Episodes

In 1949, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces posited the existence of a "monomyth," a universal pattern that formed the basis of heroic tales in every culture. But although he maintained that more often than not the young heroes followed an archetypal journey--which in addition to ancient myths can be seen in everything from Star Wars to Harry Potter--Campbell acknowledged that heroines seemed to have a different story arc, but not one that he had taxonomies. In other words, female hero...

Written in the early 1300s, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy has been an essential component of Western literature for more than 700 years. In this episode, Jacke talks to Joseph Luzzi about his book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Biography, which gives an intimate portrait of the work that has challenged and inspired generations of readers. Additional listening: 131 Dante in Love (with Professor Ellen Nerenberg and Anthony Valerie) 589 Dante and Friendship (with Elizabeth Coggeshall) 327 Natal...

It's a Literary Feast Day at the History of Literature Podcast! First, Jacke talks to old friend Mike Palindrome about his love for A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's late-in-life recollection of his salad days (Pernod days?) in Paris. Then Collin Jennings (Enlightenment Links: Theories of Mind and Media in Eighteenth-Century Britain) explains how his application of computational methods to eighteenth-century fiction, history, and poetry shed new light on the Enlightenment - and what it means for rea...

Throughout the 1930s, Ernest Hemingway was in the public eye as a journalist, short story writer, activist, and one of the most famous writers on the planet. But his 1937 novel To Have and Have Not fell flat, and critics wondered if the Hemingway who could write a novel on the level of The Sun Also Rises (1926) or A Farewell to Arms (1929) still existed. All that changed with the publication in 1940 of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Widely read and widely acclaimed, the story of the idealist Rob...

Although their lives were filled with darkness and death, their love for stories and ideas led them into the bright realms of creative genius. They were the Brontes - Charlotte, Emily, and Anne - who lived with their brother Branwell in an unassuming 19th-century Yorkshire town called Haworth. Their house, a parsonage, sat on a hill, with the enticing but sometimes dangerous moors above and a cemetery, their father’s church, and the industrializing town below. It was a dark little home, with lit...

When he undertook his research on Harriet Jacobs and her brother John Swanson Jacobs, scholar Jonathan D.S. Schroeder wasn't expecting to find John's long lost autobiography. But there it was, buried in the archives of an Australian newspaper. Unknown for one hundred and sixty-nine years, the narrative bursts with fire and fury, filled with the energy (and intellectual freedom) of an ex-slave and ex-American writing from outside the United States. In this episode, Jacke talks to Jonathan about w...

"Wright was one of those people," said poet Amiri Baraka, "who made me conscious of the need to struggle." In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the life and works of Black American novelist and poet Richard Wright (1908-1960), author of Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, and thousands of haiku. Born in Mississippi in desperate poverty to a schoolteacher mother and a sharecropper father (who were themselves the free children of formerly enslaved peoples), Wright had little formal e...

Critics didn't know quite what to make of twentieth-century American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), but readers had less difficulty. In spite of mixed reviews, On the Road (1957) quickly became a kind of bible for anyone hoping to squeeze more out of life. In this episode, Jacke talks to Steven Belletto, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jack Kerouac, about the continuing fascination with the Beat Generation and its most famous avatar. Additional listening: 339 Jack Ker...

Aesop's fables - including such classics as "The Tortoise and the Hare," "The Fox and the Grapes," and "The Ant and the Grasshopper" - are among the most familiar and best-loved stories in the world. But who was Aesop? Why was he writing these stories - and what about the ones that weren't written for children? Renowned scholar Robin Waterfield, translator of Aesop's Fables: A New Translation, joins Jacke for a discussion of the legendary Aesop and his legendary tales. PLUS Tove Jansson biograph...

It's hard to imagine now, but the United States government wasn't always hostile or indifferent to the arts. In fact, from 1935 to 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal Government responded to the Great Depression by staging over a thousand theatrical productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four) Americans, two thirds of whom had never seen a play before. How did Roosevelt's administration come to hire over twelve thousand struggling artists, in...

Medieval manuscripts are so wondrously beautiful they deserve comparison with the world's finest works of art. But what was behind the production of these manuscripts? We might think of rows of monks, patiently toiling away in a hushed chamber - but that would be to ignore the actual conditions of book production. Sara Charles (The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages) takes Jacke into the dirty, smelly, boring, and back-breaking world of an actual medieval scriptorium. PLUS Dan...

Yes, he's the father of English poetry, and yes, he's perhaps best known today for bawdy tales like the Wife of Bath. But who was Geoffrey Chaucer? How did he navigate life during one of the most turbulent periods of English history? And how did he become known as "the merry bard"? In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer Mary Flannery about her new book, Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard. Additional listening suggestions: 523 Geoffrey Chaucer (with Marion Turner) 496 The Wi...

Bibliophiles everywhere know the sweet feeling of getting lost in a book. And like all good literary snobs, we tend to think that full immersion requires a distraction-free relationship between reader and text. But was it always so? After examining early modern French literature, Geoffrey Turnovsky (Reading Typographically: Immersed in Print in Early Modern France) thinks that the answer might not be so simple. In this episode, Jacke and Geoffrey discuss the stereotypes and myths centering aroun...

For fifty years, Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955) lived his life as Germany's preeminent novelist and one of Europe's most respected intellectuals. In this episode, Jacke examines the truth behind the public image, as the author of Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, and Mario and the Magician dealt with artistic triumphs, bitter defeats, repressed sexual desires, family turmoil, relentless tragedies, political dangers, exile to America, and ultimately, an uneasy literar...

We asked, you answered! In response to a listener recommendation, we revisit a conversation from 2017 in which Mike and Jacke discuss Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and Eleanor Coppola's Hearts of Darkness. PLUS novelist Fred Waitzkin (Searching for Bobby Fisher, Anything Is Good) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Enjoy this? Try these from our archive: 110 Heart of Darkness - Then and Now 619 Fred Waitzkin on...

Who was Emily Dickinson? We think we know her, or at least one side of her, from her poems. But what was she like when she wasn't writing poetry? What was she like with her friends and family? In this episode, we talk to editor Cristanne Miller about her book The Letters of Emily Dickinson, which presents all 1,304 of Dickinson's extant letters. Enjoyed this episode? You might like to try some of these episodes: 120 The Astonishing Emily Dickinson 418 "Because I Could Not Stop for Deat...

Dealing with reality can be difficult enough, but when the nature of that reality is completely overturned - as it is in a case like the climate crisis - people are left with a feeling of intense uncertainty. What does this mean for us? How do we cope? How, in other words, do we psychologically absorb a revelation that threatens to overwhelm everything we believe about ourselves and our place in the universe? In this episode, Jacke talks to Allen MacDuffie about his new book Climate of Denial: D...

For more than two thousand years, the Bible has been an essential part of the world's conception of humanity and its relationship to God. But although it is in some sense timeless and eternal - literally the word of God - the Bible has always meant different things to different people, as individual communities have regarded this sacred book through their own language and culture. In this episode, Jacke talks to Biblical scholar Bruce Gordon about his new book The Bible: A Global History, which ...

Discussions of Ernest Hemingway tend to focus on the peaks of his career, which are typically centered around his most famous novels. But Hemingway was busy in between those novels too, writing articles, short stories, and letters to friends and professional acquaintances. In this episode, Jacke talks to Sandra Spanier, general editor of the monumental Hemingway Letters project, about the lesser known (but eventful) period in Hemingway's life and career covered in The Letters of Ernest Hemingway...

For almost sixty years, Norman Mailer was a fixture on the American literary scene, seemingly as well known for his feuds and personal exploits as he was for his prize-winning novels and groundbreaking journalism. But what was the man really like? As the Library of America commemorates the life and career of Norman Mailer with an edition of his early masterpiece The Naked and the Dead, Jacke talks to the editor of that book, J. Michael Lennon, who was intimately associated with Mailer as both fr...

Recently, we talked to novelist Jodi Picoult about her contention that many of the works commonly attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by a woman named Emilia Bassano (a.k.a. Aemilia Lanyer). But even as that compelling theory awaits definitive proof, we already know of several women - Shakespeare's contemporaries - who overcame obstacles and wrote their way through a male-dominated literary world. In this episode, Jacke talks to scholar Ramie Targoff (Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women...

Was Shakespeare gay? Will Tosh, head of research at Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, says that question has an easy answer - but more importantly, when it comes to understanding Shakespeare's sexuality, it isn't really the right question to ask. In this episode, Jacke talks to Will about his book Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare, which puts Shakespeare's artistry in the context of Elizabethan England's attitudes toward sex, intimacy, and identity. PLUS Jacke g...

For thousands of years, desperate writers have struggled with the condition known as writer's block. In this episode, Jacke talks to novelist Kate Feiffer about her book Morning Pages, in which a playwright on a tight deadline tries Julia Cameron's trick of starting her day with some stream-of-consciousness writing - with results that threaten to be more hilarious than productive. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature P...

Is it really true? Did the Elizabethan poet Emilia Bassano (sometimes known as Aemelia Lanyer) actually write Shakespeare's works? A bestselling novelist thinks so - and she's turned her research-based theories into an entertaining and thought-provoking work of fiction. In this episode, Jacke talks to Jodi Picoult about her new book BY ANY OTHER NAME, which tells the story of a modern-day playwright who discovers her ancestor Emilia Bassano's tantalizing connection to Shakespeare and the works t...