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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

11:26

Medieval Beginnings: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Close Readings ·

2023/08/04

In this episode of Medieval Beginnings, Irina and Mary jump to the 14th century for an introspective Arthurian romance about a knight trying to live up to his perfect reputation. The mysterious and intricate Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is perhaps best understood as a series of games within games, in which our hero, a recurring character throughout medieval literature, is never sure what adventure he’s playing.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings

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11:35

The Long and Short: Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and...

Close Readings ·

2023/07/24

Seamus and Mark step into the counterculture with two long poems, ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’, by Allen Ginsberg, a Beat poet-celebrity with a utopian vision for an America rescued from its corrupted institutions and vested interests. Seamus and Mark discuss some of Ginsberg’s influences – including Whitman, Carlos Williams, O’Hara and Blake – and the far-reaching impact of his work, as well as Mark’s own experiences meeting the poet.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other

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11:00

Among the Ancients: Catullus

Close Readings ·

2023/07/14

For the second half of their Among the Ancients series, Emily and Tom move to Ancient Rome, starting with the late Republican poet Catullus. Described by Tennyson, somewhat misleadingly, as ‘the tenderest of Roman poets’, Catullus combined a self-conscious technical virtuosity with a broad emotional range and a taste for paradox, often using obscene diction to skirt across the boundaries of gender and aesthetics.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings

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10:06

Medieval Beginnings: Havelok the Dane

Close Readings ·

2023/07/04

In their seventh episode of Medieval Beginnings, Irina and Mary continue their run of Romances with the Middle English Havelok the Dane, a double Cinderella story of sex, fishing and surprisingly graphic violence, written at the end of the 13th century and set in a pre-Conquest, legendary English past.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps here:

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11:31

The Long and Short: D.H. Lawrence's short stories

Close Readings ·

2023/06/23

Controversial, compulsive, and overwhelmingly charismatic, D.H. Lawrence continues to exert an undeniable magnetism through his novels and poetry. But, as Mark argues in this episode, the quintessential Lawrence lies in his shorter fiction. Focusing on five stories that span Lawrence’s career, Mark and Seamus discuss the strange mix of uninhibitedness and meticulous detail that make Lawrence’s work essential reading.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close

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11:35

Among the Ancients: Aristophanes

Close Readings ·

2023/06/14

In their sixth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom discuss the comedies of Aristophanes, in particularCloudsandLysistrata. How did an Aristophanes comedy differ from a satyr play? Was he a conservative or a radical? And what happened to comedy after Aristophanes?This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsEmily Wilson is Professor of

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9:37

Medieval Beginnings: Le Roman de Silence

Close Readings ·

2023/06/05

For the sixth episode in their Medieval Beginnings series, Mary and Irina go full Romance with one of the most elaborate and surprising narrative poems in medieval literature, Le Roman de Silence, a complex, 13th-century Old French tale about gender, power and transformation.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsIrina Dumitrescu is

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10:07

The Long and Short: Hart Crane's 'The Bridge'

Close Readings ·

2023/05/24

In their fifth episode, Mark and Seamus reach their first 20thcentury poet of the series, the Ohio-born, New York-loving ad man Hart Crane, and his epic 1930 workThe Bridge. Directly inspired byThe Waste Land,The Bridgesought to address modernity, as Eliot had done, with all its conflicts, contradictions and difficulties, but infuse itwith a Whitman-esque expression of American greatness.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly

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11:11

Among the Ancients: Euripides

Close Readings ·

2023/05/17

Euripides was the youngest of the fifth-century Athenian tragedians, and is often described as the most radical. But how daring was he? How far did he push the boundaries of dramatic form? Focusing onMedeaandHippolytus, Emily and Tom discuss the ways Euripides sought to shock his audiences, make them laugh, and explore their anxieties in a time of cultural change.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:Directly in Apple Podcasts:

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12:44

Medieval Beginnings: The Lais of Marie de France

Close Readings ·

2023/05/04

If a Middle Ages full of castles, jousts, hawking, illicit love affairs and playful singing in the meadows is what you’re looking for, then look no further than the Lais of Marie de France. These 12th century love stories, written in Anglo-Norman by a writer who was unusually keen to make her name known, describe noble stories of passion, devotion, betrayal, self-sacrifice and magical transformations played out in enchanted woodlands and richly-draped chambers.Irina and Mary discuss Marie’s various

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11:33

The Long and Short: Katherine Mansfield's short stories

Close Readings ·

2023/04/24

In episode four of The Long and Short, Mark and Seamus turn to the squarely modernist Katherine Mansfield, whose writing famously attracted the envy of Virginia Woolf. They discuss how in Mansfield's work the modernist story makes a decisive break from its 19th century predecessors. At turns lyrical, ruthless, moving and darkly comic, these stories demonstrate her knack for close observation and mimicry – no wonder one of them is Mark’s ‘desert island’ story.This is an extract from the episode. To

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12:50

Among the Ancients: Sophocles

Close Readings ·

2023/04/14

In the fourth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom ask: what was it like to go to the theatre in Athens in 468BC? And how far do modern ideas about tragedy, derived from Aristotle, apply to Sophocles’ plays? They then look in more detail atOedipus TyrannosandAntigone and what the plays have to say about agency and knowledge, andconsider issues particular to Sophocles’ time, including civic responsibility and the role of immigrants in Athenian society.This is an extract from the episode. To

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11:13

Medieval Beginnings: The Ancrene Wisse

Close Readings ·

2023/04/04

In the fourth episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina climb inside a tiny cell to explore the Ancrene Wisse, a guidebook written in the early 13th century, originally intended for three anchoresses, but which enjoyed a much wider audience (there was even a copy in Henry VIII’s library).This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsIrina

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9:50

The Long and Short: Henry James's short stories

Close Readings ·

2023/03/24

The third episode of The Long and Short turns to the short stories of Henry James. Mark and Seamus look in particular at ‘The Aspern Papers’, which, like Tennyson’s ‘Maud’, offers a diagnosis of obsession, in this case through a sensuous, excruciating and often comedic Venetian psychodrama. Mark and Seamus discuss the emergence of the short story at the end of the 19th century, and how certain features of the form – its attachment to unresolved endings, its debt to the dramatic monologue – can be

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11:59

Among the Ancients: Sappho

Close Readings ·

2023/03/14

In the third episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom move from epic to lyric, with the poems of Sappho, or what remains of them. They consider what we know, and don’t know, about her life, and how her poetry challenges the heroic tradition, both in its subversion of Homeric ideas of war andnostos, and in its playful use of language.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn

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10:07

Medieval Beginnings: Bede's Life of Cuthbert

Close Readings ·

2023/03/03

In the third episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina explorethe much-chronicled life of St Cuthbert, as told by the most famous writer of the early medieval period, the so-called Venerable Bede. From Cuthbert’s childhood interest in naked handstands, to his later work as a charismatic preacher who could elicit total confession, and as a hermit who enjoyed the assistance of friendly sea otters, it was a life which, as told by Bede, both challenged and conformed to the expected patterns of

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10:10

The Long and Short: Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself'

Close Readings ·

2023/02/24

In the second episode of The Long and Short, Mark and Seamus turn to Walt Whitman's ‘Song of Myself’, from Leaves of Grass (1855), for Mark‘one of the most exciting things literature has to offer’. They discuss the extraordinary physicality and exuberance of this seminal American poem,its relationship with urbanism, capitalism and sexuality, and its Johnny Appleseed-spirit, among many other things.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up

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9:21

Among the Ancients: The 'Odyssey'

Close Readings ·

2023/02/14

In episode two of Among the Ancients, Tom and Emily turn to Homer’sOdyssey. They discussthe twisting, turningnature of both the narrative and itshero,the poem’s complex interrogation of the idea of ‘home’, and the violence Odysseus brings with him on his return from the Trojan War.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsEmily Wilson is

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10:07

Medieval Beginnings: Letters and Laments

Close Readings ·

2023/02/03

In episode two of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina turn the pages of the Exeter Book, a remarkable 10th century manuscript containing numerous poems and riddles, some of which are written in the voices of women. They consider in particular the enigmatic and beautiful ‘Wife’s Lament’ and ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’, and their numerous interpretations, and compare them to an extraordinary collection of letters written by influential women to St Boniface in the 8th century.This is an extract from the

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9:43

The Long and Short: Tennyson's 'Maud'

Close Readings ·

2023/01/24

Mark Ford and Seamus Perry start their series, The Long and Short, with Tennyson’s‘Maud’, a weird and disturbing poem about obsession that Tennyson himself was obsessed by. He would recite it in full at the drop of a hat, sometimes more than once, to friends and foes alike–even though it received notoriously bad reviews when it was published. This episode considers why the poem meant so much to him, and what it tells us about the Victorian age.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full

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