Close Readings

• Novel Approaches: ‘North and South’ by Elizabeth Gaskell

  In North and South (1855), Margaret Hale is uprooted from her sleepy New Forest town and must adapt to life in the industrial north. Through her relationships with mill workers and a slow-burn romance with the self-made capitalist John Thornton, she is forced to reassess her assumptions about justice and propriety. At the heart of the novel are a series of righteous rebels: striking workers, mutinous naval officers and religious dissenters.Dinah Birch joins Clare Bucknell to discuss Gaskell’s rich study of obedience and authority. They explore the Unitarian undercurrent in her work, her eye for domestic and industrial detail, and how her subtle handling of perspective serves her great theme: mutual understanding.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaRead more in the LRB:Dinah Birch: The Unwritten Fiction of Dead Brothershttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v19/n19/dinah-birch/the-unwritten-fiction-of-dead-brothersRosemarie Bodenheimer: Secret-keepinghttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n16/rosemarie-bodenheimer/secret-keepingJohn Bayley: Mrs Ghttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n05/john-bayley/mrs-g Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Love and Death: Self-Elegies by Plath, Larkin, Hardy and more

  Philip Larkin was terrified of death from an early age; Thomas Hardy contemplated what the neighbours would say after he had gone; and Sylvia Plath imagined her own death in vivid and controversial ways. The genre of self-elegy, in which poets have reflected on their own passing, is a small but eloquent one in the history of English poetry. In this episode, Seamus and Mark consider some of its most striking examples, including Chidiock Tichborne’s laconic lament on the night of his execution in 1586, Jonathan Swift’s breezy anticipation of his posthumous reception, and the more comfortless efforts of 20th-century poets confronting godless extinction.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrldIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsldRead more in the LRB:Jacqueline Rose on Plath:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n16/jacqueline-rose/this-is-not-a-biography⁠David Runciman on Larkin and his father:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n03/david-runciman/a-funny-feeling⁠John Bayley on Larkin⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n08/john-bayley/the-last-romantic⁠Matthew Bevis on Hardy:⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n19/matthew-bevis/i-prefer-my-mare Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Fiction and the Fantastic: Stories by Franz Kafka

  In the stories of Franz Kafka we find the fantastical wearing the most ordinary, realist dress. Though haunted by abjection and failure, Kafka has come to embody the power and potential of literary imagination in the 20th century as it confronts the nightmares of modernity. In this episode, Marina Warner is joined by Adam Thirlwell to discuss the ways in which Kafka extended the realist tradition of the European novel by drawing on ‘simple forms’ – proverbs, wisdom literature and animal fables – to push the boundaries of what literature could explore, with reference to stories including ‘The Judgment’, ‘In the Penal Colony’ and ‘A Report to the Academy’.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrffIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsffFurther reading in the LRB:Franz Kafka (trans. Michael Hofmann): Unknown Lawshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n14/franz-kafka/short-cutsRivka Galchen: What Kind of Funny is He?https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n23/rivka-galchen/what-kind-of-funny-is-heJudith Butler: Who Owns Kafka?https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n05/judith-butler/who-owns-kafkaJ.P. Stern: Bad Faithhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n13/j.p.-stern/bad-faithNext episode: Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found at Saragossa and stories by Isak Dinesen.Get the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklist Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Conversations in Philosophy: 'My Station and Its Duties' by F.H. Bradley

  T.S. Eliot claimed that he learned his prose style from reading F.H. Bradley, and the poet wrote his PhD on the English philosopher at Harvard. Bradley’s life was remarkably unremarkable, as he spent his entire career as a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, where his only obligation was not to get married. Yet in over fifty years of slow, meticulous writing he articulated a series of unusual and arresting ideas that attacked Kantian and utilitarian notions of duty and morality. In this episode, Jonathan and James look at Bradley’s polemic against John Stuart Mill, ‘My Station and Its Duties’, and other essays in Ethical Studies, which challenge the idea of morality as a product of calm reasoning arrived at by mature, rational minds. For Bradley, morality is a characteristic of communities, determined by people’s differing needs at various stages in their lives, and the universal need for self-realisation can only be achieved through those communities.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcipIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscipRead more in the LRB:Frank Kermode on Eliot and Bradley:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n17/frank-kermode/feast-of-st-thomas Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Novel Approaches: 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray

  Thackeray's comic masterpiece, Vanity Fair, is a Victorian novel looking back to Regency England as an object both of satire and nostalgia. Thackeray’s disdain for the Regency is present throughout the book, not least in the proliferation of hapless characters called George, yet he also draws heavily on his childhood experiences to unfold a complex story of fractured families, bad marriages and the tyranny of debt. In this episode, Colin Burrow and Rosemary Hill join Tom to discuss Thackeray’s use of clothes, curry and the rapidly changing topography of London to construct a turbulent society full of peril and opportunity for his heroine, Becky Sharp, and consider why the Battle of Waterloo was such a recurrent preoccupation in literature of the period.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaRead more in the LRB:John Sutherland on Thackeray:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n02/john-sutherland/wife-overboardRosemary Hill on 'Frock Consciousness':https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n02/rosemary-hill/frock-consciousness Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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