Critical Readings examines key literary texts using close reading and critical analysis, and explains these approaches in discussion. Listeners will learn about...
The panel reads three poems by A.E. Housman, the renowned British classicist and poet, and discusses the presence of death in his poetry, the influences of Romanticism, the importance of the speaker's role, and the poetic ironies of his biography.Continue reading
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1:09:12
CR Episode 253: Pope’s Messiah
The panel reads Alexander Pope's "Messiah," based upon Virgil's Fourth Eclogue and the biblical Book of Isaiah, with a discussion of its formal qualities, its Late Augustan/pre-Romantic historical context, and its fusion of Classical and Hebraic imagery.Continue reading
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51:09
CR Episode 252: Julius Caesar, Act V
The panel reads the final act, reflecting on the role of Brutus as a tragic figure, with attention given to his relationship with Cassius, his misunderstanding of Antony's magnanimity, his stoic leanings, and his role in the final battle at Philippi.Continue reading
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1:07:56
CR Episode 251: Julius Caesar, Act IV
The panel reads the fourth act, with special attention to the fraught relationship between Brutus and Cassius, the political situation in the late Roman Republic, and the declining fate of the conspiracy in the wake of Marc Antony's speech to the plebs.Continue reading
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1:00:17
CR Episode 250: Julius Caesar, Act III
The panel discusses the play's self-awareness, its complexity of character, the presence of character flaws which serve to advance the action of the drama, and the contrast between reason and emotion, rhetoric and sophistry, and idealism and pragmatism.Continue reading
Critical Readings examines key literary texts using close reading and critical analysis, and explains these approaches in discussion. Listeners will learn about the texts themselves and about how to approach a text for critical analysis.
Ireland