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Critical Readings

CriticalReadings.com

Critical Readings examines key literary texts using close reading and critical analysis, and explains these approaches in discussion. Listeners will learn about the texts themselves and about how to approach a text for critical analysis.

arts literature

All Episodes

59:20

CR Episode 264: Doctor Wortle’s School, Part IV

Critical Readings ·

2025/03/24

The panel concludes the novella with a look at the primary falling action and the resolution of the Mary Wortle subplot, with particular attention to Doctor Wortle's passionate loyalty compared with the abstract moral principles of contemporary society.Continue reading

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71:17

CR Episode 263: Doctor Wortle’s School, Part III

Critical Readings ·

2025/03/17

The panel reads the third quarter of the novella with attention given to the romanticism of Doctor Wortle's character and how it guides his interactions with figures who disagree with his views, including his wife, Mister Puddicomb, and the Bishop.Continue reading

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62:42

CR Episode 262: Doctor Wortle’s School, Part II

Critical Readings ·

2025/03/10

The panel reads parts three and four with attention given to the moral, logical, and legal conundrums that perplex Doctor Wortle, and with a consideration of how Mrs. Wortle, Mr. Puddicombe, and Mrs. Stantiloupe represent differing aspects of society.Continue reading

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94:28

CR Episode 261: Doctor Wortle’s School, Part I

Critical Readings ·

2025/03/03

The panel reads the first two parts (or six chapters) of Trollope's fortieth novel, beginning with an introduction to the author and the text, followed by an examination of the titular character and the mystery surrounding Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke.Continue reading

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73:33

CR Episode 260: The Second Coming of Yeats

Critical Readings ·

2025/02/24

The panel discusses four poems by Yeats, including his most famous—"The Second Coming"—as a way of examining his understanding of a cyclical cosmology, whilst also looking at his depiction of cataclysmic events that influence or constrain free will.Continue reading

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69:05

CR Episode 259: John Berryman’s Eleven Addresses to...

Critical Readings ·

2025/02/17

The panel reads John Berryman's "Eleven Addresses to the Lord" and considers the poems within the context of the author's biography and Judeo-Christian theology, with special emphasis on the distinction between God as abstraction and as embodied being.Continue reading

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62:55

CR Episode 258: Tennyson’s Tiresias

Critical Readings ·

2025/02/10

The panel reads Tennyson's Tiresias and considers its story of the blind prophet's extended (but not eternal) life in the context of what it reveals about the poet's struggle with human mortality, and about the role of prophecy and its reception.Continue reading

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53:45

CR Episode 257: Tennyson’s Ulysses

Critical Readings ·

2025/02/03

The panel reads Tennyson's Ulysses with special attention given to how the return to Ithaca changed Ulysses; how he may be compared to and contrasted with his son, Telemachus; and what the nature of his heroism is—narrow, selfish, noble, or courageous.Continue reading

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50:05

CR Episode 256: Tennyson’s Tithonus

Critical Readings ·

2025/01/27

The panel reads Tennyson's "Tithonus," a dramatic monologue written in 1833, and considers both what the poem suggests about the importance of mortality to the human condition, and its significance in the context of the death of Arthur Hallam.Continue reading

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65:01

CR Episode 255: Skelton’s Phyllyp Sparowe

Critical Readings ·

2025/01/20

The panel reads "The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe" by the Tudor poet John Skelton, a poetic champion of Chaucer, and the inventor of Skeltonic verse, a roughly syllabic and strongly rhymed form of English poetry much beloved of the Henrician court.Continue reading

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69:12

CR Episode 254: The Poetry of A.E. Housman

Critical Readings ·

2025/01/13

The panel reads three poems by A.E. Housman, the renowned British classicist and poet, and discusses the presence of death in his poetry, the influences of Romanticism, the importance of the speaker's role, and the poetic ironies of his biography.Continue reading

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51:09

CR Episode 253: Pope’s Messiah

Critical Readings ·

2025/01/06

The panel reads Alexander Pope's "Messiah," based upon Virgil's Fourth Eclogue and the biblical Book of Isaiah, with a discussion of its formal qualities, its Late Augustan/pre-Romantic historical context, and its fusion of Classical and Hebraic imagery.Continue reading

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67:56

CR Episode 252: Julius Caesar, Act V

Critical Readings ·

2024/12/30

The panel reads the final act, reflecting on the role of Brutus as a tragic figure, with attention given to his relationship with Cassius, his misunderstanding of Antony's magnanimity, his stoic leanings, and his role in the final battle at Philippi.Continue reading

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60:17

CR Episode 251: Julius Caesar, Act IV

Critical Readings ·

2024/12/23

The panel reads the fourth act, with special attention to the fraught relationship between Brutus and Cassius, the political situation in the late Roman Republic, and the declining fate of the conspiracy in the wake of Marc Antony's speech to the plebs.Continue reading

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85:41

CR Episode 250: Julius Caesar, Act III

Critical Readings ·

2024/12/16

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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65:17

CR Episode 249: Julius Caesar, Act II

Critical Readings ·

2024/12/09

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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75:02

CR Episode 248: Julius Caesar, Act I

Critical Readings ·

2024/12/02

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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65:34

CR Episode 247: In Parenthesis, Part II

Critical Readings ·

2024/11/25

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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87:47

CR Episode 246: In Parenthesis, Part I

Critical Readings ·

2024/11/18

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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93:47

CR Episode 245: Wuthering Heights, Part IV

Critical Readings ·

2024/11/11

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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304 results

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