Send us Fan Mail Today, you get to treat yourselves to a discussion of Pope's major satirical poems: The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad . And, as a special bonus, you get to endure a desultory introduction concerning the Beatles at a cocktail party as well as series of pop culture references that are no less than 40 years old. The Texts: The Rape of the Lock : https://jacklynch.net/Texts/rapelock.html The Dunciad : https://congresoartistas.masonicvipclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/the-dunc...
Apr 22, 2026•36 min•Season 1Ep. 110
Send us Fan Mail For this Easter holiday, I thought we'd look at a hymn lyric from a very influential writer who is often overlooked in discussions of literature: Isaac Watt. You can find the full text of the lyric in the transcript. Additional Music: "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" perf. The Choir of St. Margaret's, Westminster (1931) His Master's Voice (B 3746) https://archive.org/details/78_when-i-survey-the-wondrous-cross_choir-of-st-margarets-westminster-miller-herber_gbia0438074b Suppor...
Apr 05, 2026•15 min•Season 1Ep. 109
Send us Fan Mail Alexander Pope, whom some critics regard as the most important poet of the early 18th century, set out to comprehensively explain the rules that governed art, poetry, and humanity itself. And, it turns out, they're all the same rules. Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliterature Please like, subscribe, and rat...
Mar 14, 2026•35 min•Season 1Ep. 108
Send us Fan Mail While many may think of Swift's magnificent octopus as a mere children's adventure tale, it is, in fact, one of the darkest and most troubling satires in the English language. Written as the Enlightenment began asserting rationality as the measure of all things, Gulliver's Travels questions the very premises of western culture themselves. Link to Gulliver's Travels : https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17157/17157-h/17157-h.htm Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider...
Feb 01, 2026•49 min•Season 1Ep. 107
Send us Fan Mail I hope you've brought your appetite, because today we're looking at some of Dr. Swift's shorter prose satires (along with a couple of poems) and he certainly gives us plenty to chew on. "A Description of the Morning": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45266/a-description-of-the-morning "A Description of a City Shower": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50578/a-description-of-a-city-shower "The Battle of the Books": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/623/623-h/623-h.htm "A...
Dec 31, 2025•39 min•Season 1Ep. 106
Send us Fan Mail One of the most theologically and liturgically important Christmas carols may contain coded messages against the Throne of England! Additional Music: "Adeste Fidelis" by Bing Crosby with The Max Terr choir ; John Scott Trotter and his orch. ; Traditional ; Decca (BM 03929) Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishlit...
Dec 21, 2025•14 min•Season 1Ep. 105
Send us Fan Mail In the early 18th century, the public press came to dominate English writing. Pamphlets, newspapers, and periodicals fed the appetite for news and commentary of an ever-hungrier reading public. Richard Steele and Joseph Addison were the great innovators of the periodical essay, a quintessentially English genre of writing. Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coff...
Nov 26, 2025•28 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Send us Fan Mail On this trip, we're looking at the conventional candidate for the first modern novel in English. Defoe's story of a resourceful man shipwrecked on a desert island is so much more than a ripping yarn: it speaks to the rise of a literary vernacular language, the values of an increasing bourgeois and expansionist society, and of spiritual awakening. Come aboard! Text: https://ia600207.us.archive.org/26/items/cu31924011498676/cu31924011498676.pdf Additional Music: "Theme from Emerge...
Nov 09, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 103
Send us Fan Mail For you today, Trick or Treaters, a discussion of what some critics assert is the first modern ghost story in English: Daniel Defoe's 1705 "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal." The text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36587/36587-h/36587-h.htm Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliterature Please like, subscribe, and ...
Oct 26, 2025•22 min•Season 1Ep. 102
Send us Fan Mail Well, I probably should have done this episode earlier, since it might have been good for it to precede our other discussions of Resto comedy. But I made a last minute decision and included a second play, which kind of threw off the old chronology. But it's good all the same! The Man of Mode by George Etherege: https://coldreads.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/the-man-of-mode.pdf The Way of the World by William Congreve: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1292/1292-h/1292-...
