Writ Large

There is only one surviving copy of The Life and Passion of William of Norwich, but its story continues to haunt us. When 12th-century monk Thomas of Monmouth learned of a young boy’s murder in his community, he accused his Jewish neighbors of the heinous crime. Over the course of two decades, he wrote a seven-volume conspiracy theory, building out the accusation and cementing it in history. Stanford professor Rowan Dorin discusses the book’s creation and its challenging legacy. Rowan Dorin is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm.

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When French author Jules Verne wrote Around the World in 80 Days in the late 1800s, scheduled global travel was practically science fiction, and 80 days seemed impossibly fast. But his techno-futurist novel inspired everyday adventurers to traverse the globe by boat, train, bike, and foot—and beat his protagonist’s record. Harvard professor Joyce Chaplin discusses what we can learn from Jules Verne’s classic novel. Joyce Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University. She is the author of Round About The Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm.

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What is the world without literature? It’s hard to imagine. We’d lose novels, sure. But we’d also lose the philosophies, politics, and religions of today because these all grew out of literature. There would be no sacred texts, no newspapers, not even TV shows. This is how Martin Puchner’s 2018 book The Written World begins. Martin Puchner is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard and the author of the book The Written World which is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm.

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The original production of Fiddler on the Roof won nine Tony awards, held the record for the longest-running Broadway musical, and was adapted into a hit movie. But the musical itself was an adaptation of Sholem Aleichem's Tevye Stories. Aleichem aimed to create a high literature for Yiddish-speaking readers, but his influence spread much further, to a new country, a new language, and a new medium. Harvard professor Saul Noam Zaritt.discusses the stories behind the musical.

Saul Noam Zaritt is Assistant Professor of Yiddish Studies at Harvard University. He is a founding editor of In geveb, an open-access digital journal of Yiddish studies.

Learn more on our website, WritLarge.fm.

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Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. Our modern world is full of wonders and struggles, but people have been grappling with many of these issues for generations. The books we’ll explore in this show help us see how we got here and where we might go. The first episode of Writ Large will be available on Lyceum on March 24 and everywhere else on March 31. To download Lyceum, go to Lyceum.fm.