Writing
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The History of Literature #94 – Smoke, Dusk, and Fire – The Jean Toomer Story
Jean Toomer (1894-1967) was born into a prominent black family in Washington, D.C., but it wasn’t until he returned to the land of agrarian Georgia that he was inspired to write his masterpiece Cane (1923), a towering achievement that went on to influence the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation. While Toomer’s… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #93 – Robert Frost Finds a Friend
It’s a curious but compelling story: it starts in the years just before World War I, when struggling poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) hastily packed up his family and moved to London in search of a friend. Although Frost’s efforts to ingratiate himself with W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound fizzled, he soon found a man, critic Edward Thomas… Continue reading
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The History of Literature #92 – The Books of Our Lives
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:05 — 44.3MB) | Embed Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSS | More “In the middle of life’s journey,” wrote Dante Alighieri, “I found myself in a selva oscura.” Host Jacke Wilson and frequent guest Mike Palindrome take stock of their own selva oscura… Continue reading
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History of Literature #91 – In Which John Donne Decides to Write a Poem About a Flea
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:42 — 33.7MB) | Embed Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSS | More John Donne (1572-1631) may have been the most wildly inventive poet who ever lived. But that doesn’t mean he was the most successful. Dr. Johnson, writing a hundred years later, objected to… Continue reading
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History of Literature #90 – Mark Twain’s Final Request
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:31 — 35.5MB) | Embed Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSS | More In 1910, the American author Mark Twain took to his bed in his Connecticut home. Weakened by disease and no longer able to write, the legendary humorist (and author of The Adventures of… Continue reading
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History of Literature #89 – Primo Levi
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:28 — 41.8MB) | Embed Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSS | More Primo Levi (1919-1987) lived quietly and wrote with restraint. An Italian Jewish writer, professional chemist, and Holocaust survivor, he was, said Italo Calvino, “one of the most important and gifted writers of… Continue reading
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History of Literature #88 – The Harlem Renaissance
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:41 — 35.8MB) | Embed Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSS | More The Harlem Renaissance, the great flowering of African American arts and culture in the early twentieth century, is hard to define and easy to admire. Coupled with the Great Migration, in which… Continue reading
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History of Literature #87 – Man in Love: The Passions of D.H. Lawrence
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:08 — 37.4MB) | Embed Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSS | More The Edwardian novelist D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) lived and wrote with the fury of a thousand suns. His novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and The Rainbow are commonly… Continue reading
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History of Literature #86 – Don Juan in Literature (aka The Case of the Red-Hot Lover)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:17 — 36.9MB) | Embed Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSS | More From his earliest days as a popular legend, through many appearances in drama and poetry and fiction and film, the sexual conquistador Don Juan has been the vehicle for authors and artists to… Continue reading
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History of Literature #85 – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:06:11 — 45.7MB) | Embed Subscribe: iTunes | Android | Email | RSS | More In 1813, a young author named Jane Austen built on the success of her popular novel Sense and Sensibility with a new novel about the emotional life of an appealing protagonist named Elizabeth Bennet,… Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 