Oct 10, 2025•32 min•Season 1Ep. 101
Send us Fan Mail For our second episode on John Dryden, we'll talk about two of his plays which marked an innovation in the tragi-comic romance: Marriage a la Mode and Amphitryon . We'll discuss the "split-plot" play, the exorcising of Restoration political anxieties, and why we sometimes mock that which we cherish. Additional sound clip from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Text of Marriage a la Mode : https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15349/15349-h/15349-h.htm#page_231 Text of Amphitryon : https://...
Sep 21, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 100
Send us Fan Mail Once hailed as the towering literary figure of the Restoration age, John Dryden is little known now by the general reader. Let's take care of that with a close look at his most enduring works, the poetical satires Mac Flecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel . Mac Flecknoe text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44181/mac-flecknoe Absalom and Achitophel text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44172/absalom-and-achitophel Mea culpa : At one point in this episode, I make refe...
Sep 07, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 99
Send us Fan Mail Since they wrote in 17th century Massachusetts, poets Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor are often overlooked in surveys of English literature. Today, though, we'll bring them back into the fold as we look at how their puritanical religious beliefs engaged with the pastoral and metaphysical poetic traditions that celebrated "Arcadia," that vision of unspoiled Nature. The Works of Anne Bradstreet: https://archive.org/details/worksofannebrads00brad/page/n7/mode/2up The Works of Edw...
Aug 24, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 98
Send us Fan Mail Charles II reopened the theatres in 1660 and inaugurated the second golden age of the English stage. Today's show looks at one of the bawdiest plays to come from the period, a "comedy of manners" whose clever use of language points to the reality of style over substance. The Country Wife text: https://theater.lafayette.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2021/03/The-Country-Wife.pdf Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click th...
Aug 03, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 97
Send us Fan Mail Today marks the anniversary of one of the most mythologized battles in Anglo-Irish history: the Battle of the Boyne. In July of 1690, King William III soundly defeated James II and secured Ireland's Protestant supremacy while sowing the seeds for centuries of violent conflict. The battle also marks the debut of one of Ireland's most prominent writers, Dr. Jonathan Swift, whose poem "Ode to King William" celebrates the Orange victory. Text of "Ode to King William": https://www.on...
Jul 11, 2025•29 min•Season 1Ep. 96
Send us Fan Mail As Americans celebrate Independence Day, I'm here once again to remind them of the debt American independence owes to English literature and history. Stick in the mud. Today, we look at a genuinely weird poem that allegorizes the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (an event that would lay the groundwork for the American Revolution nearly a century later) as a cup of tea. So, pour yourself one -- milk first or last, doesn't matter to me -- and enjoy the show! Text of "Panacea": https://...
Jul 03, 2025•23 min•Season 1Ep. 95
Send us Fan Mail In today's chinwag, we'll explore a candidate for the first novel in English by the first professional female writer in English: Oroonoko by Aphra Behn (1688). It's the story of an African prince and his beloved, who are betrayed into slavery and do not live happily ever after. The novel seems a modest heroic romance, but I think Ms. Behn has a more complex project up her sleeve . . . . Full text of Oroonoko : https://pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca/oroonoko/chapter/the-history-...
Jun 25, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 94
Send us Fan Mail Today we look at the diary, a form of writing that became extraordinarily popular over the course of the 1600s. We'll especially look at famous diarists such as John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys, who not only chronicle details of their personal lives, but also give first hand accounts of the dramatic history of the period: the Restoration of the Monarchy, the Great Plague, and the Great Fire of London. Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small...
Jun 01, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 93
Send us Fan Mail I'm back before you even had a chance to miss me! Today, a bit of a genealogy of a now little read mock epic -- Samuel Butler's Hudibras -- which takes Chaucer and Spenser and Jonson and Cervantes, mixes them all up into a gloopy goo, and sprays it all over lemon-sucking Puritans! Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicen...
May 18, 2025•26 min•Season 1Ep. 92
Send us Fan Mail Put on your comfortable shoes and grab your walking stick because today we're embarking on the most famous allegory in the English language: John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress from 1678. We'll cross plains, endure temptations, descend valleys, fight monsters, and ford rivers in our quest for the Celestial City! Along the way, we'll talk about how this most Puritanical of texts is, ironically, deeply indebted to the ideas of the preceding religions it rejects. Last one there's ...
May 04, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 91
Send us Fan Mail The political upheavals of 17th century England demanded new answers for old political questions: what is the purpose of government, how is power legitimated, and who may wield it? Philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke reasoned from the same premises, but arrived at rather different conclusions. Balancing those conclusions is the primary task of liberal democracies to this day. Texts: Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes: https://gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm "Second Trea...
Apr 20, 2025•25 min•Season 1Ep. 90
Send us Fan Mail We often think of science fiction as a particularly modern genre of storytelling, born of the science and technology of the electronic and digital age. But speculative fiction goes back centuries, back to the beginning of what we now call the Scientific Revolution of the 1600s. On today's show, we look at two of the foundational books in the genre: Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moon and Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World . May the Force be with us! Links to Texts: The Man ...
Apr 02, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 89
Send us Fan Mail Which is better: the life of ascetic contemplation or one of passionate sensuality? Let's see what the last great poet of the Stuart era, Andrew Marvell, has to say about that. Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliterature Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or whereve...
Mar 16, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 88
Send us Fan Mail Here's another episode in our foundling series "Out of Time." Today, I correct an oversight from our 15th century literature discussions and survey the very earliest surviving tales of the outlaw and all-around-swell-guy Robin Hood! Let's jump in the Wayback Machine! Here's a link to the Robin Hood Project at the University of Rochester, where you can find the texts we're discussing today and a wealth of other resources! https://d.lib.rochester.edu/project/robin-hood/about.html ...
Mar 02, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 87
Send us Fan Mail We return to Milton's magnificent octopus today with an eye toward evaluating the epic's success according to its own mission statement: "to justify the ways of God to men." How does Milton approach the great theological problems of evil and suffering, divine foreknowledge, and free will? Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/c...
Feb 17, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 86
Send us Fan Mail Sexy Satan, what have you done? You made a fool of every one! On this episode we tackle the rather thorny question of Paradise Lost 's charismatic protagonist (?) or antagonist (?) or antihero (?): the hottest guy in Hell. Why does an epic on the cosmic history of Christianity, written by a radical Puritan, present us with so commanding and appealing a character? Additional music: "Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky )" by Bill Conti. https://archive.org/details/rocky_202111/1976+-+...
Feb 02, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 85
Send us Fan Mail In 1638, John Milton -- whom many see as perhaps the (second) greatest poet in English -- produced what many think to be his first major poem: the pastoral elegy "Lycidas," written to memorialize the tragic death of a college classmate. Ah! But it's so much more than that! Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishlit...
Jan 12, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 83
Send us Fan Mail The original "War on Christmas"! This year's stocking stuffer looks at England's Christmas ban from 1647 to 1660 and at a rather quirky pamphlet entitled "The Examination and Trial of Old Father Christmas." Season's greetings, Litterbugs! Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful! Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliterature Please like, subscribe, and...
Dec 23, 2024•20 min•Season 1Ep. 82
Send us Fan Mail Today we have a slightly different kind of show -- literary analysis takes a bit of a back seat to historical context. We'll look at the turbulent period between 1625 and 1660, when England went to war with itself over the roles of the monarchy and of Parliament. We'll look at primary historical documents as well as a little poetry to get a sense of the state of the nation as it begins its rise to a world power. Support the show If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting ...
Dec 19, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 81
Send us Fan Mail This Subcast episode marks the American Thanksgiving holiday by looking at two early accounts of the celebration by Pilgrims William Bradford and Edward Winslow and then turns to that great hymn of thanksgiving -- Psalm 107 -- from The Bay Psalm Book, the first book published in what would become the United States. We'll also look at what's called the "Puritan Plain Style" of composition, a marked departure from the ornate literature of its Anglican contemporaries. Support the s...
Nov 27, 2024•21 min•Season 1Ep. 80
