Professing Literature

Jul 12 2024 24 ep. 77 mins 71

Professing Literature Podcast artwork

Why do great novels, poems and plays move us and excite us? How can they change the way we look at ourselves and the world? What do these authors have to teach us? Why do they matter? There are no better answers to these questions than those provided by the authors themselves. We want to let them speak. Professing Literature is not a broad summary of major works. Instead, it will zero in on one or two key passages, looking at them closely in order to figure out what is at stake. The goal will be to appreciate an author’s brilliance by seeing him or her in action. We will unpack key phrases, images and metaphors and we will consider the techniques the writer uses to make ideas come alive.

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EP23 - Knaves Or Jacks? | Dickens, Great Expectations

Jul 12 2024 92 mins

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations. It takes many years and great disappointment for Pip to understand what happened to him. The protagonist of Dickens’ novel lives amid hope and fear, unaware of who it is that shaped his life and what he should really value. His story is about coming to terms with his responsibility, forgiving the ones who had hurt him and learning to see and a

EP22 - Until the World Is Mended | A Reflection On J.R.R. Tolkien

Jun 24 2024 93 mins

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is one of the most beloved writers in the English tradition, though that popularity is a source of frustration to many supposedly sophisticated critics and scholars. However, his fans and his detractors alike often miss not just how carefully constructed his fiction is but how seriously it explores perennial human concerns: death, ch

EP21 - Twin Compasses | Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Jun 20 2024 86 mins

John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. John Donne came of age in a high culture whose notions of love were shaped by writers like Philip Sidney. Donne’s own love poetry, though, was very different. Scandalously frank, experimental, intellectually complex, Donne disdains the traditional conventions. Whether praising the beloved or excoriating her, whether writing to a nam

EP20 - Star and Star Lover | Sidney, Astrophil and Stella

Jun 05 2024 81 mins

Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella. Over the course of the sixteenth century English poets experimented with the sonnet form invented by their Italian neighbours, and the Petrarchan conventions that came with it. The goal was a long sequence of many short poems which chronicle the emotional chaos springing from unrequited love. Sir Philip Sidney’s sequence Astrophil and Stel

EP19 - Into the Storm | Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Part Two)

May 14 2024 60 mins

John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” (Part Two). Today we conclude our examination of Keats’ poem, looking at three pairs of stanzas that describe the strange courtship of Porphyro and Madeline and their escape from the castle.We love hearing from all of you. Please email us at [email protected] Theme Music: "Nobility" by Wicked CinemaOpening Segment M

EP18 - The Numb Fingers | Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Part One)

Apr 25 2024 74 mins

John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Part One). The first of a two-part episode that considers John Keats’ gorgeous poem. Set in a dreamy medieval world of castles, blood feuds and esoteric folk rituals, Keats gives us a love story with some of the lushest and most opulent imagery in all of English poetry. However, we begin in a very different atmosphere marked by darkness, de

EP17 – Bred in the Bone | Auden, September 1, 1939

Mar 20 2024 79 mins

On the day the Nazis invade Poland, beginning the Second World War, a poet nurses a drink in a New York bar. The unwarlike Auden has just immigrated to the United States from England, yet he feels a shadow rising behind him in the east that no one will be able to escape. Auden looks without and within, contemplating the primordial destructive urge that seems to be in control of the

EP16 - Family Breakfast | O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First

Aug 21 2023 97 mins

Flannery O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First. Sheppard is a high-minded liberal. Norton is his disappointing young son, who seems indifferent to Sheppard’s moral crusades. In the opening paragraphs of this short story Flannery O’Connor presents the two of them at breakfast. Every detail of the depiction alludes to just what is wrong within this little family, highlighting Sh

EP15 – Take My Eyes | Shakespeare, King Lear (Part Two)

Jun 19 2023 89 mins

William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act Four, Scene Five. Lear has lost his kingdom, his family, his security and his sanity. When he encounters his old friend the Earl of Gloucester, who has been savagely blinded, we witness one of the strangest and yet richest conversations in all of literature. Choked with both rage and guilt, Lear intercuts fantasies of revenge with flashes of mora

EP14 - Not Altogether Fool | Shakespeare, King Lear (Part One)

Apr 21 2023 87 mins

William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act One, Scene Four. Looking forward to an easy retirement, where he can maintain the honours of kingship with none of the responsibilities, King Lear abdicates, and banishes the wrong daughter. His loyal fool attempts to show him the error of his ways. We love hearing from all of you. Please email us at [email protected] The