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Critical Readings

Latest episodes

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Dec 16, 2024 • 1h 26min

CR Episode 250: Julius Caesar, Act III

The panel discusses the play's self-awareness, its complexity of character, the presence of character flaws which serve to advance the action of the drama, and the contrast between reason and emotion, rhetoric and sophistry, and idealism and pragmatism.Continue reading
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Dec 9, 2024 • 1h 5min

CR Episode 249: Julius Caesar, Act II

The panel discusses the the play's contrasts of public and private settings, its parallelism of scenes and characters (especially Calphurnia and Portia), and how Caesar's hubris, confidence, and superstition ultimately prove to bend the hinge of fate.Continue reading
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Dec 2, 2024 • 1h 15min

CR Episode 248: Julius Caesar, Act I

The panel discusses the first act of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, with attention to Caesar's biographies, the fraught sociopolitical situation in Rome, the thread of ambition that runs through the play, and Cassius' crafty manipulation of Brutus.Continue reading
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Nov 25, 2024 • 1h 6min

CR Episode 247: In Parenthesis, Part II

The panel discusses the biographical details of David Jones, and his participation in the Great War, before reading parts 5–7 of In Parenthesis, with attention to the role of mechanisation and the inversion of traditional forms of warfare and defence.Continue reading
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Nov 18, 2024 • 1h 28min

CR Episode 246: In Parenthesis, Part I

The panel reads Parts 1–4 of David Jones' In Parenthesis, with attention to its Modernist and post-Romantic moves, its structure as a prose poem and its prose style, and its imagistic and impressionistic development of scenes and personal experiences.Continue reading
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Nov 11, 2024 • 1h 34min

CR Episode 245: Wuthering Heights, Part IV

The panel discusses the conclusion of Wuthering Heights, with special attention given to the message of the novel; its place in the genres of Gothic, Romance, and Tragedy; and how its cycles of revenge and pain are eventually broken through acts of love.Continue reading
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Nov 4, 2024 • 1h 33min

CR Episode 244: Wuthering Heights, Part III

Guest expert Dr. Madeline Potter joins the panel to discuss chapters 17–24, with a focus on the cycles of violence and manipulation at Wuthering Heights, the symmetry of relationships, and the re-embodiments of abuse perpetuated by Heathcliff.Continue reading
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Oct 21, 2024 • 1h 17min

CR Episode 243: Wuthering Heights, Part II

The panel discusses chapters 10–16, from Catherine's marriage until her death, and examines Heathcliff's increased severity, the potential innocence of Isabella and Hareton, and the role that Nelly has played in escalating the fraught circumstances.Continue reading
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Oct 14, 2024 • 1h 47min

CR Episode 242: Wuthering Heights, Part I

Dr. Madeline Potter joins the panel to discuss the opening chapters of Emily Brontë's only novel, with attention to the influences of the gothic and romanticism, and the narrative's depiction of the unstable tension between civilisation and nature.Continue reading
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Oct 7, 2024 • 1h 2min

CR Episode 241: The Shimmering Form of Robert Penn Warren

The panel discusses the American Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren—the only person to win the Pulitzer prize both for Poetry and for Fiction—reading two of his poems from the November 1979 Poetry Magazine volume issued in honour of Allen Tate.Continue reading

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