The History Of Literature

TONI MORRISON (b. 1931) is one of the most successful and admired authors in the history of American literature. Her novels include The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987), which is widely considered to be her masterpiece. After successful careers in both academia and publishing during the 1960s and '70s, Morrison's critical and commercial success enabled her to devote more time to her writing. In 1993, the Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature to Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."  In this episode, host Jacke Wilson intersperses Toni Morrison's biographical details and literary achievements with a discussion of his first encounters with Morrison's works and what they meant to him.  Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jac

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881) was, in the estimation of James Joyce, “the man more than any other who has created modern prose.” “Outside Shakespeare,” Virginia Woolf wrote, “there is no more exciting reading.” His influence is as impossible to understand as it is to overstate: he is widely credited as the forerunner of modern psychology, existentialist philosophy, the detective novel, and the prison memoir - and is, by any measure, one of the pinnacles of Russian literature. In this episode of The History of Literature, we consider the life and works of one of the greatest novelists the world has ever known.  Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts.

What was it like to relocate from India to London to America in the early 1970s? And how can a daughter hope to recapture the experience of her father and convey it in fiction? In today's episode of the History of Literature, Jacke and Mike look at a contemporary classic story, Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Third and Final Continent." Along the way, they discuss the tropes of immigrant fiction, the pros and cons of epiphany stories, and whether a story is a "city" or "an old friend." (Yes, that's another one of Mike's special theories.) JHUMPA LAHIRI was born in 1967 in London, England, the daughter of Bengali Indian emigrants. She moved to the United States when she was two years old and grew up in Rhode Island. A graduate of Boston University, she began writing and publishing her stories of first-generation Indian-American immigrants in the 1990s. Her first book, Interpreter of Maladies, was a huge critical and commercial success, selling over 15 million copies and earning Lahiri the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. NOTE

What happens when the party is over? Can you ever truly escape your past? Jacke and Mike take a look at F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic 1931 story of guilt and melancholy, "Babylon Revisited." F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) was the quintessential Jazz Age writer. While he's known today primarily as the author of the near-perfect novel The Great Gatsby, in his lifetime he was far more famous for his short stories, which millions of readers encountered through big-circulation magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. Fitzgerald published 65 stories in The Saturday Evening Post, including "Babylon Revisited," which tells the story of an American father living in post-Crash Paris, hoping for a reunion with his nine-year-old daughter--but fearing the reminders from his past that might make that impossible.  NOTE: This is a self-contained episode of The History of Literature, in which both the story and a discussion of it are provided. No reading necessary (unless you'd prefer it that way)! Help support the show at

STEPHEN KING (1947- ) was born in the northern state of Maine, where he has lived most of his life. For more than forty years, he has been the world's leading practitioner of scary fiction. He’s also won numerous awards, including the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Medal of Arts. His books have sold more than 350 million copies. MICHELLE GARZA and MELISSA LASON (aka the SISTERS OF SLAUGHTER) have been writing horror fiction since they were young girls growing up in rural Arizona. The twin sisters have been widely praised for their demented fairytales and historical hellscapes, including Mayan Blue and Kingdom of Teeth. Their most recent work is a collaborative project, Silverwood: The Door, which delivers serialized fiction in a throwback to the era of Dickens and Little Nell. They are lifelong fans of Stephen King, The X-Files, and werewolves. Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at

EZRA POUND (1885-1972) was born in a small mining town in Idaho and died in Venice, Italy. In his eighty-seven years, he changed the face of American poetry. A restless, tireless advocate for his artistic views and the authors who shared them, he also led an extremely eventful life, clamoring for change, devolving into madness, attacking his own country and living, for a while, as a prisoner of the United States Army, who kept him in an outdoor cage. His impact on American literature is as hard to understand as it is to overstate.  Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more

Karl Marx (1818-1883) turned his early interest in literature and philosophy into a lifelong study of the socioeconomic forces unleashed by the rise of capitalism. His works The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, among others, influenced the course of the twentieth century like few others. But who was Karl Marx? How did his ideas become so widespread? And how did his thinking and writing impact literature? We'll talk about Karl Marx and Marxist Literary Theory with Mike Palindrome, the President of the Literature Supporters Club, who has spent more than twenty years reading literary theory as an amateur enthusiast. Mike's recommendations: "Ideological and Ideological State Apparatuses" by Louis Althusser Mythologies by Roland Barthes Debt: The First 5,000 Years by Daniel Graeber The Political Unconscious by Fredric Jameson Utopia or Bust by Benjamin Kunkel The Year of Dreaming Dangerously by Slavoj Zizek What is to be Done? by Vladimir Lenin Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at histo

Jacke welcomes author Sarah Bird to the program to talk about her background, her writing, and her readerly passion for the fiction of the great twentieth-century novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ (1927-2014) was one of the most revered and influential novelists of the twentieth century. Born in a small town in Colombia, which he later made famous as the fictionalized village "Macondo," he drew upon the stories and storytelling styles of his grandparents and parents to formulate what came to be called "magical realism." His books One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera have sold tens of millions of copies and stand as a testament to the power of fiction. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. SARAH BIRD is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, the recipient of the Texas Institute of Letters’ Award for Distinguished Writers, and a six-time winner of the Austin Chronicle’s Best Fiction Writer Award. Her most recent novel, Daughter of a Daughter

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the most famous American writers of the twentieth century. His plain, economical prose style--inspired by journalism and the King James Bible, with an assist from the Cezannes he viewed in Gertrude Stein’s apartment--became a hallmark of modernism and changed the course of American literature. In this episode, Jacke and Mike take a look at an author and novel, The Sun Also Rises (1927), they’ve been reading and discussing for decades. Want more Hemingway? We took a new look at an old argument in Episode 47 Hemingway vs Fitzgerald. Love everything about the Lost Generation? Spend some time with the coiner of the phrase in Episode 127 Gertrude Stein. Rather be tramping through Europe? Try Episode 157 Travel Books (with Mike Palindrome). Looking for Irving's New Yorker piece? Visit Literature's Great Couples on Tinder. Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejack

Voltaire was born Francois Marie Arouet in 1694 in Paris, France, the son of a respectable but not particularly eminent lawyer. By the time he died at the age of 83, he was widely regarded as one of the greatest French writers in history, a distinction he still holds today. Astoundingly prolific, he is best known as the author of Candide - but the stories of his life, including the scrapes brought about by his fearless tongue, are perhaps at least as fascinating as anything his razor-sharp pen committed to paper. Enjoy French literature? Travel to the nineteenth century and visit another incredibly prolific author in Episode 152 George Sand. Not a Sand fan? Maybe you'd prefer Episode 79 - Music That Melts the Stars - Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. In love with Paris? Maybe you'd like to try our Episode 127 - Gertrude Stein.  Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC.

Special guest Carolyn Cohagan, author of the Time Zero trilogy and founder of the creative writing workshop Girls with Pens, joins Jacke for a discussion of her writing process, her origins in standup comedy and theater, and her early love for the fiction of Ray Bradbury (and her special appreciation for his short story "All Summer in a Day"). For another look at a twentieth-century giant who broke down genre barriers, try Episode 141 Kurt Vonnegut (with Mike Palindrome). Love pulp fiction? Hear about the efforts of a contemporary editor to bring back the heyday of the genre, including classic twentieth-century prose and beautiful painted covers, in Episode 140 Pulp Fiction and the Hardboiled Crime Novel (with Charles Ardai). Writing a little yourself? Hear the interview that made Carolyn run out to buy the book that passes along the secrets of fiction in Episode 133 - The Hidden Machinery (with Margot Livesey).  Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson

Today, Herman Melville (1819-1891) is considered one of the greatest of American writers, and a leading candidate for THE American novelist thanks to his classic work, Moby-Dick. How did this unpromising student become one of the most inventive and observant writers of his time? What obstacles did he face, and what did he do to overcome them? What other works of his are worth reading? Jacke, Mike, and special guest Cristina, aka The Classics Slacker, who recently spent 24 hours aboard the Charles W. Morgan listening to the novel being read, take a look at this fascinating man and his whale of a book. Enjoy 19th-Century American authors? Try Episode 90, Mark Twain's Final Request. Wondering how Melville got his ideas? Learn more about one of his inspirations in Episode 111 - The Americanest American, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ready for more adventure? Try Episode 82 - Robinson Crusoe.  Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mi

In the 1960s and '70s, the Vietnam War dominated the hearts and minds of a generation of Americans. In 1990, the American writer Tim O'Brien, himself a former soldier, published "The Things They Carried," a short story that became an instant classic. Through its depiction of the members of a platoon in Vietnam, told largely through the tangible and intangible things in their possession as they humped their way through the jungle, O'Brien's story captures the soul and psyches of young men engaged in a war they cannot understand and filled with a longing for home that must compete with the brutal circumstances of present-day reality. In this episode of the History of Literature, host Jacke Wilson reads the entire short story "The Things They Carried," then invites Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, to join him for a discussion of the Vietnam War and the literary masterpiece it gave rise to. Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewils

"The world is a book," said Augustine, "and those who do not travel read only one page." But what about books ABOUT traveling? Do they double the pleasure? Transport us to a different place? Inspire and enchant? Or are they more like a forced march through someone else's interminable photo album? Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, joins us for a look at his literary journey to London and Stockholm, summer reading, and a draft of the greatest travel books of all time. Works and authors discussed include As You Like It by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy by C.L. Barber, Virginia Woolf, My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Bill Bryson, Herodotus, Rick Steves, Eat Pray Love, Under a Tuscan Sun, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, My Life in France by Julia Child, Invisible Cities and other works by Italo Calvino, The Travels of Marco Polo, Patricia Highsmith, James Joyce, Henry James, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, Another Day of Life by Ka

 “A sonnet,” said the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “is a moment’s monument.” But who invented the sonnet? Who brought it to prominence? How has it changed over the years? And why does this form continue to be so compelling? In this episode of the History of Literature, we take a brief look at one of literature's most enduring forms, from its invention in a Sicilian court to the wordless sonnet and other innovative uses. Professor Bill walked us through a sonnet by Robert Hayden in Episode 97 - Dad Poetry (with Professor Bill). One of the world's great sonneteers, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, had her moment in Episode 95 - The Runaway Poets - The Triumphant Love Story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the lovers whose first words to one another magically form a perfect sonnet, found one another in Episode 53 - Romeo and Juliet.  Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition,” said Alfred North Whitehead, “is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” We’ve all heard the name of Plato and his famous mentor Socrates, and most of us have encountered the dialogues, a literary-philosophical form he essentially invented. We know the themes he advanced, his general views of metaphysics, and his interest in knowledge and its importance as a virtue. But what do we know about Plato the man? How did this person come to write works that would be read and wrestled with more than two thousand years later? And how do Plato’s literary skills help to deepen his arguments and enrich his narratives? In this episode of The History of Literature, we look at the fascinating figure of Plato and his great mentor/creation, Socrates. Like Greek thought and literature? Try Episode 4 - Sappho. Stop the presses! Go back even further in time to Episode 3 - Homer. Like philosophy and philosophers? Try Episode 117 - Machiave

John Milton (1608 - 1674) was a revolutionary, a republican, an iconoclast, a reformer, and a brilliant polemicist, who fearlessly took on both church and king. And he ranks among the greatest poets of all time, a peer of Shakespeare and Homer. Philip Pullman, the author who named his trilogy (His Dark Materials) after a Miltonic phrase, said, “No one, not even Shakespeare, surpasses him in his command of the sound, the music, the weight and taste and texture of English words.” In this episode of the History of Literature, we look at the life and works of one of the seventeenth-century's greatest individuals. For more on Satan as a runaway character in Milton's masterpiece Paradise Lost, try Episode 132 - Top 10 Literary Villains. We covered the OG blind bard Homer all the way back in Episode 3 - Homer. For another seventeenth-century writer (who isn't Shakespeare), try Episode 91 In Which John Donne Decides to Write About a Flea.  Support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliteratu

Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was the greatest novelist of the Victorian age. In his 58 years he went from a hardscrabble childhood to a world-famous author, beloved and admired for his unforgettable characters, his powers of observation and empathy, and his championing of the lower classes. He wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of articles and short stories - and also found time to edit a weekly periodical for over 20 years. But that wasn't all: he also wrote thousands of pages of letters, ran a sizable household, was a tireless reformer, a philanthropist, an amateur theatrical performer, a lecturer, and a traveler, and at times walked 14 miles a day. And he had secrets in his personal life that are still being unearthed today. How on earth did he get all this done? How was he viewed by his contemporaries? And what do we make of his novels - and his life - today? For more on Dickens' classic work A Christmas Carol, try Episode 72 - Top 10 Christmas Stories For a look at the sentimental in fic

George Sand wrote an astonishing number of novels and plays, and had friendships and affairs with an astonishing range of men and women. She dressed in men’s clothing, and she inspired a host of 19th century authors and artists, including Russian writers like Turgenev and Dostoevsky and British writers like Mary Ann Evans, who adopted the name George, as in George Eliot, out of tribute to her French predecessor. In this episode of the History of Literature, we travel to 19th Century France, for a look at the life and works of the inimitable and indefatigable George Sand. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more inf

The Vikings! Sure, they had helmets and hammers, but did they also have... poetry? Indeed they did! In this episode, we talk to Noah Tetzner, host of The History of Vikings Podcast, about the collection of Old Norse verses called the Poetic Edda - and in particular, we look at the first of these, the succinct poem known as The Völuspá. Dated to around 1250 A.D., the Völuspá recorded centuries of oral tradition. Today, it serves as one of our best introductions to Viking mythology, affording us a window into a fascinating and mysterious culture.  Help support the show at patreon.com/literature. Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglo