Critical Readings

CR Episode 87: Canterbury Tales IX – The Shipman’s, Prioress’, and Chaucer’s Tales

19 July 2021 S. P. Cooper

The panel considers vice in the Shipman’s tale and piety in the Prioress’ tale, before moving on to examine Chaucer’s humble self-depiction in his rollicking minstrel song, The Tale of Sir Thopas, and in his dialogue on Prudence, The Tale of Melibee.

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CR Episode 86: Canterbury Tales VIII – The Physician’s and Pardoner’s Tales

12 July 2021 S. P. Cooper

The panel looks at the honor-before-death connexion between Fragment V and Fragment VI as exemplified by Virginia in the Physician’s Tale, and then considers the multiple levels of moral instruction on offer in the boldly hypocritical Pardoner’s Tale.

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Review: James Matthew Wilson’s The Strangeness of the Good (Angelico Press, 2020)

6 July 2021 S. P. Cooper

James Matthew Wilson, one of the foremost Catholic poets of the twenty-first century, traces the thread of faith through affecting meditations and personal experiences in this collection, his follow-up to the well-regarded The Hanging God (2018).

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The Lost Forms of the English Language

11 October 2020 S. P. Cooper

Dost thou long for the ability to conjugate verbs in Early Modern style? Hast thou found thyself perplex’d by the difference between ‘thou’ and ‘you’? Then thou shouldst look no further, for thou wilt find herein the edification that thou seek’st.

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CR Episode 76: Excerpts from Leaves of Grass

26 April 2021 S. P. Cooper

The panel reads excerpts from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, including poems from the inscriptions, Song of Myself, Children of Adam, and Calamus, considering the formal nature of the 'American Epic', and Whitman's use of individualism and universalism.

CR Episode 75: Excerpts from Astrophil and Stella

19 April 2021 S. P. Cooper

The panel examines a selection of sonnets and a song from Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, considering the formal and tonal connexions between Sidney's poetry and the works of earlier and later poets, including Chaucer, Petrarch, and Shakespeare.

CR Episode 74: Introduction to Abraham Cowley

12 April 2021 S. P. Cooper

The panel discusses a selection of poems covering the entire span of Abraham Cowley's oeuvre: beginning with his college years and the unfinished epic 'Davideis', through his popular collections, and concluding with his late 'Ode to the Royal Society'.

CR Episode 73: Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso

5 April 2021 S. P. Cooper

The panel discusses a selection of John Milton's shorter poems, the oft-paired 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso', and examines their use of Orpheus as a metaphor, and their different attitudes to finding communal delight and solitary pleasure in life.

CR Episode 72: Irony in the Poetry of Stephen Crane

29 March 2021 S. P. Cooper

The panel analyses the use of irony in the poetic works of Stephen Crane, including selections from "War Is Kind" (1899), and discusses the development of realism and imagism in English literature, especially in poetry about the experience of war.

CR Episode 71: Accepting Complexity in Melville’s Poetry

22 March 2021 S. P. Cooper

The panel analyses contradiction in Melville's earliest and latest published poems: three selections from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War--his first collection--and "Art" from Timoleon and Other Ventures, published only four months before his death.

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