Podcast
Critical Readings
Hosted by CriticalReadings.com · EN
Critical Readings examines key literary texts using close reading and critical analysis, and explains these approaches in discussion. Listeners will learn about the texts themselves and about how to approach a text for critical analysis.
34episodes
Episodes
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CR Episode 327: The Once and Future King, Part III
1w ago01:15:55Tap to summarizeThe panel discusses chapters 14–19 of The Sword in the Stone, with special attention to White's romanticised depiction of feudalism and the historical setting of the action, and with a comparison of the pacifistic views of the geese vs. the warlike ants.Continue reading
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CR Episode 326: The Once and Future King, Part II
2w ago01:02:06Tap to summarizeThe panel reads chapters 8–13 of The Sword in the Stone, with a focus on the precise nature of Merlin's magic and the 'transformations' experienced by the Wart (but not by Kay), and a detailed examination of the episode of the Ants and their collectivism.Continue reading
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CR Episode 325: The Once and Future King, Part I
3w ago01:10:18Tap to summarizeThe panel reads the first seven chapters of The Sword in the Stone, with attention given to the modern and medieval aspects of the setting, White's own narratorial voice, the differing metaphors and parallels of characterisation, and the original sources.Continue reading
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CR Episode 324: The Poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson
May 2500:58:33Tap to summarizeThe panel reads three poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson—"Uriel", "Ode Inscribed to William H. Channing", and "The Snow Storm"—with special attention to the role of the poet-philosopher's transcendentalist, romanticist, and abolitionist views in the poems.Continue reading
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CR Episode 323: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V
May 1801:08:57Tap to summarizeThe panel discusses the concluding act and scene of the play, with special attention to the linguistic wordplay and the Shakespearean critique of players, audiences, and critics alike in the both the play-within-a-play device and in Puck's epilogue.Continue reading
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CR Episode 322: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV
May 1100:53:23Tap to summarizeThe panel discusses the resolution of the love quadrangle, as Puck puts right the enchantments in order to bring Oberon's original plan to fruition, before turning to consider Titania's relationship to her husband in the wake of her own enchantment.Continue reading
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CR Episode 321: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III
May 401:10:01Tap to summarizeThe panel discusses the deployment of additional fairy magic, with the transformation of Bottom and the confounding of Helena, and the confusion that results when both Bottom and Helena misbelieve that they are subject of their friends' pranks.Continue reading
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CR Episode 320: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II
Apr 2701:00:54Tap to summarizeThe panel discusses the second act and the moment in the play when the plans of the characters begin to go astray due to mischance, with special attention to the tension between Titania and Oberon, and the expanding geographical knowledge of the time.Continue reading
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CR Episode 319: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I
Apr 2000:52:25Tap to summarizeThe panel discusses the setting and form of the play, before discussing the first act and its complicated love quadrangle, with attention given to love and the threat of violence, and the characters' creation of overlapping plans that threaten to collide.Continue reading
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CR Episode 318: Paradise Regained, Book IV
Apr 1301:03:36Tap to summarizeThe panel discusThe panel discusses the end of the second temptation, with Satan's exasperation and the exhaustion of his intellect, followed by his less cunning and crafty final temptation, set high atop the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, whence he falls anew.Continue reading
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