Send us a text

I hope you've brought your appetite, because today we're looking at some of Dr. Swift's shorter prose satires (along with a couple of poems) and he certainly gives us plenty to chew on.

"A Description of the Morning": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45266/a-description-of-the-morning

"A Description of a City Shower": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50578/a-description-of-a-city-shower

"The Battle of the Books": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/623/623-h/623-h.htm

"A Tale of a Tub": https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4737

"A Modest Proposal": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

One of the most theologically and liturgically important Christmas carols may contain coded messages against the Throne of England!

Additional Music: "Adeste Fidelis" by Bing Crosby with The Max Terr choir; John Scott Trotter and his orch.; Traditional; Decca (BM 03929)

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

In the early 18th century, the public press came to dominate English writing.  Pamphlets, newspapers, and periodicals fed the appetite for news and commentary of an ever-hungrier reading public.  Richard Steele and Joseph Addison were the great innovators of the periodical essay, a quintessentially English genre of writing.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

On this trip, we're looking at the conventional candidate for the first modern novel in English.  Defoe's story of a resourceful man shipwrecked on a desert island is so much more than a ripping yarn: it speaks to the rise of a literary vernacular language, the values of an increasing bourgeois and expansionist society, and of spiritual awakening.  Come aboard!

Text: https://ia600207.us.archive.org/26/items/cu31924011498676/cu31924011498676.pdf

Additional Music:

"Theme from Emergency!" by Nelson Riddle. https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_206

"The Ballad of Gilligan's Island" by Sherwood Schwartz.  https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_275

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

For you today, Trick or Treaters, a discussion of what some critics assert is the first modern ghost story in English: Daniel Defoe's 1705 "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal."

The text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36587/36587-h/36587-h.htm

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

Well, I probably should have done this episode earlier, since it might have been good for it to precede our other discussions of Resto comedy.  But I made a last minute decision and included a second play, which kind of threw off the old chronology.  But it's good all the same!

The Man of Mode by George Etherege: https://coldreads.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/the-man-of-mode.pdf

The Way of the World by William Congreve: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1292/1292-h/1292-h.htm

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

For our second episode on John Dryden, we'll talk about two of his plays which marked an innovation in the tragi-comic romance: Marriage a la Mode and Amphitryon.  We'll discuss the "split-plot" play, the exorcising of Restoration political anxieties, and why we sometimes mock that which we cherish.

Additional sound clip from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Text of Marriage a la Mode: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15349/15349-h/15349-h.htm#page_231

Text of Amphitryon: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47679/47679-h/47679-h.htm#Page_1

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

Once hailed as the towering literary figure of the Restoration age, John Dryden is little known now by the general reader.  Let's take care of that with a close look at his most enduring works, the poetical satires Mac Flecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel.

Mac Flecknoe text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44181/mac-flecknoe

Absalom and Achitophel text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44172/absalom-and-achitophel 

Mea culpa:  At one point in this episode, I make reference to Dryden's "tasteless" satiric attacks.  I know, of course, that I should have said "distasteful."  I am dreadfully embarrassed by this mistake and I sincerely apologize to all listeners who were horrified and offended at my imbecilic misuse of the noble English tongue.  I vow to do better.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

Since they wrote in 17th century Massachusetts, poets Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor are often overlooked in surveys of English literature.  Today, though, we'll bring them back into the fold as we look at how their puritanical religious beliefs engaged with the pastoral and metaphysical poetic traditions that celebrated "Arcadia," that vision of unspoiled Nature.

The Works of Anne Bradstreet: 

https://archive.org/details/worksofannebrads00brad/page/n7/mode/2up

The Works of Edward Taylor: https://archive.org/details/poemsofedwardtay00tayl

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

Charles II reopened the theatres in 1660 and inaugurated the second golden age of the English stage.  Today's show looks at one of the bawdiest plays to come from the period, a "comedy of manners" whose clever use of language points to the reality of style over substance.

The Country Wife text: https://theater.lafayette.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2021/03/The-Country-Wife.pdf

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: [email protected]

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!