Best Close Reading Podcasts (2024)

1
On Satire: Byron's 'Don Juan' 17:54

43m ago17:54

17:54

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 re…

1
Political Poems: 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rossetti, feat. Shirley Henderson and Felicity Jones 57:22

6d ago57:22

57:22

‘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 wo…

1
Among the Ancients II: Lucan 13:17

22m ago13:17

13:17

In his prodigious, prolific and very short career, Lucan was at turns championed, disavowed and finally forced into suicide at 25 by the emperor Nero. His only surviving work is Civil War, an account of the bloody and chaotic power struggle between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. In their first episode on Latin literature’s so-called ‘Silver Ag…

1
Medieval LOLs: 'Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle' 40:48

6d ago40:48

40:48

The character of Gawain, one of King Arthur’s leading knights, recurs throughout medieval literature, but the way he’s presented underwent a curious development during the period, moving closer and closer to an impossible and perhaps comical ideal of chivalric perfection. In 'Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight', his most well-known incarnation, Gawai…

1
Human Conditions: ‘Hope against Hope’ by Nadezhda Mandelstam 14:12

10d ago14:12

14:12

After reciting an unflattering poem about Stalin to a small group of friends, Osip Mandelstam was betrayed to the police and endured five years in exile before dying in transit to the gulag. His wife, Nadezhda, spent the rest of her life dodging arrest, advocating for Osip’s work and writing what came to be known as Hope against Hope. Hope against …

1
On Satire: Jane Austen's 'Emma' 14:51

9d ago14:51

14:51

What kind of satirist was Jane Austen? Her earliest writings follow firmly in the footsteps of Tristram Shandy in their deployment of heightened sentiment as a tool for satirising romantic novelistic conventions. But her mature fiction goes far beyond this, taking the fashion for passionate sensibility and confronting it with moneyed realism to dep…

1
Political Poems: 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' by Walt Whitman 33:32

1M ago33:32

33:32

Whitman wrote several poetic responses to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He came to detest his most famous, ‘O Captain! My Captain!’, and in ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd’ Lincoln is not imagined in presidential terms but contained within a love elegy that attempts to unite his death with the 600,000 deaths of the civil war and r…

1
Among the Ancients II: Plautus and Terence 14:27

20d ago14:27

14:27

In episode seven, we turn to some of the earliest surviving examples of Roman literature: the raucous, bawdy and sometimes bewildering world of Roman comedy. Plautus and Terence, who would go on to set the tone for centuries of playwrights (and school curricula), came from the margins of Roman society, writing primarily for plebeians and upsetting …

1
Medieval LOLs: Solomon and Marcolf 49:33

1M ago49:33

49:33

The foul-mouthed, mean-spirited peasant Marcolf was one of the most well-known literary characters in late medieval Europe. He appears in many poetic works from the 9th century onwards, but it’s in this dialogue with Solomon, printed in Antwerp in 1492, that we find him at his irreverent and scatological best as they engage in a battle of proverbia…

1
Human Conditions: ‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing 12:44

1M ago12:44

12:44

Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz to discuss The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing’s formally brilliant and startlingly frank 1962 novel. In her portrait of ‘free women’ – unmarried, creatively ambitious, politically engaged – Lessing wrestles with the breakdown of Stalinism, settler colonialism and traditional gender roles. Pankaj and Adam explore the l…

1
On Satire: 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' by Laurence Sterne 14:53

2M ago14:53

14:53

'Tristram Shandy' was such a hit in its day that you could buy tea trays, watch cases and cushions decorated with its most famous characters and scenes. If much of the satire covered in this series so far has featured succinct and damning portrayals of recognisable city types, Sterne’s comic masterpiece seems to offer the opposite: a sprawling and …

1
Political Poems: 'Strange Meeting' by Wilfred Owen 36:11

2M ago36:11

36:11

Wilfred Owen wrote ‘Strange Meeting’ in the early months of 1918, shortly after being treated for shell shock at Craiglockhart hospital in Edinburgh, where he had met the stridently anti-war Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon's poetry of caustic realism quickly found its way into Owen’s work, where it merged with the high romantic sublime of his other grea…

1
Among the Ancients II: Lucian 14:03

2M ago14:03

14:03

The broad theme of this series, truth and lies, was a favourite subject of Lucian of Samosata, the last of our Greek-language authors. A cosmopolitan and highly cultured Syrian subject of the Roman Empire in the second century CE, Lucian wrote in the classical Greek of fifth-century Athens. His razor-sharp satire was a model for Erasmus, Voltaire a…

1
Medieval LOLs: The Second Shepherds' Pageant 35:19

2M ago35:19

35:19

In their quest for the medieval sense of humour Mary and Irina come to The Second Shepherds’ Pageant, a 15th-century reimagining of the nativity as domestic comedy that’s less about the birth of Jesus and more about sheep rustling, taxes, the weather and the frustrations of daily life. The pageant was part of a mystery cycle, a collection of plays …

1
Human Conditions: ‘The Intimate Enemy’ by Ashis Nandy 13:21

3M ago13:21

13:21

Ashis Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy is a study of the psychological toll of colonialism on both the coloniser and colonised, showing how Western conceptions of masculinity and adulthood served as tools of conquest. Using figures as disparate as Gandhi, Oscar Wilde and Aurobindo Ghosh, Nandy suggests ways in which alternative models of age and gender c…

1
On Satire: 'The Dunciad' by Alexander Pope 12:38

3M ago12:38

12:38

Nobody hated better than Alexander Pope. Despite his reputation as the quintessentially refined versifier of the early 18th century, he was also a class A, ultra-pure, surreal, visionary mega-hater, and The Dunciad is his monument to the hate he felt for almost all the other writers of his time. Written over fifteen years of burning fury, Pope’s mo…

1
Political Poems: 'The Masque of Anarchy' by Percy Bysshe Shelley 35:31

3M ago35:31

35:31

Shelley’s angry, violent poem was written in direct response to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819, in which a demonstration in favour of parliamentary reform was attacked by local yeomanry, leaving 18 people dead and hundreds injured. The ‘masque’ it describes begins with a procession of abstract figures – Murder, Fraud, Hypocrisy – embod…

1
Among the Ancients II: Plato 11:31

3M ago11:31

11:31

Plato’s Symposium, his philosophical dialogue on love, or eros, was probably written around 380 BCE, but it’s set in 416, during the uneasy truce between Athens and Sparta in the middle of the Peloponnesian War. A symposium was a drinking party, though Socrates and his friends, having had a heavy evening the night before, decide to go easy on the w…

1
Medieval LOLs: Dame Syrith 34:50

3M ago34:50

34:50

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 representati…

1
Huda Fakhreddine on Hiba Abu Nada ("Pull Yourself Together") 1:30:30

4M ago1:30:30

1:30:30

What can a poem do in the face of calamity? This was an extraordinary conversation. Huda Fakhreddine joins the podcast to discuss "Pull Yourself Together," a poem that Huda has translated into English and that was written by the Palestinian poet, novelist, and educator Hiba Abu Nada. Hiba was killed by an Israeli airstrike in her home in the Gaza S…

1
Human Conditions: ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ by V.S. Naipaul 10:58

4M ago10:58

10:58

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 Naip…

1
On Satire: John Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera' 12:59

3M ago12:59

12:59

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…

1
Political Poems: 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 36:15

4M ago36:15

36:15

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 o…

1
Among the Ancients II: Pindar and Bacchylides 11:19

4M ago11:19

11:19

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 co…

1
Medieval LOLs: Fabliaux 34:45

5M ago34:45

34:45

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 w…

1
Human Conditions: ‘The Human Condition’ by Hannah Arendt 11:49

5M ago11:49

11:49

In the fourth episode of Human Conditions, the last of the series with Judith Butler, we fittingly turn to The Human Condition (1956). Hannah Arendt defines action as the highest form of human activity: distinct from work and labour, action includes collaborative expression, collective decision-making and, crucially, initiating change. Focusing on …

1
On Satire: The Earl of Rochester 13:14

5M ago13:14

13:14

According to one contemporary, the Earl of Rochester was a man who, in life as well is in poetry, ‘could not speak with any warmth, without repeated Oaths, which, upon any sort of provocation, came almost naturally from him.’ It’s certainly hard to miss Rochester's enthusiastic use of obscenities, though their precise meanings can sometimes be obsc…

1
Political Poems: 'Easter 1916' by W.B. Yeats 33:54

5M ago33:54

33:54

Yeats’s great poem about the uprising of Irish republicans against British rule on 24 April 1916 marked a turning point in Ireland’s history and in Yeats's career. Through four stanzas Yeats enacts the transfiguration of the movement’s leaders – executed by the British shortly after the event – from ‘motley’ acquaintances to heroic martyrs, and int…

1
Emily Wilson on Sappho ("Ode to Aphrodite") 1:27:15

5M ago1:27:15

1:27:15

This is the kind of conversation I dreamed about having when I began this podcast. Emily Wilson joins Close Readings to talk about Sappho's "Ode to Aphrodite," a poet and poem at the root of the lyric tradition in European poetry. You'll hear Emily read the poem in the Ancient Greek and then again in Anne Carson's English translation. We talk about…

1
Among the Ancients II: Herodotus 10:30

5M ago10:30

10:30

Some of the most compelling stories of the Classical world come from Herodotus‘ Histories, an account of the Persian Wars and a thousand things besides. Emily and Tom chart a course through Herodotus‘ history-as-epic, discussing how best to understand his approach to history, ethnography and myth. Exploring a work full of surprising, dramatic and f…

1
Medieval LOLs: Old English Riddles 41:58

6M ago41:58

41:58

Riddles are an ancient and universal form, but few people seem to have enjoyed them more than English Benedictine monks. The Exeter Book, a tenth century monastic collection of Old English verse, builds on the riddle tradition in two striking ways: first, the riddles don’t come with answers; second, they are sexually suggestive. Were they intended …

1
Robert Volpicelli on W. H. Auden ("In Memory of W. B. Yeats") 1:52:26

5M ago1:52:26

1:52:26

"Poetry," according to this episode's poem, "makes nothing happen." But as our guest, Robert Volpicelli, makes clear, that poem, W. H. Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats," offers that statement not as diminishment of poetry but instead as a way of valuing it for the right reasons. Robert Volpicelli is an associate professor of English at Randolph-Ma…

1
Human Conditions: ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ by Frantz Fanon 12:58

6M ago12:58

12:58

Begun as a psychiatric dissertation, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) became a genre-shattering study of antiblack racism and its effect on the psyche. At turns expressionistic, confessional, clinical, sharply satirical and politically charged, the book is dazzlingly multivocal, sometimes self-contradictory but always compelling. Judit…

1
On Satire: Ben Jonson's 'Volpone' 11:51

6M ago11:51

11:51

What did English satirists do after the archbishop of Canterbury banned the printing of satires in June 1599? They turned to the stage. Within months of the crackdown, the same satirical tricks Elizabethans had read in verse could be enjoyed in theatres. At the heart of the scene was Ben Jonson, who for many centuries has maintained a reputation as…

1
Political Poems: W.H. Auden's 'Spain 1937' 42:55

6M ago42:55

42:55

In their second episode, Mark and Seamus look at W.H. Auden's ‘Spain’. Auden travelled to Spain in January 1937 to support the Republican efforts in the civil war, and composed the poem shortly after his return a few months later to raise money for Medical Aid for Spain. It became a rallying cry in the fight against fascism, but was also heavily cr…

1
Margaret Ronda on Walt Whitman ("This Compost") 1:49:36

6M ago1:49:36

1:49:36

How does life grow from death? When we taste a fruit, are we, in some sense, ingesting everything the soil contains? Margaret Ronda joins the podcast to discuss a poem that poses these questions in harrowing ways, Walt Whitman's "This Compost." [A note on the recording: from 01:10:11 - 01:12:59, Margaret briefly loses her internet connection and I …

1
Among the Ancients II: Aesop 10:26

6M ago10:26

10:26

Supposedly an enslaved man from sixth-century Samos, Aesop might not have ever really existed, but the fables attributed to him remain some of the most widely read examples of classical literature. A fascinating window into the ‘low’ culture of ancient Greece, the Fables and the figure of Aesop appear in the work of authors as diverse as Aristophan…

1
Michelle A. Taylor on Patricia Lockwood ("The Ode on Grecian Urn") 1:56:45

6M ago1:56:45

1:56:45

What is a poem worth? What does beauty do to the person who wants it, or to the person who makes it? Michelle A. Taylor joins the pod to talk about Patricia Lockwood's poem "The Ode on a Grecian Urn," a wild and funny and ultimately quite moving poem (which is also, obviously, a riff on Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"). Michelle A. Taylor is a Postd…

1
Medieval LOLs: The Colloquies of Aelfric Bata 35:28

7M ago35:28

35:28

All teachers know that the best way for students to learn a language is through swear words, and nobody knew this better than Aelfric Bata, a monk from Winchester whose Colloquies, compiled in around the year 1000, instructed pupils to swear in Latin with elaborate and vivid fluency. Mary and Irina work through some of Aelfric’s fruitier dialogues,…

