The History of Literature
Episodes
177 Sherwood Anderson (with Alyson Hagy)
30 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One hundred years ago, a collection of short stories by a little-known author from Ohio burst onto the literary scene, causing a minor scandal for the...
176 William Carlos Williams (The Use of Force)
23 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the American modernist poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) is famous among poetry fans for his vivid, economical poems like "The Red Wheel...
175 Virgin Whore - The Virgin Mary in Medieval Literature and Culture (with Professor Emma Maggie Solberg)
16 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we know the Virgin Mary as quiet, demure, and (above all) chaste, but this wasn't always the way she was understood or depicted. In her new boo...
174 David Foster Wallace (A Mike Palindrome Special!)
09 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ask and ye shall receive! It's an all-Mike episode devoted entirely to one of his literary heroes, David Foster Wallace. Enjoy! Help support the sh...
173 The Yellow Wallpaper (with Evie Lee)
01 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Happy new year! Host Jacke Wilson is joined by special guest Evie Lee, a vice-president at the Literature Supporters Club, for a conversation about th...
172 Holiday Movies (with Brian Price)
19 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Seasons Greetings! In this episode, Jacke attempts to recover from last week's gloominess with something lighter and cheerier: a trip to the movies! H...
171 To Sleep Perchance to Dream - On Writers and Death
12 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
"To die, to sleep - to sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come..." In these immortal lines, S...
170 Toni Morrison
05 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
TONI MORRISON (b. 1931) is one of the most successful and admired authors in the history of American literature. Her novels include The Bluest Eye (19...
169 Dostoevsky
28 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881) was, in the estimation of James Joyce, “the man more than any other who has created modern prose.” “Outside Shakes...
168 Jhumpa Lahiri ("The Third and Final Continent")
21 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What was it like to relocate from India to London to America in the early 1970s? And how can a daughter hope to recapture the experience of her father...
167 F Scott Fitzgerald
07 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when the party is over? Can you ever truly escape your past? Jacke and Mike take a look at F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic 1931 story of gu...
166 Stephen King (with the Sisters of Slaughter)
31 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
STEPHEN KING (1947- ) was born in the northern state of Maine, where he has lived most of his life. For more than forty years, he has been the world's...
165 Ezra Pound
24 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
EZRA POUND (1885-1972) was born in a small mining town in Idaho and died in Venice, Italy. In his eighty-seven years, he changed the face of American ...
164 Karl Marx
17 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Marx (1818-1883) turned his early interest in literature and philosophy into a lifelong study of the socioeconomic forces unleashed by the rise o...
163 Gabriel Garcia Marquez (with Sarah Bird)
10 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke welcomes author Sarah Bird to the program to talk about her background, her writing, and her readerly passion for the fiction of the great twent...
161 Voltaire
26 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Voltaire was born Francois Marie Arouet in 1694 in Paris, France, the son of a respectable but not particularly eminent lawyer. By the time he died at...
160 Ray Bradbury (with Carolyn Cohagan)
17 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Special guest Carolyn Cohagan, author of the Time Zero trilogy and founder of the creative writing workshop Girls with Pens, joins Jacke for a discuss...
159 Herman Melville (with Mike Palindrome and Cristina Negrón)
10 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today, Herman Melville (1819-1891) is considered one of the greatest of American writers, and a leading candidate for THE American novelist thanks to ...
158 "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
03 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s and '70s, the Vietnam War dominated the hearts and minds of a generation of Americans. In 1990, the American writer Tim O'Brien, himself ...
157 Travel Books (with Mike Palindrome)
22 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
"The world is a book," said Augustine, "and those who do not travel read only one page." But what about books ABOUT traveling? Do they double the plea...
155 Plato
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition,” said Alfred North Whitehead, “is that it consists of a series of ...
154 John Milton
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John Milton (1608 - 1674) was a revolutionary, a republican, an iconoclast, a reformer, and a brilliant polemicist, who fearlessly took on both churc...
153 Charles Dickens
25 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was the greatest novelist of the Victorian age. In his 58 years he went from a hardscrabble childhood to a wor...
152 George Sand
18 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
George Sand wrote an astonishing number of novels and plays, and had friendships and affairs with an astonishing range of men and women. She dressed i...
151 Viking Poetry - The Voluspa (with Noah Tetzner)
11 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Vikings! Sure, they had helmets and hammers, but did they also have... poetry? Indeed they did! In this episode, we talk to Noah Tetzner, host of ...
150 Chekhov's "The Lady with the Little Dog"
04 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It's a deceptively simple story: a man and a woman meet, have an affair, are separated, and reunite. And yet, in writing about Anton Chekhov's story, ...
