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The History of Literature #204 – Living Poetry (with Bob Holman
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL2859676941.mp3 Fellow poet Naomi Shihab Nye says that Bob Holman’s “life gusto and poetry voice keep the world turning.” In this episode of The History of Literature, we tap into that voice, as Bob Holman joins us for a rollicking conversation about the poetic life he’s led, from his birth in a small town in Continue reading
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The History of Literature #203 – William Blake
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL3840147296.mp3 Jacke takes a look at the astonishing life and works of William Blake (1757-1827), a poet, painter, engraver, illustrator, visionary, and one of the key figures of the Romantic Period. How did the boy who saw God’s head in a window at age four become the man who wrote the most anthologized poem in Continue reading
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The History of Literature #202 – Chekhov
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL1459748972.mp3 Jacke welcomes in the new year by taking a deep dive into the melancholy (and beautiful) short story “Gooseberries” (1898), by the Russian genius Anton Chekhov. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and Continue reading
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The History of Literature #201 – Virginia Woolf (with Gillian Gill)
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL7953694278.mp3 Through novels like To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway, and essays such as “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) has inspired generations of followers, particularly young women. But who were the women who inspired Virginia Woolf? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Gillian Gill, whose works include biographies of Mary Baker Eddy, Florence Nightingale, Continue reading
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The History of Literature #200 – The Magic Mountain
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL7001668220.mp3 In this special 200th episode of the History of Literature, Jacke and Mike discuss one of Mike’s all-time favorite novels, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. What does Mann do well? What makes this novel so great? And what do the experiences of Hans Castorp teach us about straddling the line between reality and the life Continue reading
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The History of Literature #199 – Jonathan Swift
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL1562299216.mp3 Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a man who loved ciphers and a cipher of a man, an Anglo-Irishman who claimed not to like Ireland but became one of its greatest champions. He was viewed as an oddity even by the friends who knew him well and admired him most. And yet, in spite of his Continue reading
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The History of Literature #198 – Sylvia Plath
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL5250857199.mp3 Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was born in Boston in 1932, the daughter of a German-born professor, Otto Plath, and his student, Aurelia Schober. After her father died in 1940, Plath’s family moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts, where her mother taught secretarial studies at Boston University and Plath embarked on a path that she would follow the Continue reading
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The History of Literature #197 – Margaret Atwood
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL3400481901.mp3 A week ago, Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) turned 80. A month ago, she was awarded the Booker Prize for her eighteenth novel, The Testaments. But how did the little girl who grew up in the forests of Canada turn into one of the most successful and celebrated authors of her day? And what do we Continue reading
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The History of Literature #196 – One-Hit Wonders
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL9476362217.mp3 We all know how difficult it is to scale the mountain of success, whether you’re a musician or a novelist. But why do some artists reach the summit again and again, while others spend the rest of their careers stuck in the valley, gazing up and thinking about what might have been? In this Continue reading
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The History of Literature #195 – Thomas Hardy
http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL6803239613.mp3 He was born to a lower class family of tradesmen in 1840. Eighty eight years later, he died as one of the most celebrated writers in England. His name was Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), and he was at the same time the product of the Victorian era and one of its greatest critics. But how Continue reading
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