Katie Barclay

speaker

340 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 3 Aug

Katie Barclay’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The History of Literature · 821 A History of the Kiss (with Katie Barclay) | Wonderland Books! (with Amy Joyce and Gayle Weiswasser) · 3 Aug 2026 podcast

And so I interpret them.

I go, well, what can we learn about the kiss from how they put the bodies on this page, from the other things that are in the image as well?

from what that kind of I guess what's happening in the image to help us better understand what the kiss is so the images are quite central because you know they're part of how I tell the story of what the history of the kiss is or was but I guess the things I find really interesting in a lot of kiss paintings in the medieval period right is that one they all stand in a triangle okay so they kiss with their mouths but their bodies are apart it's very good holy kissing yeah

And they have their eyes open.

And you think, okay, that's that famous painting, like Giotto's fresco, when you look at Anne and Joachim, when they learn that she's pregnant and God has made this happen in their old age.

They run and they kiss each other and they hug each other, actually, in the Bible.

But in his painting, he makes them kiss.

But it's a really beautiful piece of work.

But the body shape, you think, oh, well, that's just that.

But in fact, when you look at all sorts of medieval sketches and corners of books and you've got people kissing, they're all doing the sort of interesting holding the body apart triangle shape with the eyes open.

And I think that's quite interesting when we then compare it to today, where a lot of modern representations of kisses, we close our eyes.

And in fact, advice on how to kiss well tells you to close your eyes.

And so there's kind of, I think, because medieval people take the sharing of the soul much more seriously than we do.

For us, it's a metaphor.

For them, they actually think quite seriously about how that happens.

The open eyes allows for that communication across bodies and the ways that the mouth kiss is actually also meant to achieve.

And so they're thinking about that.

But also, I like the fact that it's a kiss of equality.

So even when it's a man and a woman, even when they're husband and wife, even when it would have been a very patriarchal marriage, they still kiss on this equal plane.

And I think if we compare this to the 19th century kisses, the 19th century kisses are socially acceptable and don't cause scandals.

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