Research English At Durham
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Space, choreography and royal iconography at the English court
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For diplomats coming to the court of Charles I, it was more than a case of knocking at the door and being shown in. In this Late Summer Lectures...
Rousing the vox populi in James Shirley’s The Politician
27 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast from our Late Summer Lectures series, Kathleen Foy from Durham University explains how James Shirley’s 1639 tragedy The Politi...
Birds and Embodiment in Shelley and Keats
20 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast from our Late Summer Lectures series, Dr Amanda Blake Davis of the University of Sheffield takes us on a flight through birds &n...
The Autobiographical Pursuit of Happiness in Eighteenth-Century Literature
13 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast from our Late Summer Lectures series, Alex Hobday (University of Cambridge) examines how eighteenth-century culture sought to an...
In Conversation with Jane Smiley
19 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In a wide-ranging interview, Pulitzer-prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley explains how literary characters take on a life of their own,...
An Evening with T.S. Eliot
12 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Centre for Poetry and Poetics held an evening to celebrate the poetry and influence of T.S. Eliot. Dr Gareth Reeves and Professor Jason Hard...
Antler
05 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Clegg’s first collection, Antler, features prehistoric landscapes, folk tale and myth. John’s reading includes a histor...
To Hell with Paradise
29 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gareth Reeves’ third collection, To Hell With Paradise: New and Selected Poems, has just been published by Carcanet. In this reading from...
The Challenges of Researching and Writing Poetry
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Two of the Department’s published poets, Gareth Reeves and his PhD student John Clegg, explore how their writing of poetry relates to their re...
The Poetry of W.B. Yeats
15 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A century and a half since his birth, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats is one of the best-loved in the English language, known for his lyric poems &nbs...
Celebrating the Brontës
08 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Celebrate the literature and legacy of the Brontë sisters in this podcast, recorded around the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s b...
Becoming Sea: A Blurred Lyric of the Ocean
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We humans are creatures of the land, who usually observe the sea from above its surface. Beneath the surface, though, the sea looks, sound...
Albion: The Brut Chronicle
17 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Albion. Today that word conjures impressions of a lost, utopian version of Britain – but the story of Albion as it was originally told in the ...
Alfred the Great Through History
10 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A king sits by the fire in a peasant’s cottage, brooding on the problems of his kingdom. Suddenly the smell of burning fills the air. The cake...
Tics in the Theatre: The 'Quiet Audience' and the Neurodivergent Spectator
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Do you get annoyed when people rustle their crisp packets or check their mobile phones in the theatre? If so you’re probably not alone –...
Eugenics in Utopian Literature
27 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of genetic engineering may conjure visions of futuristic horror, such as mutant human beings with peculiar powers. But some novel...
When Masters Became Tragic Heroes
13 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1592 the face of theatre changed forever. From the death of Julius Caesar and its wide political ramifications, to the love between Ant...
(S)he’s just not that into you: Resisting Love in Medieval Romance Literature
21 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The word ‘romance’ conjures images of men and women meeting one another and falling helplessly in love. But if we trace the literature...
Registers of petition in the holograph manuscripts of Thomas Hoccleve
14 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Durham University’s Palace Green Library is home to many medieval manuscripts, but among the most precious is one of just three survivin...
Poet Caroline Bird Speaks to the 98 Percent
12 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Poetry doesn’t ask you how old you are at the door”, says Caroline Bird, reflecting on the fact that her first collection, Looking at Letterbox...
The Stream of Consciousness in William Wordsworth and James Joyce
07 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine yourself immersed in a beautiful landscape, and being moved by the view before your eyes. To remember the experience, perhaps you ...
The Geographic and Linguistic Identity of the American Midwest
05 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Do you walk on a sidewalk or a pavement? Eat fries or chips? The differences between American and British English can seem trivial at times, but they ...
Inscribing Identities in Childhood and Deathbed Scenes
24 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There can be few things in life more tragic than the death of a child. Not surprisingly, when this is represented in literature, the deathbed scene wi...
