Episodes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that tragedy is one of the world's highest art forms, and that Shakespeare was one of the form's greatest practitioners. But how did he do it? What models did he have to draw upon, …

Inspired by an email (from a listener?) with mysterious origins, Jacke takes a look at the brief narrative form the parable. How did parables get their name? What are their key features? Why did Jesus rely on them so heavily …

What happens when a woman becomes obsessed with Herman Melville during the pandemic? What if the process of sorting fact from fiction in Melville's work inspires a midlife reckoning with her own marriage and ambition? And wha...

When the U.S. joined the war in the 1940s, it had a problem: its military had virtually no intelligence service. Enter the librarians! In this episode, Jacke talks to Elyse Graham about her work Book and Dagger: How Scholars ...

Edith Maude Eaton (1865-1914) grew up in unusual circumstances: her father was an English merchant who traveled to China on business, and her mother was a formerly enslaved tightrope walker and human knife-throwing target who...

First published in December of 1922, "Winter Dreams" was one of the short stories known as the "Gatsby cluster," as F. Scott Fitzgerald worked out the characters, themes, and prose style that would later make his famous novel...

In 1819, John Keats quit his job as an assistant surgeon, abandoned an epic poem he was writing, and focused his poetic energies on shorter works. What followed was one of the most fertile periods in the history of poetry, …

Happy holidays! In this episode, presented without commercial interruption, Jacke revisits the second half of the classic James Joyce short story "The Dead." [ This episode was originally released on December 22, 2017 .] Addi...

Happy holidays! In this episode, presented without commercial interruption, Jacke revisits the first part of the the classic James Joyce holiday story, "The Dead." [ The full version of this episode was originally released on...

Generally speaking, a common conception of U.S. race relations in the mid-twentieth century runs like this: segregation was racist and bad, the doctrine of "separate but equal" masked genuine inequality, and the racial integr...

Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. Inspired by the illumination and insight in Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain , Tóibín would soon become a lifelong fan. In this ep...

Before his marriage, before meeting Herman Melville, and before the publication of The Scarlet Letter , Nathaniel Hawthorne was living in near seclusion, writing the stories that formed his first collection Twice-Told Tales ....

A legendary king, knights of the round table, magic and myths and valiant quests - the stories of King Arthur (also known as the "Matter of Britain") have captivated readers since the Middle Ages. It's potentially rich materi...

After taking a look at a wintry poem by Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay, Jacke talks to editor John McMurtrie about his new book Literary Journeys Mapping Fictional Travels Across the World of Literature , which celebrat...

From the beginning of his career as a poet, W.H. Auden wrestled with the meaning of Englishness. He came out with a collection of poems entitled On This Island , but what exactly was this island? A world in ruins? …

By listener request, Jacke presents a conversation with Nigerian-born novelist Chigozie Obioma ( The Road to the Country , The Fishermen , An Orchestra of Minorities ). Obioma, hailed by the New York Times as "the heir to Chi...

Guilty pleasures! We use the phrase all the time, but what does it really mean? Can reading a book ever be a guilty pleasure? A listener suggests that it can - and Jacke invites two frequent History of Literature guests …

Troubled patron saint of confessional poetry? Quintessential literary sad girl? Genius poet rightfully viewed as the heir to Emily Dickinson? In her tragically brief life, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) somehow managed to inspire a...

He's best known as the author of The Catcher in the Rye , one of the great publishing and cultural successes of the twentieth century. But there was more to the Jerome David Salinger (1919-2010) story than a single book. …

Jacke talks to award-winning novelist and short story writer Charles Baxter about his new book, Blood Test: A Comedy , which the New York Times says "provides a snapshot of a troubled America, disguised as a speculative comed...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 …