The Classic English Literature Podcast

Send us a textIn the early 18th century, the public press came to dominate English writing.  Pamphlets, newspapers, and periodicals fed the appetite for news and commentary of an ever-hungrier reading public.  Richard Steele and Joseph Addison were the great innovators of the periodical essay, a quintessentially English genre of writing.Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textOn this trip, we're looking at the conventional candidate for the first modern novel in English.  Defoe's story of a resourceful man shipwrecked on a desert island is so much more than a ripping yarn: it speaks to the rise of a literary vernacular language, the values of an increasing bourgeois and expansionist society, and of spiritual awakening.  Come aboard!Text: https://ia600207.us.archive.org/26/items/cu31924011498676/cu31924011498676.pdfAdditional Music:"Theme from Emergency!" by Nelson Riddle. https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_206"The Ballad of Gilligan's Island" by Sherwood Schwartz.  https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_275Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textFor you today, Trick or Treaters, a discussion of what some critics assert is the first modern ghost story in English: Daniel Defoe's 1705 "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal."The text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36587/36587-h/36587-h.htmSupport the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textWell, I probably should have done this episode earlier, since it might have been good for it to precede our other discussions of Resto comedy.  But I made a last minute decision and included a second play, which kind of threw off the old chronology.  But it's good all the same!The Man of Mode by George Etherege: https://coldreads.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/the-man-of-mode.pdfThe Way of the World by William Congreve: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1292/1292-h/1292-h.htmSupport the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textFor our second episode on John Dryden, we'll talk about two of his plays which marked an innovation in the tragi-comic romance: Marriage a la Mode and Amphitryon.  We'll discuss the "split-plot" play, the exorcising of Restoration political anxieties, and why we sometimes mock that which we cherish.Additional sound clip from Monty Python's Flying Circus.Text of Marriage a la Mode: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15349/15349-h/15349-h.htm#page_231Text of Amphitryon: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47679/47679-h/47679-h.htm#Page_1Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textOnce hailed as the towering literary figure of the Restoration age, John Dryden is little known now by the general reader.  Let's take care of that with a close look at his most enduring works, the poetical satires Mac Flecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel.Mac Flecknoe text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44181/mac-flecknoeAbsalom and Achitophel text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44172/absalom-and-achitophel Mea culpa:  At one point in this episode, I make reference to Dryden's "tasteless" satiric attacks.  I know, of course, that I should have said "distasteful."  I am dreadfully embarrassed by this mistake and I sincerely apologize to all listeners who were horrified and offended at my imbecilic misuse of the noble English tongue.  I vow to do better.Support the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textSince they wrote in 17th century Massachusetts, poets Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor are often overlooked in surveys of English literature.  Today, though, we'll bring them back into the fold as we look at how their puritanical religious beliefs engaged with the pastoral and metaphysical poetic traditions that celebrated "Arcadia," that vision of unspoiled Nature.The Works of Anne Bradstreet: https://archive.org/details/worksofannebrads00brad/page/n7/mode/2upThe Works of Edward Taylor: https://archive.org/details/poemsofedwardtay00taylSupport the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textCharles II reopened the theatres in 1660 and inaugurated the second golden age of the English stage.  Today's show looks at one of the bawdiest plays to come from the period, a "comedy of manners" whose clever use of language points to the reality of style over substance.The Country Wife text: https://theater.lafayette.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2021/03/The-Country-Wife.pdfSupport the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textToday marks the anniversary of one of the most mythologized battles in Anglo-Irish history: the Battle of the Boyne.  In July of 1690, King William III soundly defeated James II and secured Ireland's Protestant supremacy while sowing the seeds for centuries of violent conflict.  The battle also marks the debut of one of Ireland's most prominent writers, Dr. Jonathan Swift, whose poem "Ode to King William" celebrates the Orange victory.Text of "Ode to King William": https://www.online-literature.com/swift/poems-of-swift/3/Text of “Written for My Son to His Master, on the Anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne": https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/pba35-w0450.shtmlAdditional Music:"Derry’s Walls": Sam Wilson and the Loyalists, 1963https://archive.org/details/lp_no-surrender_sam-wilson-the-loyalists/disc1/02.06.+Derry's+Walls.mp3)"Boyne Water": Stuart Eydmann, 2020 https://ia601700.us.archive.org/13/items/raretunes-eydmann-boyne-water/RaretunesEydmannBoyneWater.mp3  "Awake The Trumpet's Lofty Sound": Heroic Music For Organ, Brass And Percussion; New England Brass Ensemble; CBS Masterworks (MS 6354), 1962https://archive.org/details/lp_heroic-music-for-organ-brass-and-percussio_e-power-biggs-new-england-brass-ensembleSupport the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a textAs Americans celebrate Independence Day, I'm here once again to remind them of the debt American independence owes to English literature and history.  Stick in the mud.  Today, we look at a genuinely weird poem that allegorizes the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (an event that would lay the groundwork for the American Revolution nearly a century later) as a cup of tea.  So, pour yourself one -- milk first or last, doesn't matter to me -- and enjoy the show!Text of "Panacea": https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A63046.0001.001/1:7?rgn=div1;view=fulltextSupport the showPlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.comFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!