Close Readings

London Review of Books
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Aug 3, 2025 • 14min

Love and Death: Family Elegies by Wordsworth, Lowell, Riley and Carson

Delve into the poignant exploration of family elegies spanning from Wordsworth to Carson. Discover how Wordsworth's nuanced tribute to his brother grapples with grief, contrasting with Denise Riley's innovative approach to mourning. Uncover Lowell's candid vignettes that reject typical elegiac conventions. Finally, Anne Carson challenges narrative coherence, weaving together fragments to capture the essence of loss. This thought-provoking discussion reveals how different poets confront the complexities of love and death.
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18 snips
Jul 28, 2025 • 33min

Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

Adam Thirlwell, a talented writer and cultural critic, dives deep into Mary Shelley's groundbreaking novel, examining its themes of birth, death, and monstrosity. The conversation highlights the emotional complexities of the creature and his creator, revealing how their fates intertwine. Thirlwell discusses the philosophical implications of creation and the limits of scientific ambition. Through the lens of rejection and longing, he explores the societal prejudices faced by the creature, ultimately showcasing the timeless relevance of Shelley's work.
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Jul 21, 2025 • 16min

Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Thing' by Martin Heidegger

Dive deep into Martin Heidegger's exploration of what it means for a jug to truly be a jug. The conversation highlights the essence of ‘thingness’ and how it goes beyond mere objectification. Discover the interplay between technology and authentic human experience, as well as the philosophical implications of Heidegger's poetic style. Engage with thought-provoking themes that challenge traditional perceptions of existence, all while reconsidering the dynamic relationship between revelation and concealment.
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Jul 14, 2025 • 17min

Novel Approaches: ‘The Mill on the Floss’ by George Eliot

The Mill on the Floss is George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel, and the first she published after her identity as a woman was revealed. A ‘dreamscape’ version of her Warwickshire childhood, the book is both a working-through and a reimagining of her life. Ruth Yeazell and Deborah Friedell join Tom to discuss the novel and its protagonist Maggie Tullliver, for whom duty – societal, familial, self-imposed – continually conflicts with her personal desires. They explore the book’s submerged sexuality, its questioning of conventional gender roles, and the way Eliot’s satirical impulse is counterbalanced by the complexity of her characters. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrna In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsna Further reading in the LRB: Rachel Bowlby on reading George Eliot: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n07/rachel-bowlby/waiting-for-the-dawn-to-come⁠ Dinah Birch on Eliot’s journals: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n10/dinah-birch/no-wonder-it-ached⁠ Rosemary Ashton on Eliot and sex: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n03/rosemary-ashton/two-velvet-peaches⁠ Gordon Haight’s speech on Eliot at Westminster Abbey: ⁠http://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n14/gordon-haight/gordon-haight-s-speech-in-westminster-abbey-on-21-june-when-a-memorial-stone-to-george-eliot-was-unveiled⁠ Next episode: ‘Our Mutual Friend’ by Charles Dickens.
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Jul 7, 2025 • 12min

Love and Death: War Elegies by Whitman, Owen, Douglas and more

As long as there have been poets, they have been writing war elegies. In this episode, Mark and Seamus discuss responses to the American Civil War (Walt Whitman), both world wars (W.B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, Keith Douglas) and the conflict in Northern Ireland (Michael Longley) to explore the way these very different poems share an ancient legacy. Spanning 160 years and energised by competing ideas of art and war, these soldiers, carers and civilians are united by a need that Mark and Seamus suggest is at the root of poetry, to memorialise the dead in words. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld Poems discussed in this episode: Walt Whitman, ‘Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night’ ⁠https://⁠⁠w⁠⁠ww.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45478/vigil-strange-i-kept-on-the-field-one-night⁠ Wilfred Owen, ‘Futility’ ⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57283/futility-56d23aa2d4b57⁠ Keith Douglas, ‘Vergissmeinnicht’ ⁠https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar2/poem/vergissmeinnicht/⁠ W.B. Yeats, ‘An Irish Airman foresees his Death’ ⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57311/an-irish-airman-foresees-his-death⁠ Michael Longley, ‘The Ice-Cream Man’ ⁠https://poetryarchive.org/poem/ice-cream-man/⁠ Rudyard Kipling, ‘Epitaphs of the War’ ⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57409/epitaphs-of-the-war⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Ian Hamilton on Keith Douglas’s letters: ⁠http://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n03/ian-hamilton/tough-guy⁠ Jonathan Bate on war poetry: ⁠http://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n22/jonathan-bate/players-please⁠ Poems by Michael Longley published in the LRB: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/michael-longley⁠ Next episode: Family elegies by William Wordsworth, Denise Riley, Anne Carson and Robert Lowell.
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Jul 2, 2025 • 32min

Fiction and the Fantastic: Mikhail Bulgakov and James Hogg

Adam Thirlwell, a novelist and critic celebrated for his exploration of the fantastic, dives into the eerie worlds of James Hogg and Mikhail Bulgakov. He discusses Hogg’s 'The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner', highlighting its unique narrative and themes of evil. Thirlwell also unpacks Bulgakov’s 'The Master and Margarita', examining its devilish chaos in Moscow and the blending of romanticism with modern existential questions. The conversation illuminates how both writers wield the fantastical to confront the nature of identity, fanaticism, and moral complexities.
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Jun 23, 2025 • 17min

Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Will to Believe' by William James

Most of what we believe we believe on faith, even those beliefs we hold to be based on scientific fact. This assertion lies at the heart of William James’s essay ‘The Will to Believe’, originally delivered as a lecture and intended not so much as a defence of religion as an attack on anti-religion. James’s target was the ‘rugged and manly school of science’ and the kind of atheism ‘that goes around thumping its chest offering its biceps to be felt’. In this episode Jonathan Rée and James Wood look at the intellectual environment William James was working in, and against, in the second half of the 19th century, and its parallels in the ‘new atheism’ of today. They also discuss the extraordinary upbringing William (and his novelist brother Henry) received and the advice he offered to anyone contemplating suicide in his essay ‘Is life worth living?’ Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcip In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscip Read more in the LRB: Helen Thaventhiran: William James's Prescriptions https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n20/helen-thaventhiran/no-dose-for-it-at-the-chemist Michael Wood: William James and modernism https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n18/michael-wood/understanding-forwards Richard Poirier: Williams James's pragmatism https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n19/richard-poirier/copying-the-coyote LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookscip⁠⁠
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Jun 16, 2025 • 18min

Novel Approaches: 'Aurora Leigh' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

‘I want to write a poem of a new class — a Don Juan, without the mockery and impurity,’ Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to a friend in 1844, ‘and admitting of as much philosophical dreaming and digression (which is in fact a characteristic of the age) as I like to use.’ The poem she had in mind turned out to be her verse novel, Aurora Leigh, published in 1854, and described by Ruskin as the greatest long poem of the 19th century. It tells the story of an aspiring poet, Aurora, born in Florence to an Italian mother and an English father, who loses both her parents as a child and moves to England and the care of her aunt. From there she pursues her poetic ambitions to London, Paris, Italy and back to England while negotiating a traumatic love triangle between the vicious Lady Waldemar, the impoverished seamstress Marian, and the austere social-reformer Romney. In this episode, Clare is joined by Stefanie Markovits and Seamus Perry to discuss the wide range of innovations Barrett Browning deploys to fulfil her commitment to immediacy and narrative drive in the poem, and the ways in which she uses her characters to explore the extent of her own emancipatory politics. Read the poem: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/56621/pg56621-images.html Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrna In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsna
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Jun 9, 2025 • 12min

Love and Death: 'In Memoriam' by Tennyson

Tennyson described 'In Memoriam' as ‘rather the cry of the whole human race than mine’, and the poem achieved widespread acclaim as soon as it was published in 1850, cited by Queen Victoria as her habitual reading after the death of Prince Albert. Its subject is the death in 1833 of Tennyson’s friend Arthur Hallam at the age of 22, and in its 131 sections it explores the possibilities of elegy more extensively than any English poem before it, not least in its innovative, incantatory rhyme scheme, intended to numb the pain of grief. From its repeated dramatisations of the experience of private loss, 'In Memoriam' opens out to reflect on the intellectual turmoil running through Victorian society amid monumental advances in scientific thought. In this episode, Seamus and Mark discuss the unique emotional power of Tennyson’s style, and why his great elegy came to represent what mourning, and poetry, should be in the public imagination of his time.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldRead more in the LRB:Frank Kermode:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n09/frank-kermode/eliot-and-the-shudder⁠Seamus Perry:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n02/seamus-perry/are-we-there-yet⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Jun 3, 2025 • 15min

Fiction and the Fantastic: Tales by Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen

Adam Thirlwell, a novelist and critic known for his thought-provoking writings, joins to explore the rich Gothic landscape of Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen. The conversation dives into Potocki’s complex tales of desire and guilt during the Enlightenment, revealing the intricate narrative structures that challenge perception. Thirlwell highlights Dinesen's unsettling exploration of sexual guilt, seamlessly weaving through themes of identity and heritage. Their discussion illuminates how the Gothic genre captures the darker corners of human experience that other narratives might shy away from.

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