Katie Barclay

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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

A contract is a start to something else.

And so, you know, he commits you to an ongoing relationship or certain kinds of agreements that are going to follow.

And so the kiss is actually something they do at the beginning that acknowledges their union, which confirms certain kinds of commitments to the other.

And then the relationship builds on that.

And it's quite interesting because sometimes we are very uncomfortable with that, I think.

And so the really great Barry Lyndon, which is eventually in the 17th made into a film by Stanley Kubrick, but it's based on a 19th century novel.

And in the novel, the kiss happens between the soldier who's the kind of mentor

and the main character the protagonist they kissed really early on in their relationship and the movie just does avoids that they kind of hug each other and they kiss the mentor dies which is in a battlefield and so in the modern film context where they've already established a friendship and a man is dying that seems an appropriate place for a kiss we can all get behind that right and it's also because he's dying it's not sexual right we can all be oh it's a nice death kiss

Whereas in the 19th century, they were very comfortable for that kiss to start, to be the beginning of a friendship.

And in fact, they don't kiss on the battlefield when he dies.

It's kind of one of those tragic deaths and he has to keep moving on with the troops and he has to leave his friend behind dead on the battlefield.

And so there isn't this kind of sentimental moment.

So it's really kind of interesting, I think, that we want the kiss to have to come after intimacy, whereas they saw, or for so much of our European history, we were happy with it starting somewhere.

people have great sense of humour, right?

They really love a rich symbol.

They can do many things at once, especially in literature or in art, right?

You know, maybe you don't want your contract with the king to have an erotic undertone.

But actually, because it can have multiple meanings,

There's lots of puns, there's lots of playfulness in these kinds of kisses.

But the thing is, it gets to be both, right?

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