Today, we're unfurling the scrolls of one of the most provocative, scandalous, and riveting novels to ever emerge from China’s Ming dynasty: "Jin Ping Mei," or as it's tantalizingly translated, "The Plum in the Golden Vase." This novel is not just a story; it's a journey into the opulent, and often morally ambiguous, world of 16th-century China. We have the esteemed Dr. Junjie Luo, associate professor in East Asian Studies at Gettysburg College, joining us in the studio. Dr. Luo, with his vast knowledge of Chinese literature and culture, will help us unravel the complex narrative threads and u ..read more

Madame Bovary scandalized and fascinated nineteenth-century France upon its release, and is a groundbreaking exploration of desire, romantic disillusionment, and the mundane realities of rural life. Joining us are Professors Mary Donaldson-Evans who taught at University of Delaware, Jennifer Yee from Oxford University, Rachel Mesch from Boston University, and C.F.S. Creasy from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. Recommended Readings: Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary Creasy, C.F.S.. "Flaubert’s Alibi: The Impossible Ensemble of Madame Bovary," Novel. 2015. p363-380. Donalson-E ..read more

Gulliver’s Travels remains one of the finest satires in the English language, delighting in the mockery of everything from government to religion and —despite the passing of nearly three centuries-remaining just as fun, funny and relevant today. Our guest-speakers are chief editors of the 2023 Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels Dr. Daniel Cook and Dr. Nicholas Seager. Daniel is an Associate Dean and Reader in English Literature at the University of Dundee whose teaching and research interests include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. Nick is Lecturer in English Literature a ..read more

A Norwegian author and well-known worldwide for six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle and multiple prize winner, Karl Ove Knausgaard  has been described as "one of the 21st century's greatest literary sensations". With us today is our returning guest-speaker dr. Bob Blaisdell. As I’ve introduced him on the show before, he is professor of English at the City University of New York’s Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. He is author of Creating Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Birth of Literature's Most Enigmatic Heroine; and another book titled Chekhov Becomes Chekhov: The E ..read more

Zuleika Dobson, or an Oxford love story, is the only novel by English essayist Max Beerbohm, a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford published in 1911. The book largely employs a third-person narrator limited to the character of Zuleika then shifting to that of the Duke, then halfway through the novel suddenly becoming a first-person narrator who claims inspiration from the Greek Muse Clio, with her all-seeing narrative perspective provided by Zeus. This allows the narrator to also see the ghosts of notable historical visitors to Oxford, who are present but otherwise invisible to the human ch ..read more

New Grub Street is a novel by George Gissing published in 1891, which is set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s' London.The story deals with the literary world that Gissing himself had experienced. Its title refers to the London street, Grub Street, which in the 18th century became synonymous with hack literature; by Gissing's time, Grub Street itself no longer existed, though hack-writing certainly did. Its two central characters are a sharply contrasted pair of writers: Edwin Reardon, a novelist of some talent with limited commercial prospects, and Jasper Milvain, a young jour ..read more

How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In the book The Aesthetic Cold War, Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and the political police to influence writers. In response, many writers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean—such as Chinua Achebe, Mulk Raj Anand, Eileen Chang, C.L.R. James, Alex La Guma, Doris Lessing, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka —carved out a vibrant conceptual space of aesthetic nonalignment, imagining a different and freer future for their work. With us today is the book’s ..read more

Taking Sigmund Freud's theories as a point of departure, Jean-Michel Rabaté's 2014 book The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis, explores the intriguing ties between psychoanalysis and literature. With me today is Professor. Jean-Michel Rabaté. He is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.  Professor Rabaté has authored and edited more than 40 books on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, philosophy, and writers like Beckett,  Pound and Joyce. Since 2008, he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sc ..read more

The famous English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare had during his lifetime produced 39 plays which are widely regarded as being among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world, translated into every major living language. In recent years, modern criticism has labeled some of these plays "problem plays" that elude easy categorisation, or perhaps purposely break generic conventions, and has introduced the term romances for what scholars believe to be his later comedies. What is so enigmatic about these later plays? Today, the distinguishe ..read more

Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. It recounts the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature through an unorthodox scientific experiment. Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, some scholars have argued for it as the first true science-fiction story. The novel has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays. Since the publication of the novel, the name "Franken ..read more