Episodes

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 …

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 ...

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 Aus...

"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 (1908-196...

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 fo...

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 …

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 Depress...

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 i...

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 …

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 alw...