In a programme first broadcast in 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the jewels of medieval English poetry.  It was written c1400 by an unknown poet and then was left hidden in private collections until the C19th when it emerged.  It tells the story of a giant green knight who disrupts Christmas at Camelot, daring Gawain to cut off his head with an axe if he can do the same to Gawain the following year.  Much to the surprise of Arthur's court, who were kicking the green head around, the decapitated body reaches for his head and rides off, leaving Gawain to face his promise and his apparently inevitable death the following Christmas. The illustration above is ©British Library Board Cotton MS Nero A.x, article 3, ff.94v95 With  Laura Ashe
Professor of English Literature at Worcester College, University of Oxford Ad Putter
Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Bristol And  Simon Armitage
Poet and Professor of Poetry at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.

History

Society & Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest European playwrights of the twentieth century. The aim of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was to make the familiar ‘strange’: with plays such as Mother Courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle he wanted his audience not to sit back but to engage, observe and  discover the contradictions in life, and act on what they learnt.  He developed this approach in turbulent times, from Weimar Germany to the rise of the Nazis, to exile in Scandinavia and America and then post-war life in East Berlin, and he has since inspired dramatists around the world. With Laura Bradley
Professor of German and Theatre at the University of Edinburgh David Barnett
Professor of Theatre at the University of York And  Tom Kuhn
Professor of Twentieth Century German Literature, Emeritus Fellow of St Hugh's College, University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production Reading list:  David Barnett, Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014) David Barnett, A History of the Berliner Ensemble (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Laura Bradley and Karen Leeder (eds.), Brecht and the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity (Camden House, 2015) Laura Bradley, ‘Training the Audience: Brecht and the Art of Spectatorship’ (The Modern Language Review, 111, 2016) Bertolt Brecht (ed. Marc Silberman, Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles), Brecht on Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2014) Bertolt Brecht (ed. Tom Kuhn, Steve Giles and Marc Silberman), Brecht on Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014) Bertolt Brecht (trans. Tom Kuhn and David Constantine), The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (Norton Liveright, 2018) which includes the poem ‘Spring 1938’ read by Tom Kuhn in this programme Stephen Brockmann (ed.), Bertolt Brecht in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Meg Mumford, Bertolt Brecht (Routledge, 2009) Stephen Parker, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (Bloomsbury, 2014) Ronald Speirs, Brecht’s Poetry of Political Exile (Cambridge University Press, 2000) David Zoob, Brecht: A Practical Handbook (Nick Hern Books, 2018)

Bertolt Brecht

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes' comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta, led by Lysistrata, secure peace in the long-running war between them by staging a sex strike.  To the men in the audience in 411BC, the idea that peace in the Peloponnesian War could be won so easily was ridiculous and the thought that their wives could have so much power over them was even more so.  However Aristophanes' comedy also has the women seizing the treasure in the Acropolis that was meant to fund more fighting in an emergency, a fund the Athenians had recently had to draw on. They were in a perilous position and, much as they might laugh at Aristophanes' jokes, they knew there were real concerns about the actual cost of the war in terms of wealth and manpower.  With Paul Cartledge
AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge  Sarah Miles
Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University And James Robson
Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Lysistrata (Oxford University Press, 1987) Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women (Routledge, 2010) Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson), Birds; Lysistrata; Women at the Thesmophoria (Loeb Classical Library series, Harvard University Press, 2014)  Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein), Lysistrata and Other Plays: The Acharnians; The Clouds; Lysistrata (Penguin, 2002) Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein), Lysistrata (Aris & Phillips, 1998) Paul Cartledge, Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd (Bristol Classical Press, 1999) Kenneth Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (University of California Press, 1972) Germaine Greer, Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes (Aurora Metro Press, 2000) Tony Harrison, The Common Chorus: A Version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (Faber & Faber, 1992) Douglas M. MacDowell, Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays (Oxford University Press, 1995) S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson (De Gruyter, 2013), especially 'She (Don't) Gotta Have It: African-American reception of Lysistrata' by Kevin Wetmore James Robson, Aristophanes: Lysistrata, Bloomsbury ancient comedy companions (Bloomsbury, 2023) James Robson, Aristophanes: An Introduction (Duckworth, 2009) Ralph M. Rosen and Helene P. Foley (eds.), Aristophanes and Politics. New Studies (Brill, 2020)  Donald Sells, Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy (Bloomsbury, 2018) David Stuttard (ed.), Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes' Provocative Comedy (Bristol Classical Press, 2010)

