Episodes

For centuries, Machiavelli has been viewed as everything from an insightful pragmatist to the mouthpiece of Satan. In this episode, Jacke talks to Italian scholar Gabriele Pedullà about his book On Niccolò Machiavelli: The Bonds of Politics, which offers a surprising new take on a 500-year-old literary and political giant. PLUS Vergil translator and biographer Sarah Ruden (Vergil: The Poet's Life) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read. Help support the show at pa...

The Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) has been called the last person to have read everything. He is also one of the greatest poet-critics in the history of literature, known for works like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan," "Frost at Midnight," and the Biographia Literaria. In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the life and works of this highly influential figure. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of ...

It's a multi-course literary feast at the History of Literature Podcast! Today we serve up some thoughts on books and the arts from Galileo Galilei; Mike Palindrome and his decades of reading Russian folktale theorist Vladimir Propp; Professor Valeria Sobol (Haunted Empire) and her inquiry into Russian Gothic literature and the "imperial uncanny"; and Vanessa Riley (Island Queen, Queen of Exiles), the Queen of Black Historical Fiction, stops by to tell us about her selection of the last book she...

Virgil (or Vergil) was the most celebrated poet of Ancient Rome - and also one of the most enigmatic. In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer and translator Sarah Ruden about her book Vergil: A Poet's Life. PLUS some thoughts on Charles Darwin's last book, and a chat with acclaimed historian Tom Holland (Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age) about his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The Histor...

Jacke takes a look at the life and works of Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do geniuses compose their poetry and prose? Do they carefully and laboriously revise until they achieve perfection? Or does perfection just flow out of them - as it reportedly did for Shakespeare? In this episode, Adhaar Noor Desai (Blotted Lines: Early Modern English Literature and the Poetics of Discomposition) tells Jacke about the discoveries he made when analyzing the manuscripts of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. PLUS Lara Vetter (H.D. (Hilda Dolittle): A Critical Life) discusses h...

We know - or we think we know - what friendship is today, but what did it mean to Dante? In this episode, Jacke travels back to the Middle Ages with Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall (On Amistà: Negotiating Friendship in Dante's Italy) to discuss how Dante and his contemporaries understood the concept of friendship. PLUS Dr. Tara Bynum (Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read. Help support the show at patreon....

Many readers today are familiar with the impact that Western countries have had on Africa, as told through the eyes of writers in both Africa and the West. But what about China and its growing influence in Africa? How have twentieth- and twenty-first-century African writers viewed the impact of Chinese businesses and culture on their homeland? In this episode, Jacke talks to NYU professor Duncan M. Yoon about his book China in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century African Literature, which unpacks...

Few writers have achieved the celebrity of the notorious Romantic poet Lord Byron. But what was he like in private? In this episode, Jacke talks to Andrew Stauffer about his new book, Byron: A Life in Ten Letters. PLUS Jonathan van Belle (Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio a...

In 1817 and 1818, the discovery of two sets of Czech manuscripts helped fuel the Czech National Revival, as promoters of Czech nationalism trumpeted these centuries-old works as foundational texts of a national mythology. There was only one problem: they were completely forged. In this episode, Jacke talks to David Cooper about his new book, The Czech Manuscripts: Forgery, Translation, and National Myth, which looks at why people were so eager to fall for this hoax - and what happened when the t...

As far back as Aristotle, plots have been viewed as essential components of long-form narratives. So what happened when Modern novelists like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Djuna Barnes began turning away from conventional plots? Why did they do this and what were the consequences for their art? In this episode, Jacke talks to Professor Pardis Dabashi about her new book, Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel. PLUS Booker Prize-winning author Anne Enright (The ...

James MacManus was a foreign correspondent for The Guardian during a golden era of covering wars in faroff places. In this episode, Jacke talks to James about his career as a journalist, his transition to becoming the managing director of the Times Literary Supplement, and his new novel, Love in a Lost Land, which recalls his experiences covering the war in 1970s Rhodesia. PLUS Peter K. Andersson (Fool: In Search of Henry VIII's Closest Man) discusses his choice for the last book he will ever re...

Philosopher, poet, playwright, science fiction writer, scientist, and celebrity Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was a public and publishing sensation. In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer Francesca Peacock about her new book, Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish. PLUS Patrick Whitmarsh (Writing Our Extinction: Anthropocene Fiction and Vertical Science) selects his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyoflit...

Superguest Mike Palindrome joins Jacke for a reading and discussion of D.H. Lawrence's short story "Tickets, Please" (1918), a "war of the sexes" modernist story in which some innocent flirtation turns to revenge and violence. PLUS literature aficionado Myron Tuman returns to the podcast to discuss his selection for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio ...

Jacke talks to author Michelle P. Brown about her new book, Bede and the Theory of Everything, which investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673-735), the foremost scholar of the Middle Ages and the "father of English history." PLUS Adrian Edwards, Head of Printed Heritage Collections at the British Library, stops by to select his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast...

The evidence is clear: Henry David Thoreau was an industrious person who worked hard throughout his life. And yet, he's often viewed as a kind of dreamy layabout who dropped out of society so he could sit by his pond and think his thoughts. Can we reconcile these two figures? What did work mean to Thoreau? And what advice did he have for the rest of us? In this episode, Jacke talks to Thoreau scholar Jonathan van Belle about the new book he's co-authored, Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Livin...

Happy New Year! Jacke kicks off 2024 with two of his favorite subjects: Books and Travel. First, Bethanne Patrick stops by to talk about the new season of Missing Pages, the Signal Award-winning, Webby Award-nominated, and chart-topping podcast about the world of books and book culture. Next, Aislyn Greene, host of the podcast Travel Tales by AFAR, joins Jacke for a discussion of conscientious travel, reading while traveling, and the pleasures of discovering bookstores in new places. Enjoy! H...

Nicholas Dames (The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century) started his latest project with a seemingly simple question: Why do books have chapters? In this episode, as we turn from one year to the next, Jacke talks to an expert in segmentation. PLUS Hamid Dabashi (The Persian Prince: The Rise and Resurrection of an Imperial Archetype) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or history...

What books to buy for others? What books to read? In this guest episode from FT Weekend's Life and Art podcast, members of the Financial Times books team answer listener questions and share their personal recommendations from 2023. Follow the Life and Art podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a...FRAUD!? In this episode, Jacke dives into the dispute over one of the most famous Christmas poems of all time, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (also known as "The Night Before Christmas" or "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"). Long attributed to the somewhat curmudgeonly figure Clement C. Moore, new research has called that authorship into question. Does ANOTHER Christmas poem by Moore unlock t...

Zelda and Scott, Henry and June and Anaïs, Jean-Paul and Simone, Vladimir and Vera... the names that ring out from the 1930s are those of some of the most famous artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Everyone who was everyone, it seemed, was in Europe, but as the Roaring Twenties faded, a new political reality took hold. The winds of war were once again stirring - how would these artists adapt? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Florian Illies about his new book, Love in a Time...

Shakespeare helped to make the Fool a common literary character. But what about the real-life fools who served in actual courts? Who were they and what kind of lives did they lead? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Peter K. Andersson about his book Fool: In Search of Henry VIII's Closest Man, which tells the story of Will Somer, an unusual man with a very strange job. PLUS Milton expert Ed Simon (Heaven, Hell, and Paradise Lost) selects his choice for the last book he will ever read. Hel...

Books are often viewed as the pinnacle of civilization; war, on the other hand, is where civilization breaks down. What happens when these two forces encounter one another? In this episode, Jacke talks to esteemed literary historian Andrew Pettegree about his new book, The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading. PLUS Robin Lane Fox (Homer and His Iliad) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/litera...

After taking a look at Emily Dickinson's Poem #269 ("Wild Nights - wild nights!"), Jacke talks to novelist Anne Enright about growing up in Ireland, her writing career, and her new book The Wren, The Wren. PLUS Dublin literary historian Christopher Morash (Dublin: A Writer's City) stops by to select the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomer...