Sophie Gee
speaker
10,523 appearances
38 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 3d ago
Sophie Gee’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 34 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 7.
Appearances
So actually what it is, is an incredibly Chaucerian scene.
podcast-host
And we're seeing this kind of tradition of painters who included William Blake, who also did a very famous painting of Chaucer and the Pilgrims.
podcast-host
We're seeing this tradition of painters who think of literature as kind of giving them their subject matter, that it's English literature that elevates England to being of kind of, well, European reputation, Jonty, being of global importance, and that the painters are sort of bouncing off that.
podcast-host
Well, I'm looking and it says that it's a copy of a painting, also made by Brown, that was intended for the Houses of Parliament.
podcast-host
And so I'm wondering whether Richard II is just too provocative a figure because he's deposed, because he's associated with political instability, whereas Edward III is connected to sort of monarchical stability and the formation of nationhood.
podcast-host
What do you think?
podcast-host
He's too much of a troublemaker.
podcast-host
He's a more solid proposition.
podcast-host
The one next door is another Chaucerian subject.
podcast-host
This one's by Frederick George Stevens.
podcast-host
And it's called The Proposal, but it's basically a redo of a scene from The Clark's Tale.
podcast-host
In the Canterbury Tales, with the hyper-loyal figure of Griselda, who's this kind of allegory of womanly loyalty to her husband.
podcast-host
She's been tempted by a nobleman, but she's a working class woman and she remains true to her husband.
podcast-host
And...
podcast-host
What's striking about this scene, and again, you know, really drawing on Chaucer, is we're set, it's set in a farmhouse.
podcast-host
There's just a sort of crude brick floor.
podcast-host
There are some chickens walking around, which is a very nicely Chaucerian image.
podcast-host
And we're seeing ordinary life playing out here with the supplicant nobleman who has been literally brought to his knees by the loyalty and the nobility of this young working class farm girl.
podcast-host
So your point, I think, is really right, Jonti, that Pre-Raphaelites are not just influenced by literature, but it's almost like their manifesto is that the kinds of stories that are being told in literature and the kind of cultural prestige of English literature, it's time for it to migrate across into British art.
podcast-host
And actually, the placard accompanying the picture says that before Shakespeare's, before the house was restored, it had graffiti on the walls left by people, including Dickens, who seems to be all over the place,
podcast-host
Showing 41–60 of 10,523 · page 3 of 527
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