings Running in 2024: On Satire with Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow Human Conditions with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards Among the Ancients II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones Political Poems with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford Medieval LOLs with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley PLUS: More series starting in 2025... Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    On Satire: 'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde

    By the end of 1895 Oscar Wilde’s life was in ruins as he sat in Reading Gaol facing public disgrace, bankruptcy and, two years later, exile. Just ten months earlier the premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest at St James’s Theatre in London had been greeted rapturously by both the audience and critics. In this episode Colin and Clare consider what Wilde was trying do with his comedy, written on the cusp of this dark future. The ‘strange mixture of romance and finance’ Wilde observed in the letters of his lover, Alfred Douglas, could equally be applied to Earnest, and the satire of Jane Austen before it, but is it right to think of Wilde’s play as satirical? His characters are presented in an ethical vacuum, stripped of any good or bad qualities, but ultimately seem to demonstrate the impossibility of living a purely aesthetic life free from conventional morality. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Read more in the LRB: Colm Tóibín on Wilde's letters: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n08/colm-toibin/love-in-a-dark-time Colm Tóibín the Wilde family: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n23/colm-toibin/the-road-to-reading-gaol Frank Kermode: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n19/frank-kermode/a-little-of-this-honey Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    15 min
  2. SEP 4

    On Satire: Byron's 'Don Juan'

    Few poets have had the courage (or inclination) to rhyme ‘Plato’ with ‘potato’, ‘intellectual’ with ‘hen-peck’d you all’ or ‘Acropolis’ with ‘Constantinople is’. Byron does all of these in Don Juan, his 16,000-line unfinished mock epic that presents itself as a grand satire on human vanity in the tradition of Cervantes, Swift and the Stoics, and refuses to take anything seriously for longer than a stanza. But is there more to Don Juan than an attention-seeking poet sustaining a deliberately difficult verse form for longer than Paradise Lost in order ‘to laugh at all things’? In this episode Clare and Colin argue that there is: they see in Don Juan a satire whose radical openness challenges the plague of ‘cant’ in Regency society but drags itself into its own line of fire in the process, leaving the poet caught in a struggle against the sinfulness of his own poetic power, haunted by its own wrongness. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Read more in the LRB: Clare Bucknell: Rescuing Lord Byron https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/clare-bucknell/his-own-dark-mind Marilyn Butler: Success https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n21/marilyn-butler/success John Mullan: Hidden Consequences https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n21/john-mullan/hidden-consequences Thomas Jones: On Top of Everything https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n18/thomas-jones/on-top-of-everything Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    18 min
  3. AUG 28

    Political Poems: 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rossetti, feat. Shirley Henderson and Felicity Jones

    ‘Goblin Market’ was the title poem of Christina Rossetti’s first collection, published in 1862, and while she disclaimed any allegorical purpose in it, modern readers have found it hard to resist political interpretations. The poem’s most obvious preoccupation seems to be the Victorian notion of the ‘fallen woman’. When she wrote it Rossetti was working at the St Mary Magdalene house of charity in Highgate, a refuge for sex workers and women who had had non-marital sex. Anxieties around ‘fallen women’ were explored by many writers of the day, but Rossetti's treatment is striking both for the rich intensity of its physical descriptions and the unusual vision of redemption it offers, in which the standard Christian imperatives are rethought in sisterly terms. Seamus and Mark discuss how post-Freudian readers might read those descriptions and what the poem says about the place of the ‘market’ in Victorian society. Read the poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market This episode features a full reading of 'Goblin Market' by Shirley Henderson and Felicity Jones at the Josephine Hart Poetry Hour. Watch the reading here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMnHW9MevJk Find more about the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation here: https://www.thepoetryhour.com/foundation Subscribe to Close Readings: In Apple Podcasts, click 'subscribe' at the top of this podcast to unlock all the episodes; In other podcast apps here: https://lrb.me/ppsignup Read more in the LRB: Penelope Fitzgerald: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n05/penelope-fitzgerald/christina-and-the-sid Jacqueline Rose: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n20/jacqueline-rose/undone-defiled-defaced John Bayley: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n06/john-bayley/missingness Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    57 min

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  • Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and translator of both the Odyssey and the Iliad, joins Thomas Jones, an editor at the London Review of Books, for a tour through some of the greatest works of Ancient Greek and Roman literature, from Homer to Horace. Among the Ancients is part of the Close Readings podcasts collection from the London Review of Books. Subscribe here or on the London Review of Books channel and access all our Close Readings series in full. Find our channel page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/channel/london-review-of-books/id6450677311

  • Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books exploring different periods of literature through selections of key works. A new episode will appear every month from each of our Close Readings series running this year. This feed is identical to the 'free' version of Close Readings, which contains free extracts for non-subscribers. Subscribers can listen to all the full episodes in both feeds: https://podcasts.apple.com/ug/podcast/close-readings/id1669485143 RUNNING IN 2024: ON SATIRE with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell Authors covered: Erasmus, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Earl of Rochester, John Gay, Alexander Pope, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark. HUMAN CONDITIONS with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards Authors covered: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, V. S. Naipaul, Ashis Nandy, Doris Lessing, Nadezhda Mandelstam, W. E. B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, Amiri Baraka and Audre Lorde. AMONG THE ANCIENTS II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones Authors covered: Hesiod, Aesop, Herodotus, Pindar, Plato, Lucian, Plautus, Terence, Lucan, Tacitus, Juvenal, Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius. Plus two bonus series, ad free: MEDIEVAL LOLs with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley POLITICAL POEMS with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry PLUS: More series starting in 2025 Also part of the Close Readings subscription, the full series of: MEDIEVAL BEGINNINGS with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley AMONG THE ANCIENTS with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones THE LONG AND SHORT with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry MODERN-ISH POETS SERIES 1 with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry (originally featured on the LRB Podcast) Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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  • Emily Wilson, celebrated classicist and translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, is back to take on another twelve vital works of Greek and Roman literature with the LRB’s Thomas Jones, loosely themed around truth and lies – from from Aesop’s Fables to Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Episodes will appear once a month throughout 2024. Among the Ancients is part of the Close Readings podcasts collection from the London Review of Books. Subscribe here or on the London Review of Books channel and access all our Close Readings series in full. Find our channel page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/channel/london-review-of-books/id6450677311

LRB CLOSE READINGS

Full access to all our Close Readings series

$5.99/mo or $59.99/yr after trial

4.4
out of 5
34 Ratings

About

Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series. How To Subscribe In Apple Podcasts, click 'subscribe' at the top of this podcast feed to unlock the full episodes. Or for other podcast apps, sign up here: https://lrb.me/closereadings Running in 2024: On Satire with Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow Human Conditions with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards Among the Ancients II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones Political Poems with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford Medieval LOLs with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley PLUS: More series starting in 2025... Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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