Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow attempt, over twelve episodes, to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in all of English literature. What is satire, what is it for, and why do we seem to like it so much? Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, and regular contributors to the London Review of Books. Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from these episodes. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/satireapplesignup In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/satiresignuppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
On Satire
Claim This Podcastby London Review of Books
5.0(7 reviews)
13 episodes
Updated Daily
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Podcast Overview
Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow attempt, over twelve episodes, to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in all of English literature. What is satire, what is it for, and why do we seem to like it so much? Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, and regular contributors to the London Review of Books. Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from these episodes. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/satireapplesignup In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/satiresignuppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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Publishing Since
1/1/2024
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Recent Episodes
December 4, 2024
'A Far Cry from Kensington' by Muriel Spark
In the final episode of their series, Colin and Clare arrive at Muriel Spark, who would never have considered herself a satirist though her writing was as bitingly satirical as any 20th-century novelist's. A Far Cry from Kensington has a deceptively simple plot: Agnes Hawkins, working for a publisher in London in the 1950s, insults Hector Bartlett, a would-be author, by calling him a ‘pisseur de copie’. Bartlett seeks revenge with the help of Hawkins’s fellow lodger, Wanda, with tragic results. Yet the true plot of any Spark novel is difficult to pin down, not least when the word ‘plot’ is deployed so frequently by her characters to imply conspiracy and misinformation. Colin and Clare discuss Spark’s kaleidoscopic view of reality and the ways in which both Catholicism and Calvinism play through her work. 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://apple.co/4dbjbjG In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Read more in the LRB: Jenny Turner: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n15/jenny-turner/she-who-can-do-no-wrong Frank Kermode: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n17/frank-kermode/mistress-of-disappearances Susan Eilenberg: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n24/susan-eilenberg/complacent-bounty James Wood: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n17/james-wood/can-this-be-what-happened-to-lord-lucan-after-the-night-of-7-november-1974 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
November 4, 2024
'A Handful of Dust' by Evelyn Waugh
In 1946 Evelyn Waugh declared that 20th-century society – ‘the century of the common man’, as he put it – was so degenerate that satire was no longer possible. But before reaching that conclusion he had written several novels taking aim at his ‘crazy, sterile generation’ with a sparkling, acerbic and increasingly reactionary wit. In this episode, Colin and Clare look at A Handful of Dust (1934), a disturbingly modernist satire divorced from modernist ideas. They discuss the ways in which Waugh was a disciple of Oscar Wilde, with his belief in the artist as an agent of cultural change, and why he’s at his best when describing the fevered dream of a dying civilisation. 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://apple.co/4dbjbjG In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Further reading in the LRB: Seamus Perry: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n16/seamus-perry/isn-t-london-hell John Bayley: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n20/john-bayley/mr-toad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
October 4, 2024
'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde
By the end of 1895 Oscar Wilde’s life was in ruins as he sat in Reading Gaol facing public disgrace, bankruptcy and, two years later, exile. Just ten months earlier the premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest at St James’s Theatre in London had been greeted rapturously by both the audience and critics. In this episode Colin and Clare consider what Wilde was trying do with his comedy, written on the cusp of this dark future. The ‘strange mixture of romance and finance’ Wilde observed in the letters of his lover, Alfred Douglas, could equally be applied to Earnest, and the satire of Jane Austen before it, but is it right to think of Wilde’s play as satirical? His characters are presented in an ethical vacuum, stripped of any good or bad qualities, but ultimately seem to demonstrate the impossibility of living a purely aesthetic life free from conventional morality. 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://apple.co/4dbjbjG In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Read more in the LRB: Colm Tóibín on Wilde's letters: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n08/colm-toibin/love-in-a-dark-time Colm Tóibín the Wilde family: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n23/colm-toibin/the-road-to-reading-gaol Frank Kermode: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n19/frank-kermode/a-little-of-this-honey Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford. Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
13 total episodes available
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