Literate

Episode 5: The Wild Swans at Coole by W. B. Yeats

Join us in experiencing W. B. Yeats's striking images and evocative sounds in The Wild Swans at Coole. We compare the 1917 and 1919 editions of this collection of poems. And we revel in the mastery of fit between form and content throughout. This is a book that absolutely rewards close reading! For that reason, we dive into the details of how the Irish Nobel laureate handles prominent themes, such as aging and love, as well as his subtler, intensifying focus on politics and war. Since we discuss certain poems at length, they are included in the notes below: "The Wild Swans at Coole", "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death", "The Fisherman", and "Tom O'Roughley".

What a pleasure to also hear from two experts on Yeats. The episode begins with Bernard O'Donoghue reading of "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death". He is a highly acclaimed poet, Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford University, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Later, he provides an extended reflection on how this collection of poems fits within Yeats's larger body of writings. We are also delighted to hear from Dr. Lauren Arrington, who is a Professor of English at Maynooth University and a director of the Yeats International Summer School: check it out! She highlights Yeats's tricky - even devious - use of personae, and shows how a single word in his poems may brim with significance.

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Episode 4: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

This week we're putting Franz Kafka's slim novella, The Metamorphosis, under the microscope. It's a famous story about one character, Gregor Samsa, transforming from a human into something decidedly not-human. An insect, or a "vermin", some kind of bug! As it turns out, the question of what he has become is even trickier to narrow down in the original German than it seems in English, so we compare several translations. We also discuss Gregor's wretched family, and their response to his metamorphosis. They may be the characters with human bodies, throughout the story, but they act in shockingly inhumane ways! As a result, Gregor's becoming a bug may offer a counterintuitive form of freedom from a terribly dreary life.

There's a lot going on in this small story, as our experts explain. Dr. Mark Harman, who is an acclaimed translator of Kafka and Professor Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, talks about the challenges and pleasures of rendering Kafka's German into English prose. Later we interview Dr. Carolin Duttlinger, who is an Associate Professor of German at Oxford University and co-director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre. She shows how popular ideas of the "kafkaesque", as dark and claustrophobic writing, certainly have something to them, but have also obscured certain aspects of his works, such as its comedy.

Dr. Franziska Kohlt, who is a Research Associate at the University of York, gave the readings at the start of this episode. After reading the book's first paragraph in its original German, she read out her own translation into English.

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Get in touch: @literatepodcast (Twitter) or literatepodcast@gmail.com

Episode 3: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Follow your wanderlust through Jack Kerouac's On the Road. This iconic novel of the Beat Generation takes us to 1950s America. It's a dizzying trip filled with jazz, poetry, friendship, betrayal, and the open road. We revel in the book's relentless momentum and scintillating language. But we also critique the troubling ways that it handles race and gender, and idealizes self-absorption.

Two expert guests expand our view of the book. Jerry Cimino, Founder and Director of the Beat Museum in San Francisco, makes Kerouac's post-war context come alive. He also describes the impact that On the Road had on counterculture movements like the hippies in the 1960s, and its enduring appeal for readers today. We also interview Dr. Jean-Christophe Cloutier, who is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He tells us about Kerouac's often-overlooked French Canadian background. That in turn challenges us to view this quintessentially American novel in a broader international context.

The clip of David Carradine reading from Jack Kerouac's On the Road comes courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio.

For more on the show visit literatepodcast.com

Get in touch: @literatepodcast (Twitter) or literatepodcast@gmail.com

Episode 2: Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

In this episode, we venture into the labyrinth of Jorge Luis Borges's collection of short stories, Ficciones. We explore his use of the short story, as a genre, while following apparently endless allusions across this philosophically rich and deceptively simple collection. The globally acclaimed novelist and translator Alberto Manguel provides writerly insights on Borges, in the form of an extended reflection. He explains that Borges-the-writer was always first and foremost Borges-the-reader, and how this is crucial to his writing craft. We also hear from Cristóbal Pérez Barra, who is a novelist, translator, and doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. He highlights the power of Borges's literary legacy, by describing his impact on successive writers from South America, and far beyond.

The audio clip of Jorge Luis Borges is excerpted from a recording of one of his Norton Lectures, "A Poet's Creed", delivered at Harvard University on 10 April 1968 (https://library.harvard.edu/poetry/listeningbooth/poets/borges.html).

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For more on the show visit literatepodcast.com

Get in touch: @literatepodcast (Twitter) or literatepodcast@gmail.com

Episode 1: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

In this episode, literary scholars Alicia Broggi and Erica Lombard discuss Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. The episode also features an extended reflection on the book by Dr. Dana Williams (Howard University), who is President of the Toni Morrison Society, and an interview with Dr. Tessa Roynon (Oxford University).

The clip of Toni Morrison reading Song of Solomon comes courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio.

For more on the show visit literatepodcast.com

Get in touch: @literatepodcast (Twitter) or literatepodcast@gmail.com

Coming soon! Literate podcast

Listen to the trailer for Literate, a new podcast about the "best" books. Each episode, literary scholars Alicia Broggi and Erica Lombard discuss one book on the New York Public Library’s 1995 “Books of the Century” list. They learn about its author and history, talk to experts, and ask whether it really is one of the books of twentieth century.

Episodes drop every two weeks, starting on September 3, with the first episode on Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.