"A Pretty Kind of Game": Ben Jonson's Volpone and The Alchemist

Send us Fan MailToday, you get to treat yourselves to a discussion of Pope's major satirical poems: The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad.  And, as a special bonus, you get to endure a desultory introduction concerning the Beatles at a cocktail party as well as series of pop culture references that are no less than 40 years old.  The Texts:The Rape of the Lock: https://jacklynch.net/Texts/rapelock.html The Dunciad: https://congresoartistas.masonicvipclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/the-dunciad.pdfSupport the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailFor this Easter holiday, I thought we'd look at a hymn lyric from a very influential writer who is often overlooked in discussions of literature: Isaac Watt.  You can find the full text of the lyric in the transcript.Additional Music: "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" perf. The Choir of St. Margaret's, Westminster (1931) His Master's Voice (B 3746)https://archive.org/details/78_when-i-survey-the-wondrous-cross_choir-of-st-margarets-westminster-miller-herber_gbia0438074bSupport the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailAlexander Pope, whom some critics regard as the most important poet of the early 18th century, set out to comprehensively explain the rules that governed art, poetry, and humanity itself.  And, it turns out, they're all the same rules.Support the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailWhile many may think of Swift's magnificent octopus as a mere children's adventure tale, it is, in fact, one of the darkest and most troubling satires in the English language.  Written as the Enlightenment began asserting rationality as the measure of all things, Gulliver's Travels questions the very premises of western culture themselves.  Link to Gulliver's Travels: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17157/17157-h/17157-h.htmSupport the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailI hope you've brought your appetite, because today we're looking at some of Dr. Swift's shorter prose satires (along with a couple of poems) and he certainly gives us plenty to chew on."A Description of the Morning": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45266/a-description-of-the-morning"A Description of a City Shower": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50578/a-description-of-a-city-shower"The Battle of the Books": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/623/623-h/623-h.htm"A Tale of a Tub": https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4737"A Modest Proposal": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htmSupport the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailOne of the most theologically and liturgically important Christmas carols may contain coded messages against the Throne of England!Additional Music: "Adeste Fidelis" by Bing Crosby with The Max Terr choir; John Scott Trotter and his orch.; Traditional; Decca (BM 03929)Support the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailIn the early 18th century, the public press came to dominate English writing.  Pamphlets, newspapers, and periodicals fed the appetite for news and commentary of an ever-hungrier reading public.  Richard Steele and Joseph Addison were the great innovators of the periodical essay, a quintessentially English genre of writing.Support the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailOn this trip, we're looking at the conventional candidate for the first modern novel in English.  Defoe's story of a resourceful man shipwrecked on a desert island is so much more than a ripping yarn: it speaks to the rise of a literary vernacular language, the values of an increasing bourgeois and expansionist society, and of spiritual awakening.  Come aboard!Text: https://ia600207.us.archive.org/26/items/cu31924011498676/cu31924011498676.pdfAdditional Music:"Theme from Emergency!" by Nelson Riddle. https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_206"The Ballad of Gilligan's Island" by Sherwood Schwartz.  https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_275Support the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailFor you today, Trick or Treaters, a discussion of what some critics assert is the first modern ghost story in English: Daniel Defoe's 1705 "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal."The text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36587/36587-h/36587-h.htmSupport the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us Fan MailWell, I probably should have done this episode earlier, since it might have been good for it to precede our other discussions of Resto comedy.  But I made a last minute decision and included a second play, which kind of threw off the old chronology.  But it's good all the same!The Man of Mode by George Etherege: https://coldreads.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/the-man-of-mode.pdfThe Way of the World by William Congreve: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1292/1292-h/1292-h.htmSupport the showIf you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation.  Click the "Support the Show" button.  So grateful!Or Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/classicenglishliteraturePlease like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen.  Thank you!Email: [email protected] me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber OrchestraSubcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish GuardsSound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.orgMy thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!