Critical Readings

CR Episode 103: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Songs of Travel

15 November 2021 Critical Readings

The panel traces themes of wanderlust, resignation, wistfulness, lonliness, and fatalism in six poems excerpted from Stevenson's Songs of Travel, including "The Vagabond", "Bright Is the Ring of Words," "Whither Must I Wander", and "The Woodman".

CR Episode 102: Thomas Wyatt in the Tudor Court

8 November 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads four poems by the Tudor poet and courtier Thomas Wyatt, whose misfortunes in the Henrician court (not least of all two imprisonments) are traced in sonnets and other verse including "Whoso List to Hunt" and "Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides".

CR Episode 101: Sylvia Plath

1 November 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads three poems by Sylvia Plath, "Tulips", "Lady Lazarus", and "Daddy", tracing in them themes of self-annihilation, and analysing references to her depression and to the conflicted relationships she had with her father and husband.

CR Episode 100: Shakespeare’s Sonnets

25 October 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads a selection of sonnets by William Shakespeare, and considers their Symposium-like comparisons and contrasts of the different kinds and representations of love, in terms ranging from eloquent to earthy, and from concrete to abstract.

CR Episode 99: Hero and Leander

18 October 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads Christopher Marlowe's most famous poem, Hero and Leander, discussing its rich and provocative imagery, classical allusions, and levels of metaphor, and addressing the scholarly opinion of the apparently unfinished state of the work.

CR Episode 98: The Defence of Guenevere

11 October 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads a single, long poem--"The Defence of Guenevere"--by the Victorian artisan, translator, novelist, and poet William Morris, giving special attention how Guenevere uses and mis-uses evidence and emotion in order to support her case.

CR Episode 97: Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Love and Death

4 October 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads four poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, including three sonnets, and discusses the excellence of her formal expertise and poetic style, particularly in contrast to less favourable mid-20th century critical responses to her body of work.

CR Episode 96: Robert Browning’s Dramatic Verse

27 September 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads three poems of the greatly esteemed Victorian poet, Robert Browning, including "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's", "Andrea del Sarto", and "Love among the Ruins", giving especial attention to the dramatic features of his works.

CR Episode 95: Frank O’Hara and Modernism

20 September 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads three poems by mid-twentieth century American poet, Frank O'Hara, and examines his connexions to other forms of artistic modernism and post-modernism, including not only prose poetry, but abstract expressionism, cubism, and Dadaism.

CR Episode 94: The Macabre Verse of Edward Gorey

13 September 2021 Critical Readings

The panel follows the work of Poe and Lear to the macabre and surreal art of Edward Gorey, looking at four of his early, and most famous, works including The Gashlycrumb Tinies (an abecedarium), The Evil Garden, The Insect God, and The Doubtful Guest.

The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear

CR Episode 93: Edward Lear’s Complete Nonsense

30 August 2021 Critical Readings

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear! Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him pleasant enough.

CR Episode 92: The Gothic Romanticism of Edgar Allan Poe

23 August 2021 Critical Readings

The panel reads a selection of Poe's most significant verse, including "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee", and considers not only how Poe's use of Gothic and Romantic themes shapes the content and form of his poems, but also surprising mediæval connexions.

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