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PODCAST

Close Readings

London Review of Books

Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series. How To Subscribe In Apple Podcasts, click "subscribe" at the top of this podcast feed to unlock the full episodes. Or for other podcast apps, sign up here:

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All Episodes

34:50

Medieval LOLs: Dame Syrith

Close Readings ·

2024/05/18

As Mary and Irina discussed in the previous episode of Medieval LOLs, fabliaux had an enormous influence on Chaucer, but outside of his work, only one survives in Middle English. Dame Syrith, a story of lust, deception and a mustard-eating dog, is medieval humour at its silliest and most troubling. Mary and Irina explore the surprising representations of old women, magic and consent in fabliaux, the poem’s possible role as a pedagogical tool, and medieval audiences’ love for the procuress trope.Sign

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10:58

Human Conditions: ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ by V.S....

Close Readings ·

2024/05/10

InA House for Mr Biswas, his 1961 comic masterpiece, V.S. Naipaul pays tribute to his father and the vanishing world of his Trinidadian youth. Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz in their first of four episodes to discuss the novel, a pathbreaking workofpostcolonial literature and a particularly powerful influence on Pankaj himself. They explore Naipaul’sfraughtrelationshipto modernity,and the tensions between his attachment to individual freedom and his insistence on the constraints imposed by

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12:59

On Satire: John Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera'

Close Readings ·

2024/05/04

InThe Beggar’s Operawe enter a society turned upside down, where private vices are seen as public virtues, and the best way to survive is to assume the worst of everyone. The only force that can subvert this state of affairs is romantic love – an affection, we discover, that satire finds hard to cope with. John Gay’s 1727 smash hit ‘opera’, which ran for 62 performances in its first run, put the highwaymen, criminal gangs and politicians of the day up on stage, and offered audiences a tuneful but

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36:15

Political Poems: 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's...

Close Readings ·

2024/04/28

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s deeply disturbing 1847 poem about a woman escaping slavery and killing her child was written to shock its intended white female readership to the abolitionist cause. Browning was the direct descendant of slave owners in Jamaica and a fervent anti-slavery campaigner, and her dramatic monologue presents a searing attack on the hypocrisy of ‘liberty’ as enshrined in the United States constitution. Mark and Seamus look at the origins of the poem and its story, and its place

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11:19

Among the Ancients II: Pindar and Bacchylides

Close Readings ·

2024/04/24

In the fifth episode of Among the Ancients II we turn to Greek lyric, focusing on Pindar’s victory odes, considered a benchmark for the sublime since antiquity, and the vivid, narrative-driven dithyrambs of Bacchylides. Through close reading, Emily and Tom tease out allusions, lexical flourishes and formal experimentation, and explain the highly contextual nature of these tightly choreographed, public-facing poems. They illustrate how precarious work could be for a praise poet in a world driven by

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34:45

Medieval LOLs: Fabliaux

Close Readings ·

2024/04/18

Fabliaux were short, witty tales originating in northern France between the 12th and 14th centuries, often featuring crafty characters in rustic settings and overwhelmingly concerned with money and sex. In this episode Irina and Mary look at two of these comic verses, both containing surprisingly explicit sexual language, and consider the ways in which they influenced Boccaccio, Chaucer and others.Sign up to listen to this series ad free and all our subscriber series in full, including Mary and

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11:49

Human Conditions: ‘The Human Condition’ by Hannah Arendt

Close Readings ·

2024/04/10

In the fourth episode of Human Conditions, the last of the series with Judith Butler, we fittingly turn to The Human Condition (1956). Hannah Arendt defines action as the highest form of human activity: distinct from work and labour, action includes collaborative expression, collective decision-making and, crucially, initiating change. Focusing on the chapter on action, Judith joins Adam to explain why they considerthis approach so innovative and incisive. Together, they discuss Arendt’s continued

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13:14

On Satire: The Earl of Rochester

Close Readings ·

2024/04/04

According to one contemporary, the Earl of Rochester was a man who, in life as well is in poetry, ‘could not speak with any warmth, without repeated Oaths, which, upon any sort of provocation, came almost naturally from him.’ It’s certainly hard to miss Rochester's enthusiastic use of obscenities, though their precise meanings can sometimes be obscure. As a courtier to Charles II, his poetic subject was most often the licentiousness and intricate political manoeuvring of the court’s various

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33:54

Political Poems: 'Easter 1916' by W.B. Yeats

Close Readings ·

2024/03/28

Yeats’s great poem about the uprising of Irish republicans against British rule on 24 April 1916 marked a turning point in Ireland’s history and in Yeats's career. Through four stanzas Yeats enacts the transfiguration of the movement’s leaders – executed by the British shortly after the event – from ‘motley’ acquaintances to heroic martyrs, and interrogates his own attitude to nationalist violence. Mark and Seamus discuss Yeats’s reflections on the value of political commitment, his embrace of the

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10:30

Among the Ancients II: Herodotus

Close Readings ·

2024/03/24

Some of the most compelling stories of the Classical world come from Herodotus‘Histories, an account of the Persian Wars and a thousand things besides. Emily and Tom chart a course through Herodotus‘history-as-epic, discussing how best to understand his approach to history, ethnography and myth. Exploring a work full of surprising, dramatic and frequently funny digressions, this episode illustrates the artfulness and deep structure underpinning theHistories, and, despite his obvious Greek bias,

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41:58

Medieval LOLs: Old English Riddles

Close Readings ·

2024/03/18

Riddles are an ancient and universal form, but few people seem to have enjoyed them more than English Benedictine monks. The Exeter Book, a tenth century monastic collection of Old English verse, builds on the riddle tradition in two striking ways: first, the riddles don’t come with answers; second, they are sexually suggestive. Were they intended to test the moral purity of the reader? Are they simply mischievous rhetorical exercises? Mary and Irina read some of them and consider why Anglo-Saxon

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12:58

Human Conditions: ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ by Frantz...

Close Readings ·

2024/03/10

Begun as a psychiatric dissertation, Frantz Fanon’sBlack Skin, White Masks(1952) became a genre-shattering study of antiblack racism and its effect on the psyche. At turns expressionistic, confessional, clinical, sharply satirical and politically charged, the book is dazzlingly multivocal, sometimes self-contradictory but always compelling. Judith Butler and Adam Shatz, whose biography of Fanon was released in January, chart a course through some of the most explosive and elusive chapters of the

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11:51

On Satire: Ben Jonson's 'Volpone'

Close Readings ·

2024/03/04

What did English satirists do after the archbishop of Canterbury banned the printing of satires in June 1599? They turned to the stage. Within months of the crackdown, the same satirical tricks Elizabethans had read in verse could be enjoyed in theatres. At the heart of the scene was Ben Jonson, who for many centuries has maintained a reputation as the refined, classical alternative to Shakespeare, with his diligent observance of the rules extracted from Roman comedy. In this episode, Colin and

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42:55

Political Poems: W.H. Auden's 'Spain 1937'

Close Readings ·

2024/02/28

In their second episode, Mark and Seamus look at the poem W.H. Auden was most ashamed of writing, ‘Spain’. Auden travelled to Spain in January 1937 to support the Republican efforts in the civil war, and composed the poem shortly after his return a few months later to raise money for Medical Aid for Spain. It became a rallying cry in the fight against fascism, but was also heavily criticised, not least by George Orwell, for the phrase (in its first version) of ‘necessary murder’. Mark and Seamus

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10:26

Among the Ancients II: Aesop

Close Readings ·

2024/02/24

Supposedly an enslaved man from sixth-century Samos, Aesop might not have ever really existed, but the fables attributed to him remain some of the most widely read examples of classical literature. A fascinating window into the ‘low’culture of ancient Greece, the Fables and the figure of Aesop appear in the work of authors as diverse as Aristophanes, Plato and Phaedrus, serving new purposes in new contexts. Emily and Tom discuss how Aesop’s fables as we know them came to be, make sense of their

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35:28

Medieval LOLs: How To Swear in Latin

Close Readings ·

2024/02/18

All teachers know that the best way for students to learn a language is through swear words, and nobody knew this better than Aelfric Bata, a monk from Winchester whoseColloquies, compiled in around the year 1000, instructed pupils to swear in Latin with elaborate and vivid fluency. Mary and Irina work through some of Aelfric’s fruitier dialogues, and ask whether his examples can be taken purely in good humour.Sign up to listen to this series ad free and all our subscriber series, including Mary and

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11:56

Human Conditions: ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone de Beauvoir

Close Readings ·

2024/02/10

Judith Butler joins Adam Shatz to discuss a landmark in feminist thought, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex(1949). Dazzling in its scope,The Second Sexincorporates anthropology, psychology, historiography, mythology and biology to ask an ‘impossible’ question: what is a woman? Focusing on three key chapters, Adam and Judith navigate this dense and dizzying book, exploring the nuances of Beauvoir’s original French phrasing and drawing on Judith’s own experiences teaching and writing about the text

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12:49

On Satire: John Donne's Satires

Close Readings ·

2024/02/04

In their second episode, Colin and Clare look at the dense, digressive and often dangerous satires of John Donne and other poets of the 1590s. It’s likely that Donne was the first Elizabethan author to attempt formal verse satires in the vein of the Roman satirists, and they mark not only the chronological start of his poetic career, but a foundation of his whole way of writing. Colin and Clare place the satires within Donne’s life and times, and explain why the secret to understanding their

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35:29

Political Poems: Andrew Marvell's 'An Horatian Ode...

Close Readings ·

2024/01/31

In the first episode of their newClose Readingsseries on political poetry, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ by Andrew Marvell, described by Frank Kermode as ‘braced against folly by the power and intelligence that make it possible to think it the greatest political poem in the language’.Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College, London, and Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford.Sign up to the

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12:00

Among the Ancients II: Hesiod

Close Readings ·

2024/01/24

Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones kick off their second season of Among the Ancients with a return to the eighth century BCE, exploring the poems of Homer’s near contemporary, Hesiod, the first western writer to craft a poetic persona. InWorks and Days, brilliantly translated by A.E. Stallings, Hesiod weaves his personality into a narrative that encompasses everything from brotherly bickering to cosmic warfare. Emily and Tom unpack this wildly entertaining window into Ancient Greek life, and discuss how

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