The History of Literature
Episodes
289 Swann's Way
07 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since its first appearance, Marcel Proust's magnum opus In Search of Lost Time has delighted and confounded editors, readers, and critics. Published i...
288 The Triumph of Broadway (with Michael Riedel)
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Author and notorious New York Post columnist Michael Riedel joins Jacke to discuss his new book, Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway, which ex...
287 The Heptameron | Marguerite de Navarre
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her lifetime, Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was known as a benevolent and capable leader, a protectress of free thinkers, and one of the most i...
286 JRR Tolkien
26 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a professor, academic essay, and professional linguist - but the world knows him best as the author of The H...
285 Herodotus
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Herodotus (c. 484 - 425? BCE) has been called both "The Father of History" and "The Father of Lies." His accounts of the ancient world, including a de...
284 Westerns (with Anna North)
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke continues the Thursday Theme for November with a look at a genre that began in the nineteenth century and nearly dominated the twentieth: the We...
283 Planes, Trains & Automobiles - Top 10 Literary Modes of Transportation
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From the dramatic trains of Anna Karenina to the wide-open roads of Jack Kerouac, getting around has always played a central role in literature. But n...
282 Science Fiction
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Part 2 of our look at great literary genres, Jacke probes the development of science fiction, from ancient Greek travels to the moon to the amazing...
281 The Great Gatsby
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke takes a look at F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby (1925), which has been called by one newspaper "the American masterwork, the...
280 Romance Novels
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke starts a new Thursday Theme with a look at genre fiction. First up: Romance novels! Every year, over a billion dollars are spent on these books ...
279 Jean Rhys
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke takes a look at the life and works of Jean Rhys (1890-1979), whose masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), reimagined Jane Eyre from the point of ...
278 The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe (with Evie Lee)
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this special Halloween episode, Jacke and Evie take a look at Edgar Allan Poe's great revenge story, "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), written when...
277 George Orwell
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
George Orwell (1903-1950) was one of the twentieth century's great literary figures. An English novelist, who also excelled at essays and journalism, ...
276 Edgar Allan Poe Invents the Detective Story | "The Purloined Letter"
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1965, the critic Joseph Wood Krutch studied the available evidence and came to a surprising conclusion. "Edgar Allan Poe," he wrote, "invented the ...
275 Hemingway and the Truth (with Richard Bradford)
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Richard Bradford, author of the new biography The Man Who Wasn't There: A Life of Ernest Hemingway, joins Jacke to talk about Hemingway's un...
274 Baudelaire and the Flowers of Evil
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
He was "the king of poets," said Rimbaud, "a true God." T. S. Eliot called him a deformed Dante and said, “I am an English poet of American origin w...
273 The Book for Book Lovers - The Call Me Ishmael Phone Book (with Stephanie Kent and Logan Smalley)
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Authors Stephanie Kent and Logan Smalley join Jacke to talk about their new book for book lovers, The Call Me Ishmael Phone Book: An Interactive Guide...
272 "William Wilson" by Edgar Allan Poe (with Evie Lee)
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Evie Lee, a Vice President of the Literature Supporters Club, joins Jacke for a look at Poe's classic doppelgänger story, "William Wilson" (1839). H...
271 "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace (A Mike Palindrome Solo Special!)
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's another much-anticipated, often-requested Mike Palindrome Solo Episode! In this special installment of The History of Literature Podcast, Jacke t...
270 Edgar Allan Poe - "The Black Cat"
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1843, Edgar Allan Poe, desperate for money and terrified that his wife was about to die, "became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." F...
268 Forgotten Women of Literature 4 - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) was born in Mexico or, as it was known then, New Spain. She was a poet, a philosopher, a dramatist, a scholar, ...
267 Great Scot! The 6 Best Scottish Writers (with Margot Livesey)
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Fan favorite Margot Livesey returns to the History of Literature to discuss her new novel, The Boy in the Field, and to help Jacke choose the greatest...
265 Forgotten Women of Literature 3 | Aemelia Lanyer
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The "Forgotten Women of Literature" series continues with a look at Aemilia Bassano Lanyer (1569-1645), the first Englishwoman to publish a volume of ...
264 HoL Presents Tommy Orange's "Copperopolis" (a Storybound Project) | PLUS a Visit from Jacke Lonelyhearts
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The History of Literature Podcast presents "Copperopolis," written and performed by Tommy Orange, and produced by Storybound, a radio theater podcast....
263 Forgotten Women of Literature 2 - Cai Yan (Wenji)
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Cai Yan (Wenji) (c. 178 - c. 250?) was the daughter of Cai Yong, one of the most famous scholars of the Han Dynasty. After being widowed at a young ag...
262 Ovid
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ovid (43 BCE - 17 or 18 AD) was one of the most successful poets in the Roman Empire--until he was banished from Rome by Augustus himself. What led to...
261 Forgotten Women of Literature - Enheduanna (with Charles Halton)
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke and special guest Charles Halton take a look at the poetry of Enheduanna (2286-2252 BC), a high priestess in ancient Mesopotamia who is the earl...
260 HoL Presents Diksha Basu from the Storybound Project
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke Wilson and the History of Literature Podcast present a special guest episode from the Storybound project. Storybound is a radio theater program...
259 Shakespeare's Best | Sonnets 129 and 130 ("Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame" and "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun")
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the fourth and final installment of A Month of Shakespearean Sonnets, Jacke takes a look at two sonnets from the Dark Lady sequence, Sonnet 129 ("T...
Hatchet Jobs! When Reviewers Attack
24 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The vast majority of book reviews are informative and genteel. What books get that treatment, and why? Jacke and Mike take a look at the some of the m...
Shakespeare's Best | Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds")
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Continuing the "Shakespeare on Thursdays" theme for August, Jacke takes a look at Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds"), another one...
TS Eliot | The Waste Land
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1922, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), an American living in England, published The Waste Land, widely viewed as perhaps the greatest and most iconic poem o...
Anna Karenina
10 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1870, the 42-year-old Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) told his wife that he "wanted to write a novel about the fall of a society woman in th...
The Brontes' Secret Scandal (with Finola Austin)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Novelist Finola Austin joins Jacke for a discussion of her new novel Bronte's Mistress, which provides a fascinating new perspective on one of literat...
Beatrix Potter
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) was a naturalist, a conservationist, and a highly successful children's book author and illustrator, whose stories of Peter...
Stendhal
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the life and works of French author Stendhal (1783-1842), whose innovative novels The Red and the Black and The...
The History of Literature Presents: Storybound (with Mitchell S. Jackson)
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The History of Literature presents some content from another Podglomerate podcast, Storybound. In this episode from Storybound's first season, author ...
Raymond Carver (with Tom Perrotta)
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Novelist and screenwriter Tom Perrotta joins Jacke for a discussion of his blue collar New Jersey background, the cultural shock of attending Yale Uni...
Giovanni Boccaccio | The Decameron
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the Black Death swept through the city of Florence, Italian poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) began writing his classic tale of survi...
Joyce Carol Oates (with Evie Lee)
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Friend of the podcast Evie Lee joins Jacke to take a look at Joyce Carol Oates's classic short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (1966...
Alexandre Dumas
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke takes a look at the astonishing story of Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, whose own father (who wa...
Keeping Secrets! Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, and the CIA (with Lara Prescott)
29 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Author Lara Prescott joins Jacke to talk about her novel The Secrets We Kept, which is based on the incredible but true story of the CIA's efforts to ...
William Faulkner | Dry September
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The fourth part of a three-part episode run! Jacke takes the advice of a listener and adds William Faulkner's "Dry September" (1931) to the Baldwin-Fa...
Literary Battle Royal 2 - The Cold War (U.S. vs. U.S.S.R.)
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sputnik! Cuba! Glasnost and perestroika! In this follow-up to the very popular England vs. France literary battle royal, Jacke and Mike choose up side...
More Thoreau | Experiencing Nature (with Nina Shengold)
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"We can never get enough of nature," wrote Henry David Thoreau in 1854. "I suppose that what in other men is religion is in me love of nature." A cent...
The Seven Deadly Sins
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As with Santa's reindeer or Snow White's seven dwarves, we all know the phrase "Seven Deadly Sins" even if we struggle to remember the exact list. But...
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (with Amanda Stern)
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the autumn of 1902, a young man attending a German military school wrote to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke to ask him for some advice. Rilke responded...
Alice Munro | The Love of a Good Woman 3
05 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be good? What does it mean to love and be loved? What sacrifices do we make in order to bring about happiness? And how can we do ...
Alice Munro | The Love of a Good Woman 2
03 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Think about your life: Have you always gotten what you wanted? Have you LET yourself be happy? Have you kept secrets - from others, or even yourself? ...
Alice Munro | The Love of a Good Woman
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"She is our Chekhov," said Cynthia Ozick, "and she is going to outlast most of her contemporaries." Ozick was talking about the great Alice Munro, the...
C.S. Lewis
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was an Irish-born writer who spent most of his adult life in Oxford and Cambridge, studying, teaching, enjoying the co...
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
25 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was a successful administrator and general man-about-town in Restoration London. As a devoted theatergoer, a capable bureaucr...
James Baldwin - Going To Meet the Man
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a fearless artist, an uncompromising critic, a brilliant essayist, and an American who lived within his time and yet was...
William Faulkner - A Rose for Emily
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
William Faulkner (1897-1962) is one of the most celebrated and divisive figures in American literature. Widely recognized as one of the greatest novel...
Baldwin v Faulkner
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1950s, William Faulkner (1897-1962) was one of most celebrated novelists in America, highly praised for this formal innovation, his prodigious ...
Jorge Luis Borges
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) went from a childhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a wildly successful literary career, as his poems, short stories, a...
"A Village After Dark" by Kazuo Ishiguro
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this special quarantine edition, Jacke takes a brief look at the life and works of Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and hi...
Albert Camus
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Albert Camus (1913-1960) was born in Algeria to French parents. After his father died in World War I, when Albert was still an infant, the family was ...
"Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a plague that ravages the world and impairs the ability of humans to communicate with one another. What kind of society would we have? Who wou...
The Best of the Bard: Top 10 Greatest Lines in Shakespeare
20 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When was The Bard at his best? How great did the GOAT get? Hall-of-fame guest Mike Palindrome, the President of the Literature Supporters Club, joins ...
The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino | The African Library Project
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Another special quarantine edition! In this action-packed episode, Jacke talks to Robyn Speed and Tatiana Santos of the African Library Project (afric...
A Lost Spring (with Professor Mitchell Nathanson)
13 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Mitchell Nathanson, author of Jim Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original, joins Jacke for a discussion of athletes, heroes, and A.E. Housma...
After Rain by William Trevor
09 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
William Trevor was born in Ireland in 1928. When he was 26, he moved to England, where for the next 62 years he quietly became one of the most celebra...
Extra by Yiyun Li
02 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Yiyun Li (1972- ) was born in Beijing, China, the daughter of a teacher and a nuclear physicist. She dreamed of studying in America, hoping to escape ...
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1773, Phillis Wheatley became the first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in the English language. It was yet another milestone ...
Kate Chopin
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From within the quarantine, Jacke travels to 1893 and the Louisiana bayou, where he finds Kate Chopin, pioneering feminist and author of the classic n...
Kipling, Kingsley, and Conan Doyle - When Writers Go to War (with Sarah LeFanu)
23 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In early 1900, the paths of three British writers - Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley, and Arthur Conan Doyle - crossed in South Africa, during what has ...
Special Quarantine Edition - Gusev by Anton Chekhov
20 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
More bonus content! For those of you living in isolation (and those of you who aren't), Jacke explores the depths of the human condition - as well as ...
Special Quarantine Edition - Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
16 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the world deals with a pandemic, we turn to one of America's greatest (and least appreciated) writers, Katherine Anne Porter, and her masterpiece, ...
Edith Wharton
09 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“There are only three or four American novelists who can be thought of as 'major',” said Gore Vidal. “And Edith Wharton is one.” In this episo...
More John Keats
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Keats (1795-1821) was born in humble circumstances, the son of a man who took care of horses at a London inn, and he died in near obscurity. We k...
Conflict Literature (with Matt Gallagher)
24 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Gallagher is an American writer who served in the Iraq War as a U.S. Army captain. He first became known for his blog, which was shut down by the...
John Keats
17 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"Keats is with Shakespeare," wrote Matthew Arnold, and few would disagree. His life was short, but his poetry is deep and his legacy long enduring. Wh...
Agatha Christie (with Gillian Gill)
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Agatha Christie is one of the most successful writers of all time - it's often said that sales of Christie's books are surpassed only by Shakespeare a...
Karl Ove Knausgaard
03 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since the publication of the first volume of his massive novel Mein Kampf (or My Struggle) in 2009, Karl Ove Knausgaard (1968- ) has become a househol...
Saul Bellow
27 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Saul Bellow (1915-2005) was born in Quebec, immigrated to Chicago, and became one of the greatest of the great American novelists. In 1976 he won the ...
Living Poetry (with Bob Holman)
20 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Fellow poet Naomi Shihab Nye says that Bob Holman's "life gusto and poetry voice keep the world turning." In this episode of The History of Literature...
William Blake
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke takes a look at the astonishing life and works of William Blake (1757-1827), a poet, painter, engraver, illustrator, visionary, and one of the k...
Chekhov
06 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke welcomes in the new year by taking a deep dive into the melancholy (and beautiful) short story "Gooseberries" (1898), by the Russian genius Anto...
Virginia Woolf (with Gillian Gill)
26 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Through novels like To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway, and essays such as "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) has inspired generations ...
The Magic Mountain
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this special 200th episode of the History of Literature, Jacke and Mike discuss one of Mike's all-time favorite novels, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mou...
Jonathan Swift
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a man who loved ciphers and a cipher of a man, an Anglo-Irishman who claimed not to like Ireland but became one of its ...
Sylvia Plath
02 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was born in Boston in 1932, the daughter of a German-born professor, Otto Plath, and his student, Aurelia Schober. After her ...
Margaret Atwood
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A week ago, Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) turned 80. A month ago, she was awarded the Booker Prize for her eighteenth novel, The Testaments. But how did t...
Thomas Hardy
11 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
He was born to a lower class family of tradesmen in 1840. Eighty eight years later, he died as one of the most celebrated writers in England. His name...
George Saunders (with Mike Palindrome)
04 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke and Mike take a look at contemporary author George Saunders, author of Pastoralia, Tenth of December, and Lincoln at the Bardo, In spite of some...
Macbeth
28 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It's been called "the great Shakespearean play of stage superstition and uncanniness." It's also one of Shakespeare's four major tragedies, and for mo...
Alfred Hitchcock (with Mike Palindrome)
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke's joined by the Hall of Fame Guest Mike Palindrome (President of the Literature Supporters Club) for a look at the ten greatest films by the Mas...
Chinua Achebe
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chinua Achebe's first novel Things Fall Apart (1959) ushered in a new era where African countries, which had recently achieved post-colonial independe...
Blood and Sympathy in the 19th Century (with Professor Ann Kibbie)
03 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"England may with justice claim to be the native land of transfusion," wrote one European physician in 1877, acknowledging Great Britain’s role in d...
Weeping for Gogol
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"Gogol was a strange creature," said Nabokov, "but genius is always strange." Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809 – 1852) rose from obscurity to a brill...
Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes (with Yuval Taylor)
16 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Their names we...
The Brontes
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Although their lives were filled with darkness and death, their love for stories and ideas led them into the bright realms of creative genius. They we...
Robert Louis Stevenson
31 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) went from a childhood in the western islands of Scotland to the heights of literary popularity and success, belov...
Marcel Proust
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) did little of note until he turned 38 years old - but from that point forward, he devoted the rest of his life to writing a ...
George Eliot
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps the greatest of all the many great English novelists, George Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans in 1819 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Her fat...
Samuel Beckett
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We're back! A newly reenergized Jacke Wilson returns for a deep dive into the life, works, and politics of Samuel Beckett. Yes, we know him as one of ...
182 Darkness and Light (with Jessica Harper)
06 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Harper has had the kind of life it would take ten memoirs to capture. Born in 1949, she went from a childhood in Illinois to a career as a Bro...
181 David Foster Wallace (with Mike Palindrome)
27 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Frequent guest Mike Palindrome takes the wheel for another solo episode on David Foster Wallace, including a deep dive into Wallace's unfinished manus...
179 The Oscars by Decade (with Brian Price)
13 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Screenwriter and film scholar Brian Price (author of Classical Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting: Aristotle and the Modern Screenwriter) joi...