Beginnings and Endings in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
17 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Vivam!” “I will live.” The final word of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, proclaiming the poet’s hope that he will continue to be known ...
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, and the day the Globe burned down
10 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we say that a theatre performance ‘brought the house down’, we usually don’t mean that literally. But in the case of Shakespear...
Classical Music, Conflict, and Identity in the Contemporary Novel
10 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we listen to classical music, some of us might think we hear a story in the melody - but others will not. Some of us might know about the life of...
Snake Women: Crafting Power in Medieval Origin Stories
03 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Think of a medieval romance, and you might imagine brave courtly knights dashing to the rescue of women held captive by monstrous beasts a...
A Short History of Interactive Narratives
03 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Which breakfast cereal do you prefer: Frosted Flakes or Sugar Puffs? It’s the sort of decision many of us face, bleary eyed, each morning. &nb...
Dickens's Ghosts: An Altered Perspective
23 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"Marley's ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature enquiry, that it was all a dream, his ...
Rachael Boast on the Language and Sound of Poetry
11 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As a poet, if you cooperate with language you end up ‘saying things you didn’t know you were thinking.’ So claims the multi-award-winning ...
Brexit and the Democratic Intellect
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The debate surrounding Britain’s vote to leave the European Union exposed, among other things, a suspicion of ‘experts.’ How did int...
Will Harris on Becoming a Poet
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It can seem dauntingly difficult for a young poet to gain a name and to get published by a respected press or magazine. But that’s exact...
Future Memory and Circular Time in Charles Dickens' 'The Signal-Man'
08 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On June 9th of 1865, sitting comfortably on his train home from Paris, Charles Dickens had a brush with death. Workmen on a bridge had failed &n...
The Classical Underworld as a Memoryscape
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In reality death may be a one-way trip, but literature allows us to travel imaginatively to and from the afterlife, visiting the ghosts of  ...
Polly Atkin on the Places of Her Poetry
16 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Polly Atkin published her first full length poetry collection, Basic Nest Architecture, in 2017. Like her two pamphlets before it – bone song (2008)...
Time and Place: Bakhtin and Shakespeare
30 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
All the world’s a stage – one of Shakespeare’s more famous sayings, and perhaps now almost a cliché. However, Helen Clifford uses the work of R...
JL Williams on the Origins of Her Poetry
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When she was growing up in rural New Jersey, JL Williams wrote a play about pirates. Today, Williams is best known as a poet, but she has ...
Wandering Across Scandinavia in Egils Saga
16 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
An island nation that wants to be involved in the politics of wider Europe, but also removed from it. A fractious debate over power, sover...
Gillian Allnutt on a Life in Poetry
21 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Gillian Allnutt is the author of nine collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Wake, was published by Bloodaxe in 2018. Ahead of its publicati...
Sounds Unreal
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sound is part of our everyday life experience, but it’s hard to understand and define its meaning and workings; sound can feel strange or unfamiliar...
Liz Berry's Locations and Locutions
07 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The title of Liz Berry’s first, multi-award-winning poetry collection, Black Country, signals her place of birth - and unsurprisingly the book was d...
Aurélia Lassaque on Poetry Across Languages
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to Aurélia Lassaque, a French poet and performer who writes, sings, and speaks in French, English and Occitan – a language spoken in parts o...
The Pleasures and Challenges of Contemporary Literature
19 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Meet Arya Thampuran and Katie Harling-Lee, two PhD researchers who have particular interests in contemporary fiction, and who have set up a new networ...
Crash and Burn: A Poetry Reading in Memory of Michael O’Neill
21 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In December 2018 we lost our colleague, teacher and friend Professor Michael O’Neill. Just before he died, Michael had completed his fifth collectio...
Philosophy and Literature
16 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Are philosophy and literature two distinct disciplines, divided by a common language? Emphatically not, according to Michael Mack and Barry Stocker, e...