The History of Literature

In 1813, a young author named Jane Austen built on the success of her popular novel Sense and Sensibility with a new novel about the emotional life of an appealing protagonist named Elizabeth Bennet, who overcomes her mistaken first impressions and finds true love with the enigmatic and ultimately appealing Mr. Darcy. The novel was called Pride and Prejudice, and for more than 200 years it’s been celebrated as one of the great pinnacles in the history of novels – and indeed, in all of literature. What was Jane Austen’s background, and how did she come to write such a marvelous novel? What accounts for the book’s success? And what lessons can we take from it today? Host Jacke Wilson takes a look at one of the most beloved works in literary history – and tells a story of his own youthful efforts to avoid being part of someone else’s Austen-influenced plot. FREE GIFT! Write a review on iTunes (or another site), then send us an email at [email protected] to receive your free History of Literature card as a thank you gift. Act now while supplies last! Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can follow Jacke Wilson at his Twitter account @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literatureSC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Danse Macabre – Xylophone Version” and “Samba Sting” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In February of 1895, the playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) continued an astonishing run of theatrical success with the opening of his artistic masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest. Three months later, he was imprisoned on charges of “gross indecency.” In this special St. Patrick’s Day episode, host Jacke Wilson takes a look at the career of Oscar Wilde, Irish boy wonder, and the forces that led to his tragic demise. FREE GIFT! Write a review on iTunes (or another site), then send us an email at [email protected] to receive your free History of Literature card as a thank you gift. Act now while supplies last! Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can follow Jacke Wilson at his Twitter account @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literatureSC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “NewsSting” and “Modern Piano Epsilon – The Small” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Life is short, and books are many. How many great books have you read? How many more have you NOT read? How to choose? Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, joins Jacke for a discussion of overrated classics and the pleasures of shortening one’s list of must-reads. FREE GIFT! Write a review on iTunes (or another site), then send us an email at [email protected] to receive your free History of Literature card as a thank you gift. Act now while supplies last! Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can follow Jacke Wilson at his Twitter account @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literatureSC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Sweet Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1719, a prolific author and political agitator named Daniel Defoe published a long-form narrative about a shipwrecked sailor stranded on a desert island, who lives in solitude for 27 years before famously seeing a human footprint on the sand. Often viewed as the first novel written in English, Robinson Crusoe was a smash hit in its day and has been popular ever since. Who was Daniel Defoe, and how did he go from being the owner of a brick-and-tile factory to being the author of 500 works (and a paid spy)? How does his classic adventure story forge a path for novels and novel writing? How did this work become so popular – and why did its protagonist, a man coming to grips with both solitude and the absence of society, become a modern literary myth? And finally, we take a look at the story of Alexander Selkirk, the real-life survivor who may have served as the inspiration for Defoe’s classic character. FREE GIFT! Write a review on iTunes (or another site), then send us an email at [email protected] to receive your free History of Literature card as a thank you gift. Act now while supplies last! Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can follow Jacke Wilson at his Twitter account @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literatureSC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “NewsSting” and “Secret of Tiki Island” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever wanted something so badly you’d sell your soul to get it? Youth? Wealth? Sex? Power? Knowledge? We call it making a deal with the devil, or in more literary terms, a Faustian bargain. But who was Faust? How did his tale first get told? How was his legend advanced, and what great works did he inspire? In this special episode of The History of Literature, we look at the historical Faust and dig into the literary myth of Faustian bargains, from Icarus and the Temptations of Christ, through Christopher Marlowe and Goethe, all the way to bluesman Robert Johnson and his legendary trip to the Crossroads. FREE GIFT! Write a review on iTunes (or another site), then send us an email at [email protected] to receive your free History of Literature card as a thank you gift. Act now while supplies last! Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can follow Jacke Wilson at his Twitter account @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literatureSC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson “NewsSting” and “Dragon and Toast” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who rules us and why? What does Shakespeare’s Henry V (c. 1599) tell us about the character of a leader? What does it tell us about the character of the people governed by such a man? Host Jacke Wilson jumps from kings to presidents, from the battlefields of France in the early fifteenth century, to the Elizabethan stage in the early seventeenth century, to the Lincoln Memorial and what one of President Richard M. Nixon’s closest aides called “the weirdest day so far.” FREE GIFT! Write a review on iTunes (or another site), then send us an email at [email protected] to receive your free History of Literature card as a thank you gift. Act now while supplies last! Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can follow Jacke Wilson at his Twitter account @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literatureSC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “NewsSting” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1851, a 30-year-old Frenchman named Gustave Flaubert set out to write a novel about a discontented housewife in a style that would melt the stars. After five years of agonizing labor, his book Madame Bovary (1856) changed the world of literature forever. How did Madame Bovary influence authors as different as Ernest Hemingway and Vladimir Nabokov? Host Jacke Wilson takes a special Valentine’s Day look at Flaubert’s innovative novelistic style and his wonderfully compelling heroine, the woman stuck in the provinces who “wanted to die, but who also wanted to live in Paris.” Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can follow Jacke Wilson at his Twitter account @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literature SC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writing about the Scottish-born novelist Margot Livesey, the author Alice Sebold remarked, “Every novel of Margot Livesey’s is, for her readers, a joyous discovery. Her work radiates with compassion and intelligence and always, deliciously, mystery.” How has Margot Livesey managed to create this suspense in novel after novel, including in contemporary classics such as The Flight of Gemma Hardy, The House on Fortune Street, and her most recent work, Mercury? Host Jacke Wilson is joined by the author for a conversation about her readerly passions and writerly inspirations, including Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can follow Jacke Wilson at his Twitter account @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literature SC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Danse Macabre – Violin Hook” and “Lift Motif” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes a city a great literary city? Having a tradition of famous authors? A culture of bookstores and cafes and publishing houses and universities? Inspiring great books? Host Jacke Wilson is joined by Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, for a discussion of the cities where literature finds itself most at home – including their choices for the world’s ten greatest literary cities. Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. On Twitter, you can follow Jacke Wilson at his handle @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literature SC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “The Secret of Tiki Island” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For 70 years, the people of North Korea have lived through a totalitarian nightmare – and those of us in the outside world have had little access to their experience. How have generations of oppression and terror affected the psychology of everyday people? How do they feel about their situation? What are their hopes? What are their dreams? How do they think, and how do they live? Like so much else about North Korea, these questions were shrouded in darkness…until now. Terry Hong, reader extraordinaire and the curator of the website BookDragon, joins us to talk about an astonishing new development: the publication of short stories by North Korea’s first dissident writer. Works Discussed: The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea, by “Bandi” (preorder only until March 7, 2017) Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea, by Jang Jin-sung Recommended Books about North Korea: Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee A Kim Jong-il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power by Paul Fischer The Boy Who Escaped Paradise by J.M. Lee Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. On Twitter, you can follow Jacke Wilson at his handle @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literature SC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Dragon and Toast” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With a strong claim to be the first novel in history, the Japanese classic The Tale of Genji (ca. 1001-1012), by Murasaki Shikibu, or Lady Murasaki, is one of the world’s greatest literary masterpieces. But who was Lady Murasaki, and what compelled her to write this story of an idealized prince and his many lovers? How innovative was she? And do the intrigues of the imperial Japanese courts from a thousand years ago still have the power to fascinate, entertain, and instruct us today? Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. On Twitter, you can follow Jacke Wilson at his handle @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literature SC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Ritual” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a new year! A time for fresh beginnings! And on the History of Literature Podcast, it’s a time to celebrate beginnings. Vu Tran, author of the novel Dragonfish and a professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, joins us to discuss ten great first chapters – how they work, how they affect the reader, and how they fulfill their author’s intentions. Works Discussed: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison The Secret History, by Donna Tartt The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami Beloved, by Toni Morrison Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. On Twitter, you can follow Jacke Wilson at his handle @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literature SC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Spanish novelist Javier Marías (b. 1951) has led a fascinating life, from his childhood as the son of a philosopher to his role as the king of a Caribbean island that has been ruled by a succession of writers. Marías’s philosophical novels have been translated into 42 languages and celebrated throughout Europe – and yet, as the New York Times Book Review noted, he remains largely unknown in America. Why is that? And what are Americans missing? Host Jacke Wilson is joined by Mike Palindrome, the President of the Literature Supporters Club and an ardent devotee of Javier Marías, to discuss Marías and his novel A Heart So White. Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. On Twitter, you can follow Jacke Wilson at his handle @WriterJacke. You can also follow Mike and the Literature Supporters Club (and receive daily book recommendations) by looking for @literature SC. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Sweeter Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sure, we all know the story of Frosty and Rudolph… but what about literary Christmas stories? How have great authors treated (or mistreated) this celebrated holiday? Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, joins Jacke for a look at the ten best Christmas stories in literature. Authors discussed include Dostoevsky, Dickens, Willa Cather, Mark Twain, Ntozake Shange, Roderick Thorpe, Dr. Seuss, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Hans Christian Andersen, Chekhov, O. Henry, and more. PLUS a special holiday tribute to Gar, the worst producer in the history of podcasting. Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Follow Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @writerjacke (Jacke) and @literatureSC (Mike). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). (Also featuring cameo appearances by Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sir Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Bing Crosby, Mariah Carey, Sir Elton John, Jimmy Stewart, and Frank Sinatra.) *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just after World War II, the poet and critic W.H. Auden said that Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (ca. 1959) is “of great relevance to our time, though it is gloomier, because it is about a society that is doomed. We are not doomed, but in such immense danger that the relevance is great. [Rome] was a society not doomed by the evil passions of selfish individuals…but by an intellectual and spiritual failure of nerve that made the society incapable of coping with its situation.” Why is Julius Caesar so continually important to those living in a liberal democracy? What does it tell us about the relationship of an individual to society and the state? And as the citizens of a republic lose their faith in institutions, how do we reconcile the noble ambition of a Caesar with the high-minded (but bloody) principles of the assassin Brutus? In this episode, host Jacke Wilson takes a look at Shakespeare’s play, the portrayals of Brutus (James Mason) and Mark Antony (Marlon Brando) in the 1953 film, the fraught morality of assassination, the surprising links between John Wilkes Booth and the play, and an essay from The Journal of Democracy describing the declining faith in liberal democracies in 2016. Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early in her career, novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) wrote a critical essay in which she set forth her views of what fiction can and should do. The essay was called “Modern Fiction” (1919), and it has served critics and readers as a guide to Modernism (and Woolf) ever since. But while it’s easy to follow her arguments about the authors who became giants in the world of literature such as Joyce and Chekhov, it’s less easy to understand her statements about the authors she criticized, contemporary best sellers H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and John Galsworthy. What was behind her savage criticism of these three? What does her animosity tell us about Woolf’s views of fiction? Professor Andrea Zemgulys of the University of Michigan joins Jacke to help him figure this out. Then a pair of children’s book experts (Jacke Wilson Jr. and Jacke Wilson Jr. Jr.) join Jacke in the studio to discuss buying holiday books for children. Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Quirky Dog,” “Sweeter Vermouth, and “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s the Thanksgiving episode! Jacke and Mike respond to listener feedback and discuss some literary things to thankful for. Authors discussed include Edith Wharton, John Fowles, Ernest Hemingway, Vu Tran, Lydia Davis, Gary Snyder, Walt Whitman, Elena Ferrante, Walker Percy, Madeleine Thien, James Wood, Harold Bloom, and more! Show Notes: Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Darxieland” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jacke digs into his origins in rural Wisconsin and offers some thoughts on race, literature, and the recent election. Also featured: René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, and Simone de Beauvoir. Show Notes: We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Piano Between” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What can we do to unlock the past? How do family secrets affect us? Author Shawna Yang Ryan has spent a lot of time thinking about these issues – and in this episode, she joins Jacke for a discussion of some of her favorite books, including the novel that led her to rethink her understanding of the American West and the graphic novel about a family’s journey that can bring her to tears. SHAWNA YANG RYAN is a former Fulbright scholar and the author of Water Ghosts (Penguin Press 2009) and Green Island (Knopf 2016). She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Her short fiction has appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Asian American Literary Review, Kartika Review, and The Berkeley Fiction Review. She is the 2015 recipient of the Elliot Cades Emerging Writer award. Originally from California, she now lives in Honolulu. Works Discussed: Green Island and Water Ghosts by Shawna Yang Ryan Another Country by James Baldwin Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner Vietnamerica: A Family’s Journey by GB Tran Locked in Time by Lois Duncan Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt Yi Yi [A One and a Two…] directed by Edward Yang Show Notes: We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” and “Greta Sting” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By any measure, Mary Shelley (1797-1851) lived a radical life. As the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, two philosophers devoted to principles of freedom and equality, she grew up in a tumultuous world of exciting new ideas and strong advocacy for social change. After she and the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley eloped at a young age, they spent a rainy summer with Lord Byron and two other friends in a cottage in Geneva, Switzerland, where they passed the time by inventing ghost stories. And it was in that cottage that what is probably the most famous Halloween story of all time, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), was brought to life. What ideas shaped this famous story of a scientist who successfully animates a corpse before ruing the consequences? What does the novel have to say about the importance of human relationships in our society? And how does the novel connect to Frank Capra’s Christmas film, It’s a Wonderful Life? In this special Halloween episode, we’ll talk to Professor James Chandler of the University of Chicago, author of An Archaeology of Sympathy: The Sentimental Mode in Literature and Cinema, about the fascinating world of Mary Shelley, her novel Frankenstein, and the films they inspired. Works Discussed: An Archaeology of Sympathy: The Sentimental Mode in Literature and Cinema, by James Chandler Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley Show Notes: We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Supernatural Radio A” and “Greta Sting” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“She was a combination of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth,” said Alexander Woolcott. Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) wrote short stories, poems, reviews, screenplays, and more. Perhaps most famously, she was part of the group of New Yorkers known as the Algonquin Round Table, which met every day for lunch and eventually grew famous for their witticisms, put-downs, and general high spirits. A woman of brilliance as well as deep contradiction, Parker at her best combined romantic optimism with a dark, biting pessimism that still feels modern. In this episode, Jacke is joined by the President of the Literature Supporters Club for a field report of the Algonquin Hotel today and a discussion of Parker’s life, works, and top ten quips. Show Notes: We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “I Wished on the Moon” by Billie Holiday (1935) and Ella Fitzgerald and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra (1962) *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this special episode, the revered American author Charles Baxter joins Jacke to discuss some of his favorite books, including works by Anton Chekhov, Saul Bellow, James Wright, and Paula Fox. “Charles Baxter’s stories have reminded me of how broad and deep and shining a story can be, and I am grateful.” — Alice Munro CHARLES BAXTER is the author of the novels The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), The Soul Thief, Saul and Patsy, Shadow Play, and First Light, and the story collections Gryphon, Believers, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, and Harmony of the World. The stories “Bravery” and “Charity,” which appear in There’s Something I Want You to Do, were included in Best American Short Stories. Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Works Discussed: Collected Poems by James Wright Herzog, Henderson the Rain King, and Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow Desperate Characters and The Widow’s Children by Paula Fox Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov Show Notes: We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Sweet Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone loves and admires a good poem…but what about the bad ones? After discussing his own experience writing terrible poetry, Jacke analyzes the 10 things that make a poem go wrong, assesses the curious role of Scotland and Michigan in developing bad poetry, and reviews some candidates for the worst poet in history, including: * Jennifer Aniston, whose astonishingly bad love poem to John Mayer graced (disgraced?) the pages of Star magazine; * James McIntyre, the Canadian poet known as “the Chaucer of Cheese”; * Julia A. Moore, the “Sweet Singer of Michigan,” whose poems were described as “worse than a Gatling gun” and “rare food for the lunatic,” but who insisted on giving public performances (to her husband’s mortification and Mark Twain’s delight); * Margaret Cavendish, the seventeenth-century aristocrat whose nature poems took her into the unintentionally comic realm of extreme bad taste (and near cannibalism); …and many others as well. It’s a celebration of bad poetry… the agony and the ecstasy… the cringeworthy and the triumphant… or, as William McGonagall, one of the best (worst?) of the bad poets might say: “This episode is very fine / Indeed I think it very fine.” Show Notes: We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone always talks about the greatest openings in the history of literature – I’m looking at you, Call me Ishmael – but what about endings? Aren’t those just as important? What are the different ways to end short stories and novels? Which endings work well and why? In this episode, Jacke and Mike take a look at great literary endings, with some assistance from David Lodge, Charles Baxter, Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Samuel Beckett, Iris Murdoch, Uncle Wiggily, The Third Man, Donald Barthelme, Alice Munro, Henry James, E.B. White, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary Shelley, David Foster Wallace, O. Henry, Ian McEwan, Thomas Mann, and Joseph Conrad. Show Notes: We have a special episode coming up – listener feedback! Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) lived a life that, in retrospect, looks almost like one of her short stories: sudden, impactful, and lastingly powerful. Deeply Catholic, O’Connor portrayed the American South as a place full of complex characters seeking redemption in unusual and often violent ways. She once said that she had found that violence was “strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace,” and it is this confrontation – restless faith crashing into pain and evil – that energizes O’Connor’s best works. Possessed of almost supernatural writerly gifts, O’Connor’s insight and artistry place her in the uppermost echelon of American authors. Host Jacke Wilson tells the story of O’Connor’s life, her most famous works, and his own near-connection to the author…before concluding with some troubling recent discoveries and a preview of a deeper examination of O’Connor and her place in American letters. Show Notes: See the photo of the young Flannery O’Connor at the Amana Colonies at https://jackewilson.com/2014/08/08/writers-laughing-flannery-oconnor/. Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Porch Blues” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Embattled and arrogant, the novelist and painter Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was deeply immersed in Modernism even as he sought to blast it apart. He was the type of person who would rather hate a club than join it – and while his taste for the attack led to his marginalization, his undeniable genius made him impossible to ignore. Eventually, his misanthropic views led him down some dark paths, as the freedom and energy of the early twentieth century gave way to totalitarian regimes and the horrors of modern war. Professor Paul Peppis, an expert in the politics, art, and literature of the Modernist era, joins Jacke for a discussion of Wyndham Lewis and his leadership of the thrilling, doomed artistic revolution known as Vorticism. Show Notes: Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Modern Piano Epsilon – The Small” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes a short story a short story? What can a short story do that a novel can’t? Can a story ever be TOO short? The President of the Literature Supporters Club stops by to discuss the length of fiction, with some help from Lydia Davis, Donald Barthelme, Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Munro, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Roberto Bolano, Georges Simenon, Alberto Moravia, Augusto Monterroso, Jonathan Franzen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, and Franz Kafka. Show Notes: Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Spy Glass,” “Sweeter Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1818, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published his classic poem “Ozymandias,” depicting the fallen statue of a once-powerful king whose inscription “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” has long since crumbled into the desert. A hundred years later, a set of Modernist poets revisited the subject of ruins, injecting the poetic trope with some surprising new ideas. Professor Bill Hogan of Providence College joins Jacke for a look at the treatment of ruins in the poetry of H.D. (1886-1961), William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Robert Frost (1874-1963), and Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). Works Discussed: “Ozymandias” (1818) – Percy Bysshe Shelley “The Walls Do Not Fall” (1944) – H.D. “The Tower” (1928) – W.B. Yeats “The Directive” (1946) – Robert Frost “The Anecdote of the Jar” (1919) and “The Man on the Dump” (1939) – Wallace Stevens Show Notes: Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vincent O’Neill hails from Sandycove, Dublin, where he grew up in the shadow of the tower made famous by the opening chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. After a childhood spent tracing the steps of Joyce’s characters, Vincent developed a love for the theatre, eventually becoming the co-founder and artistic director of the Irish Classical Theatre Company in Buffalo, New York. He joins Jacke Wilson for a discussion of James Joyce and the theatre, including a staging of Joyce’s play Exiles, the magic of Joyce’s language, and the long journey to bring an adaptation of Finnegan’s Wake to the stage. Show Notes: Learn more about the Irish Classical Theatre Company at irishclassical.com. Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What books are essential? Who has the authority to choose them, and what is their selection process? First, Jacke and Mike continue their look at the College Board’s 101 Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers. Then Jacke proposes a different method for determining which books are relevant in today’s world – and tests the results against the College Board’s efforts. You can find a PDF of the College Board’s list at: http://www.uhlibrary.net/pdf/college_board_recommended_books.pdf Shane Sherman’s List of Lists can be found at: http://thegreatestbooks.org/ His methodology is described at: http://thegreatestbooks.org/lists/details Show Notes: Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Bass Walker,” “Sweeter Vermouth,” “Greta Sting” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1964, the Oxford professor John Barrington Wain wrote: “…Romeo and Juliet is as perfectly achieved as anything in Shakespeare’s work. It is a flawless little jewel of a play. It has the clear, bright colours, the blend of freshness and formality, of an illuminated manuscript.” First produced in 1594, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet became an immediate sensation, and the story of the star-crossed lovers has been a core part of Western civilization ever since. Why is the play so popular? What does it tell us about falling in love – and how does that differ from being in love? And what does any of this have to do with George Carlin? Show Notes: Brand new! Check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/historyofliterature. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What works of literature are essential? When we start reading literature, where do we begin? The College Board, an organization that prepares standardized tests for millions of American young people, has published list of 101 recommended books for college-bound readers. High schools and colleges across the country take their lead from this list, and students are encouraged to use it as a guide to a summer of literature. But is the list any good? Can it be improved? The President of the Literature Supporters Club joins Jacke for a discussion of the list’s most worthy selections…and its most egregious omissions. You can find the list by searching "College Board 101 Great Books for College Bound Readers." Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Bass Walker” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1797, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge took two grains of opium and fell into a stupor. When he awoke, he had in his head the remnants of a marvelous dream, a vivid train of images of the Chinese emperor Kubla Khan and his summer palace, Xanadu. The vision transformed itself into lines of poetry, but as he started writing, he was interrupted by a Person from Porlock, who arrived at Coleridge’s cottage on business and stayed for an hour. when Coleridge returned to his work, the vision had been lost, and the fragmentary nature of the poem Kubla Khan has haunted its admirers ever since. The resentment has centered around the bumbling Person from Porlock, whose visit remains shrouded in mystery. The scholar Jonathan Livingston Lowes put it bluntly: “If there is any man in the history of literature who should e hanged, drawn, and quartered,” he wrote, “it is the man on business from Porlock.” Who was this Person from Porlock, and why was he knocking on the door of Coleridge’s cottage? How did Coleridge handle the interruption, and what did it mean for him and his art? And finally, what might we take from this vivid legend today? Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Piano Between” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies, The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (ca. 1603) is perhaps the most difficult of them to watch. The malevolent Iago, viewed by some as evil incarnate, has been infuriating audiences for centuries – legend has it that at one performance in the Old West, a cowboy in the audience was so offended by Iago’s machinations he pulled out his pistol and shot him. And theater professionals are well accustomed to the gasps, cries, and occasional screams from the audience as they view the horrendous scene, in which the jealous lead character is finally driven to kill his wife, the innocent Desdemona. What motivates Iago? Why is Othello so susceptible? And what themes in Othello still resonate today? Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, the Master of Fine Arts degree has quietly dominated the American literary scene. There are now over 100 programs where professors and students go about the business of turning dreams into fiction through the alchemy – or as some would say, the meatgrinder – known as the writing workshop. It’s a phenomenon like no other in the history of literature. What goes on at these MFA programs? What good comes out of them? And what impact are they having on contemporary American literature? The President of the Literature Supporters Club joins Jacke for a discussion of MFA programs. Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hamlet (ca 1599-1602) has been called the greatest play ever written in English – and even that might not be giving it enough credit. Many would rank it among the greatest achievements in the history of humankind. Jacke Wilson takes a deeper look at the Prince of Negative Capability and his famous soliloquy. Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) were the pole stars of the Lost Generation, the collection of young American authors who came of age in the Paris and New York of the 1920s. The Hemingway-Fitzgerald relationship has been examined for decades and continues to fascinate. Why are we so drawn to these two authors? What do they represent in American literature? Who was the better author, and why? Jacke and Mike take a look at the great Hemingway-Fitzgerald debate – and challenge themselves to find ten new things to say about these American icons. Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China’s T’ang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) valued poets and poetry like no other culture before or since. In this episode, Jacke Wilson takes a look at what may have been the greatest flourishing of poetry in the history of the world. Poets discussed include Ezra Pound (1885-1972), T’ao Ch’ien (365-427), Wang Wei (ca. 699-761), Li Bai (Li Po) (701-762), and Tu Fu (712-770). Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Tea Roots” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing the journey with a deeper look at the incredible achievements of St. Augustine (354 – 430 A.D.), a luminary of the early Catholic church, one of the most profound thinkers in Western culture, and the author of a work the likes of which the world had never seen, The Confessions. Host Jacke Wilson identifies five key themes in The Confessions and shows how the themes build up to the autobiography’s culminating passage. Works Discussed: The Confessions of St. Augustine (tr. Maria Boulding) Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Virtutes Vocis” and “Virtutes Instrumenti” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The journey continues! Host Jacke Wilson takes a look at one of the deepest thinkers in the Western tradition, St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.), and the literary form he pioneered and perfected. Who was Augustine? What led him to produce one of the most influential books ever written? And what can we gain from reading The Confessions today? In this first of a two-part episode, Jacke considers Augustine’s relationship to God, the impact of his studies in rhetoric on his attempts to write an autobiography, and what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would have made of Augustine’s description of tragedy. Works Discussed: The Confessions of St. Augustine (tr. Maria Boulding) The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Virtutes Vocis” and “Virtutes Instrumenti” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is evil? Is it a force that lives outside us? Or something that dwells within? And how do we recognize it? Professor Rebecca Messbarger joins Jacke to discuss the problems of seeing evil and the particular ways that post-Fascist Italian writers dealt with the dilemma. We also hear the story of how a mild-mannered Italian professor’s scholarly research eventually led to her roaming the Internet in an attempt to purchase a cadaver. Books Discussed: The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini by Rebecca Messbarger Alabama Moon by Watt Key Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda Todo Modo by Leonardo Sciascia Family Sayings by Natalia Ginzburg Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Spy Glass” and “Bushwick Tarantella Loop” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He was a supremely talented musician and composer – but was he the voice of his generation? Jacke and Mike take a look at the life and lyrics of Prince. Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Dickens called the New Testament “the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.” Thomas Paine complained that it was a story “most wretchedly told,” and argued that anyone who could tell a story about a ghost or even just a man walking around could have written it better. What are the New Testament’s literary qualities? What can we gain from studying the New Testament as a literary work? Professor Kyle Keefer, author of The New Testament as Literature – A Very Short Introduction, joins host Jacke Wilson to discuss what it means to read the New Testament as literature. Show Notes: You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Piano Between” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Jacke Wilson is joined by special guest Radha Vatsal, author of the historical mystery A Front Page Affair. Radha starts by talking about her own adventure leaving India to study in America at the age of 16, which eventually led to an interest in the action film heroines and female journalists at the start of the twentieth century. Radha also recommends four books for listeners and describes the historical research necessary to create the character of Kitty Weeks, a plucky female journalist in 1910s New York City who owns her own car and wants to write about more than fashion and gossip. Works Discussed: A Front Page Affair (Kitty Weeks Mystery) by Radha Vatsal “The Forgotten Female Action Stars of the 1910s” by Radha Vatsal (article in The Atlantic) The Waterworks by E.L. Doctorow The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 by Philipp Blom Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880-1930 by Jean Marie Lutes Out on Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of Modern Public Space by Alice Fahs A FRONT PAGE AFFAIR description: New York City, 1915 The Lusitania has just been sunk, and headlines about a shooting at J.P. Morgan’s mansion and the Great War are splashed across the front page of every newspaper. Capability “Kitty” Weeks would love nothing more than to report on the news of the day, but she’s stuck writing about fashion and society gossip over on the Ladies’ Page―until a man is murdered at a high society picnic on her beat. Determined to prove her worth as a journalist, Kitty finds herself plunged into the midst of a wartime conspiracy that threatens to derail the United States’ attempt to remain neutral―and to disrupt the privileged life she has always known. Radha Vatsal’s A Front Page Affair is the first book in highly anticipated series featuring rising journalism star Kitty Weeks. Advance reviews: “The fascinating historical details add flair to this thoroughly engaging mystery starring an intelligent amateur sleuth reminiscent of Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy. Vatsal’s debut will leave readers eager for Kitty’s next adventure.” – Booklist “This lively and well-researched debut introduces a charming historical series and an appealing fish-out-of-water sleuth who seeks independence and a career in an age when most women are bent on getting married, particularly to titled Englishmen. Devotees of Rhys Bowen’s mysteries will enjoy making the acquaintance of Miss Weeks.” – STARRED Library Journal review; March Debut of the Month “[A] spirited debut…Vatsal deftly intertwines the tumult of the era, from emerging women’s rights to spreading international conflict, into this rich historical.” – Publishers Weekly “This first in a planned series is a nice combination of mystery and thriller seasoned by historical facts and a look at women’s lives before woman’s liberation.” – Kirkus About the Author: RADHA VATSAL was inspired by 1910s action-film heroines to create a heroine, Capability “Kitty” Weeks, an aspiring journalist who finds herself plunged into the tumultuous world of 1910s New York. Vatsal was born in Mumbai India, and has a Ph.D.from the English Department at Duke University (with a focus on silent-era film history). She lives in New York with her husband and their two daughters.You can find Radha at www.radhavatsal. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jacke and Mike reconsider the life and works of the great twentieth-century British novelist Graham Greene. Works discussed include The End of the Affair, The Power and the Glory, The Quiet American, Babbling April, and The Third Man. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When are two artists or characters more than the sum of their parts? How is that magic created? And what does it mean for the rest of us? Part two of a conversation with host Jacke Wilson and his guest, the President of the Literature Supporters Club, on great literary duos. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Sweeter Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes a great literary duo? Two authors inspiring one another? Two characters who fall in love? Best friends? Rivals? Host Jacke Wilson is joined by the President of the Literature of the Supporters Club to discuss. Jacke and Mike also respond to a listener question about building a World Literature syllabus. But first, Jacke draws upon some listener feedback to take a look at the condition America’s condition is in. What kind of country gives a goldfish plastic surgery? This episode is dedicated to a certain special someone. Thank you, Mr. Hot Wing. Works Discussed: The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell The Arabian Nights Moon Palace by Paul Auster Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortazar One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante The Neopolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante Zadig by Voltaire The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer The Decameron by Boccaccio Orientalism by Edward Said Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami “The Thousand and One Nights” by Jorge Luis Borges Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Sheherezade” by Edgar Allen Poe The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow The Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O’Brian Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Sweeter Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when a republic morphs into empire? What did it mean for the writers of Ancient Rome – and what would it mean for us today? Jacke Wilson takes a look at the current state of affairs in America and the Roman examples of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Petronius, and Catullus. You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Drums of the Deep” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Jacke welcomes special guest Ronica Dhar, who presents Five Books (or actually Four Books and a Movie) To Lower Your Blood Pressure. Highlights include a poem by Ronica’s former teacher and mentor, letters to a samurai written by a zen master who invented a type of pickle, and a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic who wrestled with God and her in-laws with a fierceness that would have made Beyoncé proud. Ronica Dhar graduated from the University of Chicago and was a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction. She holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan where she received the Meijer award and the Hopwood award. Her first book, Bijou Roy, was called a “thoughtful, elegant novel” by the author Ann Patchett. After years spent living in Washington D.C. and New York City, Ronica recently returned to Detroit, the city of her childhood. Works Discussed: Bijou Roy (Ronica Dhar) Praise Song for the Day (Elizabeth Alexander) Aleutian Sparrow (Karen Hesse) I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (tr. Ranjit Hoskote) The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman (Takuan Soho) Samsara (directed by Ron Fricke) You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Sweet Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Written over the span of 800 years from ca. 400 B.C. to ca. 400 A.D, the Mahabharata tells a riveting tale of disputed kingship and warring families. But just as the action-packed narrative reaches its climax, the story pauses to convey a dialogue between the reluctant warrior Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna, who dramatically reveals himself as the incarnation of God. This passage, known as the Bhagavad Gita, has proved inspirational to hundreds of millions of religious seekers and was regarded by philosophers from Henry David Thoreau to Mahatma Gandhi as perhaps the greatest distillation of philosophy and religion ever written. How does this philosophical treatise fit into this fast-paced story? What lessons does it have for us? And how did a two-thousand-year-old argument that a warrior should fulfill his duty on the battlefield end up inspiring some of the most famous advocates of non-violence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? You can find more literary discussion at jackewilson.com and more episodes of the series at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at [email protected] or by leaving a voicemail at 1-361-4WILSON (1-361-494-5766). Books Discussed: The Bhagavad Gita (tr. Easwaran) Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation (tr. Mitchell) The Norton Anthology of World Literature (Third Edition) (Vol. Package 1: Vols. A, B, C) Music Credits: “Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA). “Sweeter Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to The History of Literature, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding literature, history, and storytelling like Storybound, Micheaux Mission, and The History of Standup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices