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
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
Mar 29, 2021 • 1h 4min
CR Episode 72: Irony in the Poetry of Stephen Crane
The panel analyses the use of irony in the poetic works of Stephen Crane, including selections from "War Is Kind" (1899), and discusses the development of realism and imagism in English literature, especially in poetry about the experience of war.Continue reading
Mar 22, 2021 • 1h 5min
CR Episode 71: Accepting Complexity in Melville’s Poetry
The panel analyses contradiction in Melville's earliest and latest published poems: three selections from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War--his first collection--and "Art" from Timoleon and Other Ventures, published only four months before his death.Continue reading
Mar 15, 2021 • 1h 10min
CR Episode 70: Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard
In a return to the works of Alexander Pope, the panel reads his "Eloisa to Abelard" in full and discusses the complexity of Eloisa's tragic circumstances: her love for Abelard, her vocation as a nun, and the suffering to which they have been subjected.Continue reading
Mar 8, 2021 • 1h 12min
CR Episode 69: Keats and The Eve of St. Agnes
The panel discusses the late Romantic shift in focus from nominally Christian, deified Nature to transcendental beauty in three longer works by Keats, including "The Eve of St. Agnes" and excerpts from "Endymion" and the unfinished "Hyperion".Continue reading
Mar 1, 2021 • 1h 2min
CR Episode 68: Shelley, Ozymandias, and the Death of Keats
The panel engages in a wide-ranging discussion of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his relation to the early and late Romantic movements, his work to establish the reputation of Keats, his association with radical politics, and his own untimely death, aged 29.Continue reading
Feb 22, 2021 • 60min
CR Episode 67: An Introduction to Lord Byron
The panel begins a multi-week review of Romanticism with a review of the movement's (and the author's) effects upon poetry, including readings of three works: "Darkness", "The Destruction of Sennacherib", and excerpts from "The Bride of Abydos".Continue reading
Feb 15, 2021 • 59min
CR Episode 66: Poetry and Verse of Robert W. Service
The panel discusses the difference between verse and poetry (including whether such a difference exists), and examines three 'frosty' poems by Service, including "Pullman Porter", "The Prospector", and his famous ballad, "The Cremation of Sam McGee".Continue reading