149 Raising Readers (aka The Power of Literature in an Imperfect World)
27 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke and Mike respond to an email from a listener who is about to become a father and wondering about the role of literature in the life of a young c...
147 Leo Tolstoy
13 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When asked to name the three greatest novels ever written, William Faulkner replied, “Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina.” Nabokov said, ...
146 Power Ranking the Nobel Prize for Literature
07 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Nobel Prize for Literature has a special place in the literary landscape. We revere the prize and its winners - and yet we often find ourselves pu...
145 Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know - The Story of Lord Byron
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Later Romantic poet George Gordon Byron, once described by Lady Caroline Lamb as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know," lived 36 years and became wo...
144 Food in Literature (with Ronica Dhar)
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Food, glorious food! We all know its power for nourishment, pleasure, and comfort -- and we’ve all felt the sharp pangs of its absence. How has this...
143 A Soldier's Heart - Teaching Literature at the U.S. Military Academy (with Professor Elizabeth Samet)
14 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Since ancient times, societies have used rousing lines of poetry to inspire soldiers to acts of heroism, courage, and sacrifice. But what about litera...
142 Comedian Joe Pera Talks with Us (with Joe Pera)
07 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Comedian Joe Pera has been hailed as one of the top "Comedians Under 30," "20 of the Most Innovative Comedians Working Today," and the "Cozy Sweater o...
141 Kurt Vonnegut (with Mike Palindrome)
30 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
"The year was 2081," the story begins, "and everyone was finally equal." In this episode of the History of Literature, Jacke and Mike take a look at K...
140 Pulp Fiction and the Hardboiled Crime Novel (with Charles Ardai)
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1896, an enterprising man named Frank Munsey published the first copy of Argosy, a magazine that combined cheap printing, cheap paper, and cheap au...
139 A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1922, the miserable genius Franz Kafka wrote a short story, Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist), about another miserable genius: a man whose “a...
138 Why Poetry (with Matthew Zapruder)
09 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Why Poetry, the poet Matthew Zapruder has issued "an impassioned call for a return to reading poetry and an incisive argument for its ...
136 The Kids Are All Right (Aren't They?) - Making the Case for Literature
23 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Why does literature matter? Why read at all? Jacke Wilson takes questions from high school students and attempts to make the case for literature. Wor...
135 Aristotle Goes to the Movies (with Brian Price)
16 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Hollywood screenwriter and professional script doctor Brian Price, author of Classical Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting: Aristotle and the ...
134 The Greatest Night of Franz Kafka's Life
10 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We use the term Kafkaesque to describe bureaucracies and other social institutions with nightmarishly complex, illogical, or bizarre qualities - and i...
133 The Hidden Machinery - Discovering the Secrets of Fiction (with Margot Livesey)
02 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wonder how fiction works? Or what great literature can teach us about writing? Novelist Margot Livesey returns to the show for a discussion of he...
132 Top 10 Literary Villains
23 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Villains! Bad guys ! Femme fatales! We love them in movies - but what about literature? What makes villains so effective (and so essential)? What do t...
131 Dante in Love (with Professor Ellen Nerenberg and Anthony Valerio)
15 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was the greatest poet of his era and one of the greatest artists of all time. His masterpiece, the Divine Com...
130 The Poet and the Painter – The Great Love Affair of Anna Akhmatova and Amedeo Modigliani
08 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) began her career as a poet of love and ended it as the poet of suffering and heartbreak, thanks in no small part to the tot...
129 Great Sports Novels – Where Are They? (with Mike Palindrome and Reagan Sova)
01 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, the Super Bowl draws over 100 million viewers in the U.S. alone, and the Olympics and World Cup will be watched by billions around the wor...
128 Top 10 Animals in Literature (with Mike Palindrome)
26 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Continuing our look at animals in literature, we’re joined by Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, for a discussion of the ...
127 Gertrude Stein
20 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946) would be essential to the history of literature had she never written a word – but she did write words, lots of them,...
126 Animals in Literature (Part One)
15 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by a listener’s heartfelt request, we take a look at an often overlooked subject: animals in literature. In this episode, a precursor to a ...
125 Raymond Carver
07 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Raymond Carver (1938-1988) packed a lot of pain of suffering into his relatively brief life. He also experienced relief and even joy – and along the...
124 James Joyce’s “The Dead” (Part 2)
22 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In this second part of a two-part episode, we look at the resounding conclusion of James Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead,” which contains some of ...
123 James Joyce’s The Dead (Part 1)
19 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Happy holidays! In this special two-part episode, host Jacke Wilson takes a look at a story that he can’t stop thinking about: James Joyce’s maste...
