In their second episode, Colin and Clare look at the dense, digressive and often dangerous satires of John Donne and other poets of the 1590s. It’s likely that Donne was the first Elizabethan author to attempt formal verse satires in the vein of the Roman satirists, and they mark not only the chronological start of his poetic career, but a foundation of his whole way of writing. Colin and Clare place the satires within Donne’s life and times, and explain why the secret to understanding their language lies in the poet's use of the ‘profoundly unruly parenthesis’.

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

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/satireapplesignup

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/satiresignuppod

Read more on John Donne in the LRB:

Catherine Nicholson: Who was John Donne?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n02/catherine-nicholson/batter-my-heart

Blair Worden: Donne and Milton's Prose

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n12/blair-worden/things-the-king-liked-to-hear

Tobias Gregory: Lecherous Goates

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n20/tobias-gregory/lecherous-goates

Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.

Get in touch: [email protected]

Clare and Colin begin their twelve-part series on satire with the big question: what is satire? Where did it come from? Is it a genre, or more of a style, or an attitude? They then plunge into their first text, The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus, a prose satire from 1511 that lampoons pretty much the whole of sixteenth century life in the voice of Folly herself. 

Erasmus’s influential work grew partly out of his close friendship with Thomas More, and their shared love of the 2nd century satirist Lucian, but also emerged at a moment (a few years before Luther’s 95 theses) when the worldliness of the Catholic Church could by satirised without necessarily being heretical. Folly’s harshest critiques are levelled at Erasmus’ particularly bugbear, those theologians who resisted humanist reformers (such as Erasmus) who sought to make textually accurate translations of scripture. But she also targets the whole panoply of human weaknesses, arguing (controversially) that not only is folly a necessary human quality that we couldn’t survive without, but that Christianity is folly and Christ himself was a fool.

Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from most of the episodes in this series. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further Reading in the LRB:

James McConica: A Foolish Christ

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n21/j.b.-trapp/the-miller-s-tale

J.B. Trapp: On Erasmus

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n21/j.b.-trapp/the-miller-s-tale

M.A. Screech: Possible Enemies

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n11/m.a.-screech/possible-enemies

James Wood: Thomas More

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n08/james-wood/the-great-dissembler

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Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell present their series, On Satire. Over twelve episodes, Colin and Clare will attempt to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in English literature, as they ask what satire is, what it’s for and why we seem to like it so much.

Authors covered: Erasmus, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Earl of Rochester, John Gay, Alexander Pope, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark.

Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, and regular contributors to the LRB.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extracts of most of the episodes in this series. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Read more on satire in the LRB:

Jonathan Coe: Sinking Giggling into the Sea

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n14/jonathan-coe/sinking-giggling-into-the-sea

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.