Critical Readings

CR Episode 62: Winter with Longfellow

4 January 2021 Critical Readings

As the new year dawns, the panel revisits the work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the quintessential Fireside Poet, to reexamine some favourites (Excelsior, The Day Is Done) and some poems which are new to the podcast (Psalm of Life, Paul Revere’s Ride).

CR Episode 61: Poetry and Prose of John Donne

28 December 2020 Critical Readings

If it must be Donne, let it be done well! The panel reads Donne’s selected poetry and prose: a Christmas sermon, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, “The Flea”, and selections from both “La Corona” and “Holy Sonnets”.

CR Episode 60: The Ambiguous Andrew Marvell

21 December 2020 Critical Readings

The panel considers the scholarly consensus that Marvell is poetically and politically ambiguous by reading “To His Coy Mistress”, “Clorinda and Damon”, “A Dialogue between the Soul and the Body”, and “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland”.

CR Episode 59: Contradictory Verse of Robert Herrick

7 December 2020 Critical Readings

The panel continues a survey of English Civil War poetry with a look at Robert Herrick’s deliberately contradictory verses, including his Hesperides, and the famous Carpe Diem poems “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” and “Corinna’s Going a Maying”.

CR Episode 58: Religious Poetry of George Herbert

16 November 2020 Critical Readings

The panel examines the poetical works of George Herbert, discussing the Christian theological implications found in the language of three of his lyric poems, each of which is composed on a religious topic: “Prayer (2)”, “Divinity”, and “Love (3)”.

CR Episode 57: Cigars and Seaweed of James Russell Lowell

26 October 2020 Critical Readings

The panel examines selected verse of American fire-side poet James Russell Lowell, with a brief survey including some light verse on cigars and seasons, and some more serious writing on nautical themes featuring sirens, seaweed, and ocean-side lyres.

CR Episode 56: An Introduction to Robert Lowell

19 October 2020 Critical Readings

The panel reviews the biography of, and some selected works by, the twentieth-century poet Robert Lowell, including his “Falling Asleep over the Aeneid”, “Memories of West Street and Lepke”, and “Four Spanish Sonnets”, with special attention to form.

CR Episode 55: Wallace Stevens’ Harmonium

5 October 2020 Critical Readings

The panel reviews five poems selected from Wallace Stevens’ debut collection, Harmonium, and considers the role of Stevens within the larger context of the poetic development of the Romantic movement into its fulfilment with the advent of Modernism.

CR Episode 54: Pope’s Translation of The Iliad

28 September 2020 Critical Readings

The panel reads Book I of Alexander Pope’s translation of The Iliad, discusses Pope’s approach contextually, compares that approach to the modern translations of Fitzgerald and Fagles (amongst others), and considers theoretical commentary on translations.

CR Episode 53: Masefield’s Midsummer Night

21 September 2020 Critical Readings

The panel examines the biography of John Masefield before reading and examining excerpts from his Arthurian cycle, Midsummer Night, with special attention on the unique aspects of Masefield’s recasting of traditional Arthurian mythological elements.

CR Episode 52: The Faerie Queene, Mutabilitie Cantos

14 September 2020 Critical Readings

The panel reviews the epilogue-like Mutabilitie Cantos of the Faerie Queene, reviewing scholarly opinion about their place in the whole poem, and considering the interrelations of the Greco-Roman pantheon to Nature, Time, and the Judeo-Christian God.

King Arthur and the Questing Beast, by Aubrey Beardsley

CR Episode 51: The Faerie Queene, Book VI, Cantos 7-12

7 September 2020 Critical Readings

The panel reviews the second half of Spenser’s book of courtesy, with attention given to the scholarly view of C. S. Lewis, Northrop Frye, and others, that Courtesy represents the central portion of the poem and that it is the essential Spenserian virtue.,