122 Young James Joyce
15 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of James Joyce as a man in his thirties and forties, a monkish, fanatical, eyepatch-wearing author, trapped in his hovel and his own m...
121 A Portrait of the Poet as a Young Man – John Ashbery’s Early Years (with Karin Roffman)
06 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, author Karin Roffman joins Jacke for a conversation about her literary biography of John Ashbery, one of America’s greatest twentie...
119 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
22 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Very few works of art have had the cultural and literary impact of J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye. An immediate success upon its publi...
118 Oscar’s Ghost – The Battle for Oscar Wilde’s Legacy (with Laura Lee)
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Episode 87, we looked at the trials of Oscar Wilde and how they led to his eventual imprisonment and tragically early death. This episode picks up ...
117 Machiavelli and The Prince
03 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) went from being a little-known functionary to one of the most famous and controversial political theorists of all time...
116 Ghost Stories!
28 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the Halloween Episode! After some false starts (thanks, Gar!), Jacke settles in to discuss some ghost stories, including a few old chestnuts, a...
115 The Genius of Alice Munro
23 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
She was born Alice Ann Laidlaw on July 10, 1931, in a small town called Wingham Ontario, the daughter of a mink farmer and a schoolteacher. Eighty yea...
114 Christopher Marlowe – What Happened and What If?
16 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1921, T.S. Eliot wrote, “When Shakespeare borrowed from him, which was pretty often at the beginning, Shakespeare either made something inferior ...
112 The Novelist and the Witch-Doctor – Unpacking Nabokov’s Case Against Freud (with Joshua Ferris)
30 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
“I admire Freud greatly,” the novelist Vladimir Nabokov once said, “as a comic writer.” For Nabokov, Sigmund Freud was “the Viennese witch-...
111 The Americanest American – Ralph Waldo Emerson
25 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1984, the literary scholar Harold Bloom had this to say about Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Emerson is the mind of our climate, the principal source of ...
110 Heart of Darkness – Then and Now
18 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jacke and Mike discuss Joseph Conrad’s short novel Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, and Eleanor Coppola’s documen...
109 Women of Mystery (with Christina Kovac)
13 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Author Christina Kovac (The Cutaway: A Thriller) joins Jacke for a discussion of crime fiction, writing a strong female protagonist, working in the lo...
108 Beowulf (aka Need a Hero? Get a Grip…)
07 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The poem called Beowulf (ca. 850 CE) was composed in Old English during what is known as the Middle Ages. Telling the tale of a hero who fights two m...
107 The Man and the Myth – Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes (with Mattias Bostrom)
31 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Continuing our series on literary myths, we’re joined by Mattias Bostrom, author of From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Crea...
106 Literature Goes to the Movies, Part Two – Flops, Bombs, and Stinkeroos
24 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Ah, the sweet smell of success… and the burning stench of failure. Continuing their two part conversation on literary adaptations, Jacke and Mike c...
105 Funny Women, Crimes Against Book Clubs, George Orwell, and More (with Kathy Cooperman)
17 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Kathy Cooperman, author of the new novel Crimes Against a Book Club, joins the show to discuss everything from the secret lives of book clubs to her o...
104 King Lear
10 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We all know that Shakespeare’s King Lear is one of the greatest tragedies ever written. But was it too tragic? Dr. Johnson thought it might be. Leo ...
102 Pablo Neruda
27 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) lived an eventful life: from his youth in Chile, to the sensational reception of his book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Des...
100 The Greatest Books with Numbers in the Title
06 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s here! Episode 100! Special guest Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, returns for a numbers-based theme: what are the ...
99 History and Mystery (with Radha Vatsal)
29 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Radha Vatsal, author of Murder Between the Lines: A Kitty Weeks Mystery, joins Jacke for a discussion of intrepid “girl” reporters in 1910s New Yo...
98 Great Literary Feuds
22 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when writers try to get along with other writers? Sometimes it goes well – and sometimes it ends in a fistfight, a drink in the face, o...
97 Dad Poetry (with Professor Bill)
15 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s Father’s Day weekend here in the U.S., and that means thinking about golf, grilling, and…poetry? On the History of Literature Podcast it do...
96 Dracula, Lolita, and the Power of Volcanoes (with Jim Shepard)
08 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Author Jim Shepard joins the podcast to discuss everything from the humor of Christopher Guest and S.J. Perelman to the poetic philosophy of Robert Fr...
95 The Runaway Poets – The Triumphant Love Story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning
29 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) was one of the most prolific and accomplished poets of the Victorian age, an inspiration to Emily Dickensen, Oscar Wilde...