1
Sylvie Thode on Tim Dlugos ("The Far West") 1:32:58

6M ago1:32:58

1:32:58

How might a poem map the passage from life to death? Sylvie Thode joins the podcast to talk about a fascinating poem by Tim Dlugos, "The Far West." Sylvie is a graduate student in English at UC Berkeley, where she works on poetry and poetics, with particular interest in the poetry of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Though that focus roots her in the 20th cent…

1
Human Conditions: ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone de Beauvoir 11:56

7M ago11:56

11:56

Judith Butler joins Adam Shatz to discuss a landmark in feminist thought, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949). Dazzling in its scope, The Second Sex incorporates anthropology, psychology, historiography, mythology and biology to ask an ‘impossible’ question: what is a woman? Focusing on three key chapters, Adam and Judith navigate this dense…

1
Marisa Galvez on William IX ("The Song of Nothing") 1:03:44

6M ago1:03:44

1:03:44

For the first time in the run of this podcast (though certainly not the last!) today we have a poem in translation. Marisa Galvez joins Close Readings to discuss "The Song of Nothing," a poem by the first attested troubadour, William IX. The poem is something like 900 years old, and Marisa helps us see both its strangeness and the sense in which it…

1
On Satire: John Donne's Satires 12:49

7M ago12:49

12:49

In their second episode, Colin and Clare look at the dense, digressive and often dangerous satires of John Donne and other poets of the 1590s. It’s likely that Donne was the first Elizabethan author to attempt formal verse satires in the vein of the Roman satirists, and they mark not only the chronological start of his poetic career, but a foundati…

1
Political Poems: Andrew Marvell's 'An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland' 35:29

7M ago35:29

35:29

In the first episode of their new Close Readings series on political poetry, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ by Andrew Marvell, described by Frank Kermode as ‘braced against folly by the power and intelligence that make it possible to think it the greatest political poem in the language’. Mar…

1
Among the Ancients II: Hesiod 12:00

7M ago12:00

12:00

Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones kick off their second season of Among the Ancients with a return to the eighth century BCE, exploring the poems of Homer’s near contemporary, Hesiod, the first western writer to craft a poetic persona. In Works and Days, brilliantly translated by A.E. Stallings, Hesiod weaves his personality into a narrative that encom…

1
Stephanie Burt on Allan Peterson ("I thought all life came from the alphabet") 1:23:01

7M ago1:23:01

1:23:01

Very few scholars have as much enthusiasm for poetry as Stephanie Burt, and so it was a delight to have her back for this episode. Steph has been in the news of late for offering a (very popular) course at Harvard on Taylor Swift, and we begin this episode by talking in fascinating ways about the long history of the relation between popular music a…

1
Medieval LOLs: Chaucer's 'Miller's Tale' 30:03

8M ago30:03

30:03

Were the Middle Ages funny? In this bonus Close Readings series running throughout this year, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley begin their quest for the medieval sense of humour with Chaucer’s 'Miller’s Tale', a story that is surely still (almost) as funny as when it was written six hundred years ago. But who is the real butt of the joke? Mary a…

1
Paul Fry on William Wordsworth ("A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal") 1:31:17

7M ago1:31:17

1:31:17

Some of the most profound insights I have ever had as a student of poetry occurred in the classroom of Paul Fry, and so this episode really is a dream for me. Paul Fry joins the podcast to talk about William Wordsworth's poem "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal." Just an eight-line poem, but it opens for us into some big questions: Where does Wordsworth …

1
Human Conditions: ‘Anti-Semite and Jew’ by Jean-Paul Sartre 12:06

8M ago12:06

12:06

Judith Butler joins Adam Shatz for the first episode of Human Conditions to look at Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 book Anti-Semite and Jew, originally published in French as Réflexions Sur La Question Juive. Sartre’s ‘portraits’ of the ‘anti-Semite’ and the ‘Jew’, as he saw them, caused controversy at the time for directly confronting anti-Jewish bigotry…

1
Keegan Cook Finberg on Harryette Mullen ("Dim Lady") 1:32:35

7M ago1:32:35

1:32:35

What kind of love do we find in comparison? Keegan Cook FInberg joins the podcast to discuss Harryette Mullen's poem "Dim Lady," which is simultaneously a love poem and a (perhaps?) loving tribute to Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 (itself a love poem and parody). Keegan is an assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Close Reading Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Quick Reference Guide