Lysistrata

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Finnish epic poem that first appeared in print in 1835 in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire and until recently part of Sweden.  The compiler of this epic was a doctor, Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), who had travelled the land to hear traditional poems about mythical heroes being sung in Finnish, the language of the peasantry, and writing them down in his own order to create this landmark work. In creating The Kalevala, Lönnrot helped the Finns realise they were a distinct people apart from Sweden and Russia, who deserved their own nation state and who came to demand independence, which they won in 1917.   With  Riitta Valijärvi
Associate Professor in Finnish and Minority Languages at University College London Thomas Dubois
The Halls-Bascom Professor of Scandinavian Folklore and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison And  Daniel Abondolo
Formerly Reader in Hungarian at University College London Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Nigel Fabb, What is Poetry? Language and Memory in the Poems of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Frog, Satu Grünthal, Kati Kallio and Jarkko Niemi (eds), Versification: Metrics in Practice (Finnish Literature Society, 2021) Riho Grünthal et al., ‘Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread’ (Diachronica, Volume 39, Issue 4, Aug 2022) Lauri Honko (ed.), The Kalevala and the World's Traditional Epics (Finnish Literature Society, 2002) The Kalevala Heritage: Archive Recordings of Ancient Finnish Songs. Online Catalogue no. ODE8492. Mauri Kunnas, The Canine Kalevala (Otava Publishing, 1992) Kuusi, Matti, et al. (eds.), Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic (Finnish Literature Society, 1977) Elias Lönnrot (trans. John Martin Crawford), Kalevala: The Epic Poem of Finland (first published 1887; CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017) Elias Lönnrot (trans. W. F. Kirby), Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes (first published by J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907, 2 vols.; ‎ Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, 2000)  Elias Lönnrot (trans. Francis Peabody Magoun Jr.), The Kalevala, or Poems of the Kaleva District (Harvard University Press, 1963) Elias Lönnrot (trans. Eino Friberg), The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People (Otava Publishing, 1988) Elias Lönnrot (trans. Keith Bosley), The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1989) Kirsti Mäkinen, Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin, Kaarina Brooks, An Illustrated Kalevala: Myths and Legends from Finland (Floris Books, 2020) Sami Makkonen, Kalevala: The Graphic Novel (Ablaze, 2024) Juha Y. Pentikäinen (trans. Ritva Poom), Kalevala Mythology, (Indiana University Press, 1999) Tina K. Ramnarine, Ilmatar’s Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music (University of Chicago Press, 2003) 
Jonathan Roper (ed.), Alliteration in Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), especially chapter 12 ‘Alliteration in (Balto-) Finnic Languages’ by Frog and Eila Stepanova Karl Spracklen, Metal Music and the Re-imagining of Masculinity, Place, Race and Nation (Emerald Publishing, 2020), especially the chapter ‘Finnish Folk Metal: Raising Drinking Horns in Mainstream Metal’ Leea Virtanen and Thomas A. DuBois, Finnish Folklore: Studia Fennica Folkloristica 9 (Finnish Literature Society, 2000)

The Kalevala

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the dance which, from when it reached Britain in the early nineteenth century, revolutionised the relationship between music, literature and people here for the next hundred years.  While it may seem formal now, it was the informality and daring that drove its popularity, with couples holding each other as they spun round a room to new lighter music popularised by Johann Strauss, father and son, such as The Blue Danube.  Soon the Waltz expanded the creative world in poetry, ballet, novellas and music, from the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev to Moon River and Are You Lonesome Tonight. With Susan Jones
Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford Derek B. Scott
Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Leeds And Theresa Buckland
Emeritus Professor of Dance History and Ethnography at the University of Roehampton Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list:  Egil Bakka, Theresa Jill Buckland, Helena Saarikoski, and Anne von Bibra Wharton (eds.), Waltzing Through Europe: Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the Long Nineteenth Century, (Open Book Publishers, 2020) Theresa Jill Buckland, ‘How the Waltz was Won: Transmutations and the Acquisition of Style in Early English Modern Ballroom Dancing. Part One: Waltzing Under Attack’ (Dance Research, 36/1, 2018); ‘Part Two: The Waltz Regained’ (Dance Research, 36/2, 2018) Theresa Jill Buckland, Society Dancing: Fashionable Bodies in England, 1870-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) Erica Buurman, The Viennese Ballroom in the Age of Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, 2022)  Paul Cooper, ‘The Waltz in England, c. 1790-1820’ (Paper presented at Early Dance Circle conference, 2018) Sherril Dodds and Susan Cook (eds.), Bodies of Sound: Studies Across Popular Dance and Music (Ashgate, 2013), especially ‘Dancing Out of Time: The Forgotten Boston of Edwardian England’ by Theresa Jill Buckland Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz (first published 1932; Vintage Classics, 2001) Hilary French, Ballroom: A People's History of Dancing (Reaktion Books, 2022) Susan Jones, Literature, Modernism, and Dance (Oxford University Press, 2013) Mark Knowles, The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (McFarland, 2009) Rosamond Lehmann, Invitation to the Waltz (first published 1932; Virago, 2006) Eric McKee, Decorum of the Minuet, Delirium of the Waltz: A Study of Dance-Music Relations in 3/4 Time (Indiana University Press, 2012) Eduard Reeser, The History of the Walz (Continental Book Co., 1949) Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 27 (Macmillan, 2nd ed., 2000), especially ‘Waltz’ by Andrew Lamb Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris and Vienna (Oxford University Press, 2008), especially the chapter ‘A Revolution on the Dance Floor, a Revolution in Musical Style: The Viennese Waltz’ Joseph Wechsberg, The Waltz Emperors: The Life and Times and Music of the Strauss Family (Putnam, 1973) Cheryl A. Wilson, Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (first published 1915; William Collins, 2013) Virginia Woolf, The Years (first published 1937; Vintage Classics, 2016) David Wyn Jones, The Strauss Dynasty and Habsburg Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Sevin H. Yaraman, Revolving Embrace: The Waltz as Sex, Steps, and Sound (Pendragon Press, 2002) Rishona Zimring, Social Dance and the Modernist Imagination in Interwar Britain (Ashgate Press, 2013)

The Waltz

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lewis Carroll's book which first appeared in print in 1865 with illustrations by John Tenniel. It has since become one of the best known works in English, captivating readers who follow young Alice as she chases a white rabbit, pink eyed, in a waistcoat with pocket watch, down a rabbit hole that becomes a well and into wonderland. There she meets the Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, the March Hare, the Mock Turtle and more, all the while growing smaller and larger, finally outgrowing everyone at the trial of Who Stole the Tarts from the Queen of Hearts and exclaiming 'Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards!' With Franziska Kohlt
Leverhulme Research Fellow in the History of Science at the University of Leeds and the Inaugural Carrollian Fellow of the University of Southern California Kiera Vaclavik
Professor of Children’s Literature and Childhood Culture at Queen Mary, University of London And Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Professor of English Literature at Magdalen College, University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Kate Bailey and Simon Sladen (eds), Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser (V&A; Publishing, 2021) Gillian Beer, Alice in Space: The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll (University of Chicago Press, 2016) Will Brooker, Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll and Alice in Popular Culture (Continuum, 2004) Humphrey Carpenter, Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s Literature (first published 1985; Faber and Faber, 2009) Lewis Carroll (introduced by Martin Gardner), The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, (W. W. Norton & Company, 2000) Gavin Delahunty and Christoph Benjamin Schulz (eds), Alice in Wonderland Through the Visual Arts (Tate Publishing, 2011) Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland (Harvill Secker, 2015) Colleen Hill, Fairy Tale Fashion (Yale University Press, 2016) Franziska Kohlt, Alice through the Wonderglass: The Surprising Histories of a Children's Classic (Reaktion, forthcoming 2025)
    
Franziska Kohlt and Justine Houyaux (eds.), Alice: Through the Looking-Glass: A Companion (Peter Lang, forthcoming 2024) Charlie Lovett, Lewis Carroll: Formed by Faith (University of Virginia Press, 2022) Elizabeth Sewell, The Field of Nonsense (first published 1952; Dalkey Archive Press, 2016) Kiera Vaclavik, 'Listening to the Alice books' (Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 26, Issue 1, January 2021) Diane Waggoner, Lewis Carroll's Photography and Modern Childhood (Princeton University Press 2020) Edward Wakeling, The Man and his Circle (IB Tauris, 2014) Edward Wakeling, The Photographs of Lewis Carroll: A Catalogue Raisonné (University of Texas Press, 2015)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

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