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.]

Additional listening:

• 368 The Story of the Nativity (with Stephen Mitchell)
• 172 Holiday Movies (with Brian Price)
• 407 "The Old Nurse's Story" by Elizabeth Gaskell

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

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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 December 19, 2017.]

Additional listening:

• 123 James Joyce's The Dead (Part 1) [Full Version]
• 72 The Best Christmas Stories in Literature
• 577 'Twas the Night Before Controversy - The Raging Dispute Over a Classic Christmas Poem
• 470 Two Christmas Days - A Holiday Story by Ida B. Wells

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 integration brought about by the famous Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education was a long-awaited triumph. But is the story as neat as that? What did writers - and in particular Black women writers - think about segregation in the 1930s-1950s? Did they view racial integration as a path to the promised land? Or as yet another false and incomplete promise? How did their writings reflect a resistance to conventional liberal wisdom - and how might their narrative models speak to today's world? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Eve Dunbar about her book Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation. PLUS Deni Kasa (The Politics of Grace in Early Modern Literature) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read.

Additional listening:

• 617 Politics and Grace in Early Modern Literature (with Deni Kasa) | Mike Recommends... James Baldwin! | My Last Book with Carlos Allende
• 358 The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (with Farah Jasmine Griffin) | Charles Dickens's Gospel (with Scott Carter)
• 485 Reading Pleasures - Everyday Black Living in Early America (with Tara A. Bynum)

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 episode, Tóibín tells Jacke about that original encounter, the qualities he most admires in Baldwin's work, Baldwin's spiritual relationship to the works of Henry James, and more. He also tells Jacke about his new book On James Baldwin, which the Sunday Independent calls "lucid, concise, unpretentious, emotionally engaging, and in some instances, deeply personal. [A] brilliant book."

Additional listening:

• Baldwin v. Faulkner
• James Baldwin - "Going To Meet the Man"
• 645 Richard Wright

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Edgar Allan Poe was impressed: "His tone is singularly effective," he wrote, "wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes...We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth."

In this episode, Jacke takes a look at one of these Twice-Told Tales, the short story "Wakefield," in which a Londoner abandons his wife, takes up residence one street away, then rejoins his family after twenty years as if he'd never left. The story is read in full by Emma Wilson, HOL producer. PLUS Amelia Possanza (Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read.

Additional listening:

• 296 Nathaniel Hawthorne
• 461 The Peabody Sisters (with Megan Marshall)
• 297 The Scarlet Letter

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 material for a contemporary novelist, but as Lev Grossman found, some of the Arthurian world's lesser-known characters can be just as compelling. In this episode, the bestselling author of the Magicians Trilogy tells Jacke about his new take on an old legend in his novel The Bright Sword.

Additional listening:

• 286 JRR Tolkien
• 354 Treasure Island Remixed (with C.B. Lee)
• 175 Virgin Whore - The Virgin Mary in Medieval Literature and Culture (with Professor Emma Maggie Solberg)

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 celebrates passages of literature that have sent readers to the ends of the earth from Ancient Greece to today.

Additional listening:

• 157 Travel Books (with Mike Palindrome)
• 579 New Year New You! Conversations with Bethanne Patrick and Aislyn Greene
• 95 Runaway Poets: The Triumphant Love Story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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? A beautiful (if morally compromised) haven? In this episode, Jacke talks to Nicholas Jenkins (The Island: War and Belonging in Auden's England) about Auden's relationship with the land of his birth, including his preoccupations with the vicissitudes of war, the trials of love, and the problems of identity. PLUS Italian scholar Gabriele Pedullà (On Niccolò Machiavelli: The Bonds of Politics) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read.

Additional listening:

• 595 Machiavelli (with Gabriele Pedulla)
• 479 Auden and the Muse of History (with Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb)
• 138 Why Poetry (with Matthew Zapruder)

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Chinua Achebe," tells Jacke about his childhood in Nigeria, the moment he knew he wanted to be a storyteller, what he values in literature, and more. Special attention is paid to one of Obioma's favorite books, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

[This is an HOL Encore performance. The conversation with Chigozie Obioma originally aired on February 1, 2021.]

Additional listening:

• 552 Writing after Rushdie (with Shilpi Suneja)
• 557 Somerset Maugham (with Tan Twan Eng)
• 314 Gabriel García Márquez (with Patricia Engel)

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 to test the theory. For this day-before-Thanksgiving special treat, Laurie Frankel (This Is How It Always Is, Family Family) and Mike Palindrome, the President of the Literature Supporters Club, help Jacke find some guilty pleasures, in literature and life. PLUS Jacke gives his own top ten guilty pleasures. AND Mary Flannery (Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read. Enjoy!

Additional listening:

• 640 Chaucer the Merry Bard (with Mary Flannery)
• 68 Thanksgiving Thoughts (with Mike Palindrome)
• 360 FMK Shakespeare! (with Laurie Frankel) | Tolstoy's Gospel (with Scott Carter)

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 all of these images and more. In this episode, Jacke talks to Emily Van Duyne about her book Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation, which delivers a nuanced, passionate exploration of the life and work of one of the most misunderstood writers of the twentieth century.

Additional listening:

• Sylvia Plath (with Mike Palindrome)
• Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (with Heather Clark)
• Plath, Hughes, and the "Other Woman" - Assia Wevill and Her Writings (with Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter Steinberg)
• Sylvia Plath Day by Day (with Carl Rollyson)

The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices