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.
According to one contemporary, the Earl of Rochester was a man who, in life as well is in poetry, ‘could not speak with any warmth, without repeated Oaths, which, upon any sort of provocation, came almost naturally from him.’ It’s certainly hard to miss Rochester's enthusiastic use of obscenities, though their precise meanings can sometimes be obscure. As a courtier to Charles II, his poetic subject was most often the licentiousness and intricate political manoeuvring of the court’s various factions, and he was far from a passive observer. In this episode Clare and Colin consider why Restoration England was such a satirical hotbed, and describe the ways in which Rochester, with a poetry rich in bravado but shot through with anxiety, transformed the persona of the satirist.
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Read more in the LRB:
Germaine Greer: Doomed to Sincerity
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n18/germaine-greer/doomed-to-sincerity
Terry Eagleton: In an Ocean of Elizabeths
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n20/terry-eagleton/in-an-ocean-of-elizabeths
Christopher Hill: Reason, Love and Life
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n22/christopher-hill/reason-love-and-life
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.