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Close Readings

By: London Review of Books
  • Summary

  • Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series.


    How To Subscribe

    Apple Podcast users can sign up directly here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

    For other podcast apps, sign up here: lrb.me/closereadings


    Close Readings Plus

    If you'd like to receive all the books under discussion in our 2024 series, and get access to online seminars throughout the year with special guests and other supporting material, sign up to Close Readings Plus here: https://lrb.me/plus


    Running in 2024:

    On Satire with Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow

    Human Conditions with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards

    Among the Ancients II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones

    There'll be a new episode from each series every month.


    Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    London Review of Books
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Episodes
  • 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd' by Walt Whitman
    Jul 28 2024

    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 reconfigure the assassination as a symbolic birth of the new America. Seamus and Mark discuss Whitman’s cosmic vision, with its grand democratic vistas populated by small observations of rural and urban life, and his use of a thrush as a redemptive poetic voice.

    Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College, London, and Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford.

    Sign up to the Close Readings subscription to listen ad free and to all our series in full:

    Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/ppapplesignup

    In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/ppsignup


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    34 mins
  • Among the Ancients II: Plautus and Terence
    Jul 24 2024

    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 the conventions they simultaneously established. Plautus’ ‘Menaechmi’ is full of coinages, punning and madcap doubling. Terence’s troubling ‘Hecyra’ tells a much darker story of Roman sexual mores while destabilizing misogynistic stereotypes. Emily and Tom discuss how best to navigate these very early and enormously influential plays, and what they lend to Shakespeare, Sondheim and the modern sitcom.


    This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:

    Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

    In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings


    Emily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jones is an editor at the London Review of Books.

    Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    14 mins
  • Medieval LOLs: Solomon and Marcolf
    Jul 18 2024

    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 proverbial wisdom. Mary and Irina consider some of the more startling and perplexing of the riddles and discuss how the development of Marcolf’s earthy rejoinders tells a story about justice and political power.

    Read the text here:

    https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/bradbury-solomon-and-marcolf

    Sign up to listen to this series ad free and all our subscriber series in full, including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings:

    Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignup

    In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup

    Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    50 mins

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