94 Smoke, Dusk, and Fire – The Jean Toomer Story
22 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jean Toomer (1894-1967) was born into a prominent black family in Washington, D.C., but it wasn’t until he returned to the land of agrarian Georgia ...
93 Robert Frost Finds a Friend
16 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a curious but compelling story: it starts in the years just before World War I, when struggling poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) hastily packed up...
92 The Books of Our Lives
12 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
“In the middle of life’s journey,” wrote Dante Alighieri, “I found myself in a selva oscura.” Host Jacke Wilson and frequent guest Mike Pali...
91 In Which John Donne Decides to Write a Poem About a Flea
05 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
John Donne (1572-1631) may have been the most wildly inventive poet who ever lived. But that doesn’t mean he was the most successful. Dr. Johnson, w...
90 Mark Twain’s Final Request
28 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1910, the American author Mark Twain took to his bed in his Connecticut home. Weakened by disease and no longer able to write, the legendary humo...
89 Primo Levi
21 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Primo Levi (1919-1987) lived quietly and wrote with restraint. An Italian Jewish writer, professional chemist, and Holocaust survivor, he was, said It...
87 Man in Love: The Passions of D.H. Lawrence
07 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Edwardian novelist D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) lived and wrote with the fury of a thousand suns. His novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and Love...
86 Don Juan in Literature (aka The Case of the Red-Hot Lover)
02 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From his earliest days as a popular legend, through many appearances in drama and poetry and fiction and film, the sexual conquistador Don Juan has be...
85 Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
27 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1813, a young author named Jane Austen built on the success of her popular novel Sense and Sensibility with a new novel about the emotional life of...
84 The Trials of Oscar Wilde
17 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In February of 1895, the playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) continued an astonishing run of theatrical success with the opening of his artistic master...
83 Overrated! Top 10 Books You Don’t Need to Read
10 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Life is short, and books are many. How many great books have you read? How many more have you NOT read? How to choose? Mike Palindrome, President of t...
82 Robinson Crusoe
03 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1719, a prolific author and political agitator named Daniel Defoe published a long-form narrative about a shipwrecked sailor stranded on a desert i...
81 Faust (aka The Devil Went Down to Germany)
24 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever wanted something so badly you’d sell your soul to get it? Youth? Wealth? Sex? Power? Knowledge? We call it making a deal with the devi...
80 Power Play! Shakespeare’s Henry V
17 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Who rules us and why? What does Shakespeare’s Henry V (c. 1599) tell us about the character of a leader? What does it tell us about the character of...
79 Music That Melts the Stars – Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
10 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1851, a 30-year-old Frenchman named Gustave Flaubert set out to write a novel about a discontented housewife in a style that would melt the stars. ...
78 Jane Eyre, The Good Soldier, Giovanni’s Room (with Margot Livesey)
03 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Writing about the Scottish-born novelist Margot Livesey, the author Alice Sebold remarked, “Every novel of Margot Livesey’s is, for her readers, ...
77 Top 10 Literary Cities
27 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a city a great literary city? Having a tradition of famous authors? A culture of bookstores and cafes and publishing houses and universitie...
76 Darkness and the Power of Literature – The Forbidden Stories of North Korea (with Terry Hong)
18 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For 70 years, the people of North Korea have lived through a totalitarian nightmare – and those of us in the outside world have had little access to...
75 The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki
11 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
With a strong claim to be the first novel in history, the Japanese classic The Tale of Genji (ca. 1001-1012), by Murasaki Shikibu, or Lady Murasaki, i...
74 Great First Chapters (with Vu Tran)
01 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a new year! A time for fresh beginnings! And on the History of Literature Podcast, it’s a time to celebrate beginnings. Vu Tran, author of th...
73 Javier Marias and the Philosophical Novel
27 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Spanish novelist Javier Marías (b. 1951) has led a fascinating life, from his childhood as the son of a philosopher to his role as the king of a ...
72 The Best Christmas Stories in Literature
19 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sure, we all know the story of Frosty and Rudolph… but what about literary Christmas stories? How have great authors treated (or mistreated) this ce...
70 Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
05 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Just after World War II, the poet and critic W.H. Auden said that Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (ca. 1959) is “of great relevance to our time, thoug...
69 Virginia Woolf and Her Enemies (with Professor Andrea Zemgulys) / Children’s Books
28 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Early in her career, novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) wrote a critical essay in which she set forth her views of what fiction can and should do. T...
68 Listener Feedback and Thanksgiving Thoughts
23 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the Thanksgiving episode! Jacke and Mike respond to listener feedback and discuss some literary things to thankful for. Authors discussed inclu...