Jonathan Bate

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Blake's collection of illustrated poems "Songs of Innocence and of Experience." He published Songs of Innocence first in 1789 with five hand-coloured copies and, five years later, with additional Songs of Experience poems and the explanatory phrase "Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul." Blake drew on the street ballads and improving children's rhymes of the time, exploring the open and optimistic outlook of early childhood with the darker and more cynical outlook of adult life, in which symbols such as the Lamb belong to innocence and the Tyger to experience.WithSir Jonathan Bate Provost of Worcester College, University of OxfordSarah Haggarty Lecturer at the Faculty of English and Fellow of Queens' College, University of CambridgeAndJon Mee Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of YorkProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Explore the world of Elizabethan revenge tragedy with guests Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders, and Janet Clare. From the theatrical portrayal of vengeance on stage to the societal shift from medieval to Tudor legal systems, delve into the complexities of revenge narratives in works like 'Hamlet' and 'The Spanish Tragedy'. Discover the psychological depth of vengeful minds through soliloquies and the evolving codes of justice in the Elizabethan era.