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 29, 2020 • 1h 6min
CR Episode 43: The Faerie Queene, Book II, Cantos 7-12
The panel reviews the second half of Book II of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, with particular attention shown to the allegorical representation of the seven deadly sins and the means by which they can be overcome through the virtue of temperance.Continue reading
Jun 22, 2020 • 1h 12min
CR Episode 42: The Faerie Queene, Book II, Cantos 1-6
The panel reviews selections from the first six cantos of Book II of Spenser's Faerie Queene, with particular attention to Guyon's interactions with Belphoebe (and her connexion to Diana and Venus), the character of Palmer, and the return of Archimago.Continue reading
Jun 15, 2020 • 1h 2min
CR Episode 41: The Faerie Queene, Book I, Cantos 7-12
The panel examines the second half of the first book of The Faerie Queene, with particular attention to the foundations of textual analysis, demonstrating readings grounded in the texts themselves and in the material and tropes available to the author.Continue reading
Jun 8, 2020 • 1h 4min
CR Episode 40: The Faerie Queene, Book I, Cantos 1-6
The panel welcomes two additional experts to begin a several-month-long survey of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene in its entirety, in this episode examining Spenser's personal history, his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, and the first half of Book I.Continue reading
Jun 1, 2020 • 55min
CR Episode 39: Robert Frost and the Road Not Taken
The panel discusses two of Robert Frost's best-known nature poems, including "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", and their common misreadings, before discussing the unusually urban setting of his "Acquainted with the Night".Continue reading
Apr 27, 2020 • 1h 1min
CR Episode 38: Betjeman’s Railways
The panel bridges McGonagall's Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay to a discussion of twentieth-century poet laureate John Betjeman, who had an abiding fascination for railway buildings both architecturally and as a connecting point for human experiences.Continue reading
Apr 6, 2020 • 43min
CR Episode 37: William McGonagall and the Tay Bridge
In the first podcast of April, the panel examines the work of a truly exceptional poet--the unparalleled and indefatigable William Topaz McGonagall--and discusses three of his poems related to the Tay Bridge (near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green).Continue reading
Mar 30, 2020 • 1h 2min
CR Episode 36: Eliot’s Four Quartets IV – Little Gidding
After a brief delay, the panel concludes its review of Eliot's Four Quartets with a discussion of Little Gidding, focusing on its cyclicality, pentecostal imagery, connexions to Dante's Commedia, and what the poem suggests about the communion of saints.Continue reading
Mar 2, 2020 • 59min
CR Episode 35: Eliot’s Four Quartets III – The Dry Salvages
The panel examines 'The Dry Salvages' (rhymes with 'assuages'), the third of Eliot's Four Quartets, and ponders over the speaker's shift away from temporal considerations and towards intercessory prayer and overtly Christian theological symbolism.Continue reading
Feb 24, 2020 • 47min
CR Episode 34: Eliot’s Four Quartets II – East Coker
The panel examines 'East Coker', the second of Eliot's Four Quartets, with particular attention to the poet's developing understanding about the search for meaning in life, the connexion to ancestral history, and the necessity of identifying a telos.Continue reading
