The History of Literature Podcast
Amateur enthusiast Jacke Wilson journeys through the history of literature, from ancient epics to contemporary classics. (Episodes are not in chronological order - feel free to jump in wherever you'd like!)
Recent Episodes
517 The Marquis de Sade
May 29, 2023
The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) was more than just a rake or a cad - based on his egregious conduct, he clearly belonged in prison, and one sympathizes with the father who aimed a pistol at Sade's chest and pulled the trigge…
516 Sappho (with Diane Rayor)
May 25, 2023
When Diane Rayor was in college, a professor recommended a work by a 2600-year-old poet that changed her life. Now, after years of studying and translating the works of Sappho, the greatest woman poet in Ancient Greece, she …
515 The Plague by Albert Camus (with Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris) | My Last Book with Alison Strayer
May 22, 2023
What were you doing when the pandemic arose? And did you turn to The Plague by Albert Camus to help you make sense of it all? For two Camus scholars, the pandemic resonated in unexpected ways - and shed new light on a work t…
514 Southern Gothic (with David van den Berg) | My Last Book with Jason Feifer
May 18, 2023
In the aftermath of a Civil War loss that shattered the region and exposed the moral and cultural fault lines in the populace, writers in the American South responded with stories filled with grotesque, macabre, and shocking…
513 The Writers of Northern Ireland (with Alexander Poots) | My Last Book with Laura Lee
May 15, 2023
The literary world has long celebrated the incredible contributions of Ireland and its writers, with a special focus on Dublin-centric writers like James Joyce and W.B. Yeats. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland has been quietly tur…
512 Hannah Arendt (with Samantha Rose Hill) | My Last Book with Scott Carter
May 11, 2023
Born to a German-Jewish family in 1906, Hannah Arendt became one of the most renowned political thinkers of the twentieth century. Her works, including The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jer…
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