Episodes

The Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognizably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have ...

How do today's master's create their art? In this episode, Jacke talks to Joe Skinner, producer and host of the podcast American Masters: Creative Spark , about the narrative interviews he's conducted with iconic artists abou...

In a final powerful book , acclaimed literary biographer Robert Richardson told the story of how Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James dealt with personal tragedies early in their careers. In this episod...

He loved and he hated. Other than that, not much is known about the life of Catullus, who scandalized the late Roman Republic with his bawdy poems, his aching love for the upper-class married woman he called "Lesbia," and his...

After the October Revolution in 1917, a teenaged Vladimir Nabokov and his family, part of the Russian nobility, sought exile in Western Europe, eventually settling in Berlin, where Vladimir lived for fifteen years. His life t...

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) was one of the twentieth century's most accomplished and celebrated poets. In this episode, Jacke talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Megan Marshall about her personal connection to Bishop,...

Introducing YE GODS WITH SCOTT CARTER

Jacke talks to Edgar Award-winning novelist, Tony Award-winning playwright, and legendary story songwriter Rupert Holmes about writing pop song landmarks ("Escape (The Piña Colada Song))," Broadway whodunit musicals ( The Mys...

"It is difficult to find happiness within oneself," said the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), "but it is impossible to find it anywhere else." In spite of his pessimism - or perhaps because of it - Schopenh...

Jacke talks to "serial biographer" Carl Rollyson about his new two-volume biography of William Faulkner, The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934 (Volume 1) and The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarmi...

On October 5, 1962, two items were released, hardly newsworthy at the time. One was Dr. No , the first James Bond film, and the other was Love Me Do , the first Beatles recording. Over the next sixty years, …

What was Willa Cather's life really like? Was she - as is often thought - a solitary artist, painstakingly crafting her novels about the Great Plains? Or did she actually have a robust creative partnership with another woman,...

"In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure." In this episode, Jacke talks to Dr. Tara A. Bynum about h...

John Milton is often regarded as second only to Shakespeare in the history of English verse - and his epic poem, Paradise Lost , is viewed by many as second to none. His literary achievements are all the more remarkable …

In her lifetime, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was widely acknowledged as the best read person - male or female - in New England. Her landmark work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century , is considered the first full-length treatmen...

Is Moby-Dick truly the Great American Novel? How did contemporary critics miss it? When (and how) was the book rediscovered? Jacke goes through all this and more, as he continues the countdown of Top 10 Essential Questions ab...

Here we go! Moby-Dick; or, the Whale (1851) by Herman Melville is one of the greatest - and strangest - novels you will ever read. Call it what you will - a literary leviathan, an intellectual chowder, an early entry …

In 1878, critic Matthew Arnold wrote, "Goethe is the greatest poet of modern times... because having a very considerable gift for poetry, he was at the same time, in the width, depth, and richness of his criticism of life, by...

W.H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets - and also one of the most engaged. As he struggled to make sense of the rise of fascism, two world wars, and industrialized murder, his focus turned to...

Kafka! The avatar of anxiety! He's long been one of our favorites here at the History of Literature Podcast. In this episode, Jacke talks to translator Ross Benjamin about the new edition of The Diaries of Franz Kafka , publi...

Does Edith Wharton hate us? That's a provocative question - but perhaps one that Wharton herself provoked, with her essay on the readers who damaged literature and her fiction satirizing the same. In this two-part series, Jac...

Does Edith Wharton hate us? That's a provocative question - but perhaps one that Wharton herself provoked, with her essay on the readers who damaged literature and her fiction satirizing the same. In this two-part series, Jac...

As we all know, the text of a book can possess incredible powers, transporting readers across time and space. But what about the books themselves? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Emma Smith ( This Is Shakespeare ) abou...

In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the life of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick and many other works. Melville experienced ups and downs, from a fancy Manhattan childhood to financial ruin and back again. Once a liter...