Close Readings

For their final conversation Among the Ancients, Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones turn to the contradictions of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Said by Machiavelli to be the last of the ‘five good emperors’ who ruled Rome for most of the second century CE, Marcus oversaw devastating wars on the frontiers, a deadly plague and economic turmoil. The writings known in English as The Meditations, and in Latin as ‘to himself’, were composed in Greek in the last decade of Marcus’ life. They reveal the emperor’s preoccupations with illness, growing old, death and posthumous reputation, as he urges himself not to be troubled by such transient things.

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Further reading in the LRB:

Mary Beard: Was he quite ordinary?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n14/mary-beard/was-he-quite-ordinary

Emily Wilson: I have gorgeous hair

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/emily-wilson/i-have-gorgeous-hair

Shadi Bartsch: Dying to Make a Point

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n22/shadi-bartsch/dying-to-make-a-point

M.F. Burnyeat: Excuses for Madness

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n20/m.f.-burnyeat/excuses-for-madness

Get in touch: [email protected]

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For the final episode of their series in search of the medieval sense of humour Irina and Mary look at one of the most remarkable women authors of the Middle Ages, Gwerful Mechain, who lived in Powys in the 15th century. Mechain was part of a lively literary coterie in northeast Wales and in her poem Cywydd y Cedor (‘Ode to the Vagina’) she challenged the conventional approach of her fellow male poets to praise every part of a woman’s body apart from her genitalia. Her witty, combative verses, intended for public performance, deployed a brilliant mastery of the complex metrical tradition of medieval Welsh poetry to discuss the most intimate physical experiences.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings, sign up:

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As our Close Readings series come to an end this year, you’re probably wondering what’s coming in 2025. We’re delighted to announce there’ll be four new series starting in January:

‘Conversations in Philosophy’ with Jonathan Rée and James Wood

Jonathan and James challenge a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of philosophy and literature, as they consider how style, narrative, and the expression of ideas play through philosophical writers including Kierkegaard, Mill, Nietzsche, Woolf, Beauvoir and Camus.

Reading list here:

https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/posts/conversations-in-philosophy

‘Fiction and the Fantastic’ with Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis.

Marina and guests will traverse the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, dread and hope, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin.

Reading list here:

https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/posts/fiction-and-the-fantastic

‘Love and Death’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

Mark and Seamus explore the oscillating power of outrage and grief, bitterness and consolation, in poetry in English from the Renaissance to the present day. Their series will consider the elegies of Milton, Hardy, Bishop, Plath and others at their most intimate and expressive.

Reading list here:

https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/posts/love-and-death

‘Novel Approaches’ with Clare Bucknell, Thomas Jones and other guests

Clare, Tom and guests discuss a selection of 19th-century (mostly) English novels from Mansfield Park to New Grub Street, looking in particular at the roles played in the books by money and property.

Reading list here:

https://lrb.supportingcast.fm/posts/novel-approaches

And the subscription will continue to include access to all our past Close Readings series.

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GIFTS

If you enjoy Close Readings, why not give it to another book lover in your life?

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In the final episode of Human Conditions, Brent and Adam turn to Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, a collection of prose with exceptional relevance to contemporary grassroots politics. Like Du Bois, Césaire and Baraka, Lorde’s work defies genre: as she argues in this collection, ‘poetry is not a luxury’ but an essential tool for liberation. Throughout her work, Lorde sought to find and articulate new ways of living that encompassed her whole self – as a Black woman, poet, essayist, novelist, mother and lesbian. Brent and Adam discuss Lorde’s radical poetics and politics, and the case for poetry, anger, vulnerability, love and desire as the arsenal of revolution.

This podcast was recorded on 21 August 2024.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

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Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.

Get in touch: [email protected]

Further reading and listening in the LRB:

Reni Eddo-Lodge & Sarah Shin: On Audre Lorde

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/at-the-bookshop/reni-eddo-lodge-and-sarah-shin-on-audre-lorde-your-silence-will-not-protect-you

Jesse McCarthy & Adam Shatz: Blind Spots

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/blind-spots

Sean Jacobs: Chop-Chop Spirit

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n09/sean-jacobs/chop-chop-spirit

Ange Mlinko: Waiting for the Poetry

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n14/ange-mlinko/waiting-for-the-poetry

Get in touch: [email protected]

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In the final episode of their series, Colin and Clare arrive at Muriel Spark, who would never have considered herself a satirist though her writing was as bitingly satirical as any 20th-century novelist's. A Far Cry from Kensington has a deceptively simple plot: Agnes Hawkins, working for a publisher in London in the 1950s, insults Hector Bartlett, a would-be author, by calling him a ‘pisseur de copie’. Bartlett seeks revenge with the help of Hawkins’s fellow lodger, Wanda, with tragic results. Yet the true plot of any Spark novel is difficult to pin down, not least when the word ‘plot’ is deployed so frequently by her characters to imply conspiracy and misinformation. Colin and Clare discuss Spark’s kaleidoscopic view of reality and the ways in which both Catholicism and Calvinism play through her work.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

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Read more in the LRB:

Jenny Turner:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n15/jenny-turner/she-who-can-do-no-wrong

Frank Kermode:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n17/frank-kermode/mistress-of-disappearances

Susan Eilenberg:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n24/susan-eilenberg/complacent-bounty

James Wood:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n17/james-wood/can-this-be-what-happened-to-lord-lucan-after-the-night-of-7-november-1974

Get in touch: [email protected]

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As an undergraduate, Seamus Heaney visited Station Island several times, an ancient pilgrimage site traditionally associated with St Patrick and purgatory. Decades later, Heaney worked through competing calls for political engagement and his long-lapsed Catholicism in ‘Station Island’, a poem he described as an ‘exorcism’.

A dreamlike reworking of Dante’s Purgatorio, ‘Station Island’ describes Heaney’s encounters with the ghosts of childhood acquaintances, literary heroes and victims of the Troubles. Seamus and Mark explore Heaney’s unusually autobiographical poem, which wrestles with the inescapability of politics.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings 

Further reading in the LRB:

Paul Muldoon: Sweaney Peregraine

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n20/paul-muldoon/sweaney-peregraine

Seamus Perry: We Did and We Didn’t

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n09/seamus-perry/we-did-and-we-didn-t

John Kerrigan: Hand and Foot

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n11/john-kerrigan/hand-and-foot

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Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’, better known as ‘The Golden Ass’, is the only ancient Roman novel to have survived in its entirety. Following the story of Lucius, forced to suffer as a donkey until the goddess Isis intervenes, the novel includes frenetic wordplay, filthy humour and the earliest known version of the Psyche and Cupid myth. In this episode, Tom and Emily discuss Apuleius’ anarchic mix of the high and low brow, and his incisive depiction of the lives of impoverished and enslaved people.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Peter Parsons: Ancient Greek Romances

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n15/peter-parsons/ancient-greek-romances

Leofranc Holford-Strevens: God’s Will

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n10/leofranc-holford-strevens/god-s-will

Get in touch: [email protected]

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If you’re looking for advice on sustaining a marriage, or robbing a grave, or performing liver surgery, then a series of self-help stories by a 14th-century Spanish prince is a good place to start. Tales of Count Lucanor, written between 1328 and 1335 by Prince Juan Manuel of Villena, is one of the earliest works of Castilian prose. The tales follow the familiar shape of many medieval stories, presented as a kind of medicine to improve the lives of its readers by example. Yet in his preface Manuel makes an unusual assertion about the individuality of all people, a philosophy that, as Mary and Irina discuss in this episode, leads to bizarre and opaque moral messages intended more to make the reader think for themselves than reach a universal conclusion.

Find a translation of the Tales here: https://elfinspell.com/CountLucanor1.html

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings, sign up:

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In 'Black Music', a collection of essays, liner notes and interviews from 1959 to 1967, Amiri Baraka captures the ferment, energy and excitement of the avant-garde jazz scene. Published while he still went by LeRoi Jones, it provides a composite picture of Baraka’s evolving thought, aesthetic values and literary experimentation. In this episode, Brent and Adam discuss the ways in which Baraka tackled the challenge of writing about music and his intimate connections to the major players in jazz. Whether you’re familiar with the music or totally new to the New Thing, 'Black Music' is an essential guide to a period of political and artistic upheaval.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Subscribe to Close Readings:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.

Get in touch: [email protected]

Further reading in the LRB:

Adam Shatz: The Freedom Principle

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/may/the-freedom-principle

Adam Shatz: On Ornette Coleman

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n14/adam-shatz/diary

Philip Clark: On Cecil Taylor

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/april/cecil-taylor-1929-2018

Ian Penman: Birditis

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n02/ian-penman/birditis

Get in touch: [email protected]

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In 1946 Evelyn Waugh declared that 20th-century society – ‘the century of the common man’, as he put it – was so degenerate that satire was no longer possible. But before reaching that conclusion he had written several novels taking aim at his ‘crazy, sterile generation’ with a sparkling, acerbic and increasingly reactionary wit. In this episode, Colin and Clare look at A Handful of Dust (1934), a disturbingly modernist satire divorced from modernist ideas. They discuss the ways in which Waugh was a disciple of Oscar Wilde, with his belief in the artist as an agent of cultural change, and why he’s at his best when describing the fevered dream of a dying civilisation.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Seamus Perry:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n16/seamus-perry/isn-t-london-hell

John Bayley:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n20/john-bayley/mr-toad

Get in touch: [email protected]

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