Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow attempt, over twelve episodes, to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in all of English literature. What is satire, what is it for, and why do we seem to like it so much?
Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.
Episodes will appear once a month throughout 2024, on the 4th of each month.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow attempt, over twelve episodes, to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in all of English literature. What is satire, what is it for, and why do we seem to like it so much?
Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.
Episodes will appear once a month throughout 2024, on the 4th of each month.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What did English satirists do after the archbishop of Canterbury banned the printing of satires in June 1599? They turned to the stage. Within months of the crackdown, the same satirical tricks Elizabethans had read in verse could be enjoyed in theatres. At the heart of the scene was Ben Jonson, who for many centuries has maintained a reputation as the refined, classical alternative to Shakespeare, with his diligent observance of the rules extracted from Roman comedy. In this episode, Colin and Clare argue that this reputation is almost entirely false, that Jonson was as embroiled in the volatile and unruly energies of late Elizabethan London as any other dramatist, and nowhere is this more on display than in his finest play, Volpone.
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Read more in the LRB:
Blair Worden: The Tribe of Ben
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/blair-worden/the-tribe-of-ben
Terence Hawkes: Jonson and digestion
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n10/terence-hawkes/lore-and-ordure
Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.
Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
