Critical Readings
CriticalReadings.com
Critical Readings examines key literary texts using close reading and critical analysis, and explains these approaches in discussion. Listeners will learn about the texts themselves and about how to approach a text for critical analysis.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Jun 14, 2021 • 1h 10min
CR Episode 82: Canterbury Tales IV – The Man of Law’s Tale
The panel examines The Man of Law's Tale and scholarly arguments about whether it is suited to its putative teller, and consider the tale's depictions of crime and justice (temporal and divine), constancy, providence, misadventure, and religious strife.Continue reading
Jun 7, 2021 • 1h 10min
CR Episode 81: Canterbury Tales III – The Miller’s, Reeve’s, and Cook’s Tales
Leaving behind the Knight's noble depictions of courtly love, the panel descends through bawdy, sexual misadventures in the form of 'quites'--narrative responses--offered by the drunken Miller and the vengeful Reeve, and the Cook's incomplete tale.Continue reading
May 31, 2021 • 1h 10min
CR Episode 80: Canterbury Tales II – The Knight’s Tale
In the second part of the Canterbury Tales series, the panel reads selections from The Knight's Tale, with a focus on how the three shines--to Venus, to Mars, and to Diana--serve as an interpretive device, and on the connexion to Boethian philosophy.Continue reading
May 24, 2021 • 1h 17min
CR Episode 79: Canterbury Tales I – General Prologue
In the first week of the Canterbury Tales series, the panel reviews the biography of Geoffrey Chaucer, introduces the Canterbury Tales in general, and then reads selections from the General Prologue, with emphasis on Chaucer's development of character.Continue reading
May 17, 2021 • 57min
CR Episode 78: Kipling, “If”, and The Great War
The panel discusses selections from the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, including his most famous poem, "If", and three poems related to The Great War and, its mechanised social aftermath: "Gethsemane", "The Benefactor", and "The Secret of the Machines".Continue reading
May 10, 2021 • 1h 3min
CR Episode 77: Ben Jonson’s Critical Eye
The panel discusses Ben Jonson's role as critic and author of the Elizabethan age, and reads four of his poems, including several of his Epigrams, before concluding with his rhapsodic ode written in memory of his friend, William Shakespeare.Continue reading
Apr 26, 2021 • 1h 25min
CR Episode 76: Excerpts from Leaves of Grass
The panel reads excerpts from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, including poems from the inscriptions, Song of Myself, Children of Adam, and Calamus, considering the formal nature of the 'American Epic', and Whitman's use of individualism and universalism.Continue reading
Apr 19, 2021 • 1h 4min
CR Episode 75: Excerpts from Astrophil and Stella
The panel examines a selection of sonnets and a song from Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, considering the formal and tonal connexions between Sidney's poetry and the works of earlier and later poets, including Chaucer, Petrarch, and Shakespeare.Continue reading
Apr 12, 2021 • 54min
CR Episode 74: Introduction to Abraham Cowley
The panel discusses a selection of poems covering the entire span of Abraham Cowley's oeuvre: beginning with his college years and the unfinished epic 'Davideis', through his popular collections, and concluding with his late 'Ode to the Royal Society'.Continue reading
Apr 5, 2021 • 1h 4min
CR Episode 73: Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso
The panel discusses a selection of John Milton's shorter poems, the oft-paired 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso', and examines their use of Orpheus as a metaphor, and their different attitudes to finding communal delight and solitary pleasure in life.Continue reading
