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The History of Literature #123 – James Joyce’s The Dead (part 1)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:47 — 41.3MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Happy holidays! In this special two-part episode, host Jacke Wilson takes a look at a story that he can’t stop thinking about: James Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead.” How does it work? Why is it so good? And why does it resonate so deeply with Continue reading
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The History of Literature #122 – Young James Joyce
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:15 — 43.0MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More We often think of James Joyce as a man in his thirties and forties, a monkish, fanatical, eyepatch-wearing author, trapped in his hovel and his own mind, agonizing over his masterpieces, sentence by sentence, word by laborious word. But young James Joyce, the one Continue reading
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History of Literature #121 – A Portrait of the Poet as a Young Man – John Ashbery’s Early Life (with Karin Roffman)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:41 — 45.4MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More In this episode, author Karin Roffman joins Jacke for a conversation about her literary biography of John Ashbery, one of America’s greatest twentieth-century poets. In naming Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life as one of its Notable Books of the Year, The New York Times noted Continue reading
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The History of Literature #120 – The Astonishing Emily Dickinson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10:59 — 49.0MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) might be the most enigmatic poet who ever lived. Her innovative use of meter and punctuation – and above all the liveliness of her ideas, as she crashes together abstract thoughts and concrete images – astonished her nineteenth-century readers and have Continue reading
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History of Literature #119 – The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:18:39 — 54.3MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More Very few works of art have had the cultural and literary impact of J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye. An immediate success upon its publication in 1951, and popular with teenagers (and adults) ever since, the book has sold over 65 million copies Continue reading
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History of Literature #118 – Oscar’s Ghost – The Battle for Oscar Wilde’s Legacy (with Laura Lee)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:09 — 38.8MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS | More In Episode 87, we looked at the trials of Oscar Wilde and how they led to his eventual imprisonment and tragically early death. This episode picks up where that one left off, as the incarcerated Wilde writes a manuscript, De Profundis, that eventually leads to Continue reading
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History of Literature #117 – Machiavelli and The Prince
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:54 — 44.8MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS | More Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) went from being a little-known functionary to one of the most famous and controversial political theorists of all time. His masterpiece Il Principe (or in English, The Prince) has been read, studied, and argued about for 500 years. “A guidebook for statesmen,” said Benito Mussolini. Continue reading
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History of Literature #116 – Ghost Stories!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:12:54 — 50.3MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS | More It’s the Halloween Episode! After some false starts (thanks, Gar!), Jacke settles in to discuss some ghost stories, including a few old chestnuts, a little Toni Morrison, a little Henry James, and a LOT of real-life phenomena. Along the way, he discusses how ghost stories Continue reading
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History of Literature #115 – The Genius of Alice Munro
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:32:04 — 63.5MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS | More She was born Alice Ann Laidlaw on July 10, 1931, in a small town called Wingham Ontario, the daughter of a mink farmer and a schoolteacher. Eighty years later, Alice Munro was the first Canadian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mike and Continue reading
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History of Literature #114 – Christopher Marlowe – What Happened and What If?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:25 — 34.9MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS | More In 1921, T.S. Eliot wrote, “When Shakespeare borrowed from him, which was pretty often at the beginning, Shakespeare either made something inferior or something different.” He was talking about Shakespeare’s near-contemporary Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), whose literary career was cut short by his murder at the Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 