Critical Readings

King Arthur, by Julia Margaret Cameron FEATURED

CR Episode 128: Idylls of the King, Part I

30 May 2022 Critical Readings

The panel begins a twelve-week series covering the entirety of Tennyson’s Arthurian cycle, Idylls of the King, beginning with the cycle’s publishing history and formal characteristics, and readings of the dedication and “The Coming of Arthur”.

CR Episode 127: The Waste Land, Part IV

23 May 2022 Critical Readings

The Waste Land series concludes with readings and analysis of the final two parts–“Death by Water” and “What the Thunder Said”–with special attention to the biblical and grail quest imagery, the Wheel of Fortune, and contrasting aquatic extremes.

CR Episode 126: The Waste Land, Part III

16 May 2022 Critical Readings

In this third part of the four-part series on The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, the panel reads “The Fire Sermon” and discusses cities both real and unreal, and how the abnegation of all human desire leads to the hollowing out of the psyche.

CR Episode 125: The Waste Land, Part II

2 May 2022 Critical Readings

The panel continues with the second of a four-part series on The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, reading “A Game of Chess”, with special attention given to the idea of death and rebirth, and to the presence and significance of baptismal imagery.

CR Episode 124: The Waste Land, Part I

25 April 2022 Critical Readings

The panel embarks upon a four-week study of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, beginning with a discussion of the allusive connexions and the imagistic and modernist effects of the poem’s opening epigram and its first section, “The Burial of the Dead”.

CR Episode 123: Henry Vaughan

11 April 2022 Critical Readings

The panel reads a selection of the poety of the seventeenth-century, Welsh, metaphysical poet, Henry Vaughan, with a particular attention to Vaughan’s own religious beliefs, philosophical positions, and connexions to Ben Jonson and George Herbert.

Illustration from Lucile by Owen Meredith FEATURED

CR Episode 122: Owen Meredith

4 April 2022 Critical Readings

The panel reads a selection of verses from Owen Meredith–Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Earl of Lytton–an eminent Victorian statesman and poet, including an excerpt from the second part of his long, anapestic epic, “Lucile”, and two shorter poems.

CR Episode 121: The Poetry of Robert Graves

28 March 2022 Critical Readings

The panel reads the poetry of Robert Graves, from his early war poetry to the work of his later life, with special attention to his theory of The White Goddess, including “A Dead Boche”, “A Boy in Church”, “The God Called Poetry” and “The Spoilsport”.

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Critical Readings

CR Episode 152: Young Goodman Brown

CR Episode 151: Whitman and the Civil War, Part II

CR Episode 150: Whitman and the Civil War, Part I

CR Episode 128: Idylls of the King, Part I

CR Episode 127: The Waste Land, Part IV

CR Episode 126: The Waste Land, Part III

CR Episode 125: The Waste Land, Part II

CR Episode 124: The Waste Land, Part I

CR Episode 123: Henry Vaughan

CR Episode 122: Owen Meredith

CR Episode 121: The Poetry of Robert Graves

CR Episode 120: The Poetry of D. H. Lawrence

CR Episode 119: Pope and Wordsworth in Conversation

CR Episode 118: Introduction to Conrad Aiken

CR Episode 117: Milton’s Lycidas