This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the third in a four-week sequence on the works of John Milton. It concerns Books VII through XII of his epic poem Paradise Lost, with an emphasis sex and gender, the role of nature and the natural sciences, epic as a genre in relation to classical and Christian cultures, and the poem’s conception of Biblical and universal history. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the second in a four-week sequence on the works of John Milton. It concerns Books I through VI of his epic poem Paradise Lost and what I read as its radical rewriting of Christian metaphysics, a spiritual revolution extending far beyond the famously sympathetic portrait of Satan, one that places Milton closer to post-Christian figures like Goethe, Blake, and Joyce than has been generally recognized. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the first in a four-week sequence on the works of John Milton. It concerns his biography, historical context, and early achievement in three different genres: the masque Comus, the pastoral elegy Lycidas, and the prose polemic Areopagitica. The political paradoxes of his Puritanism and concern for liberty, and their implications for the present, and for his status as second only to Shakespeare in the canon of English poetry, are considered throughout. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 20 minutes are free, is the final in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It concerns Shakespeare’s valedictory romance, The Tempest, which I treat as epilogue and summation of Shakespeare’s art. I also conclude my reading of Ted Hughes’s Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. Along the way, we solve the Eleusinian Mysteries and the vexed relation of art to magic. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the seventh in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It concerns Shakespeare’s final tragedy, the Roman history Coriolanus, often acclaimed and reprehended as the poet’s most political play, banned as fascist in 1930s France, the favorite of ideological dramatists of right and left like T. S. Eliot (who judged it better than Hamlet) and of Bertolt Brecht (who thought it anticipated his own epic theater), and which led the Romantic liberal critic William Hazlitt to argue that poetry itself is inherently right-wing. We consider the play closely, as well as these critical responses. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the sixth in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It concerns Shakespeare’s late Roman historical love…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the fifth in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It concerns Shakespeare’s ultimate tragedy, King Lear, and its place in the evolving spiritual development of the poet-playwright’s art. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the fourth in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It concerns Shakespeare’s masterpiece, the tragedy Hamlet, and its invention of modern subjectivity. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the third in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It concerns the “problem play” Measure for Measure, a sexual dystopia on the themes of death and justice. We consider the nature of the problem play as a potential genre, the relationship of Shakespeare to Christianity and the Gospels, the drama’s proto-Freudian depiction of repression and desire, the relationship in the play between the “two bodies”—spiritual and physical—of God, the political sovereign, and the artist, and, finally, begin to discuss Ted Hughes’s Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the second in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It deals with love, melancholy, pastoral, and gender-bending in As You Like It, generally considered one of Shakespeare’s finest comedies, and featuring his most celebrated comic heroine, Rosalind. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall: