Great Writers Inspire
29 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 11 years ago - ★★★★ - 11 ratingsPLEASE NOTE: The 'Great Writers Inspire' project has its own website which features much more extensive, diverse and updated content. Please visit https://writersinspires.org
From Dickens to Shakespeare, from Chaucer to Kipling and from Austen to Blake, this significant collection contains inspirational short talks freely available to the public and the education community worldwide. This series is aimed primarily at first year undergraduates but will be of interest to school students preparing for university and anyone who would like to know more about the world's great writers. The talks were produced as part of the Great Writers Inspire Project which makes a significant body of material freely available on the subject of great works of literature and their authors. Visit https://writersinspire.org/ to see how great writers can inspire you.
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Episodes
Oscar Wilde's Women
September 19, 2012 16:54 - 16 minutes - 15 MBSophie Duncan introduces Oscar Wilde by setting him in an accurate historical context. She then moves on to consider the revolutionary aspects of his four plays Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance and The Importance of Being Earnest.
Great Writers Inspire Great Writing
September 19, 2012 16:51 - 9 minutes - 8.6 MBAlex Pryce considers how writers are readers, influenced and inspired by the works of other writers. Taking as a starting point the literary afterlife of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and the influence of Romantic John Keats on the First World War Poet Wilfred Owen, Alex discusses how writers are challenged by precursory writers, and introduces some theories of influence from T.S. Eliot and Harold Bloom.
Julian Thompson on Rudyard Kipling
September 19, 2012 16:49 - 20 minutes - 18.7 MBDr Julian Thompson considers a writer described by Kingsley Amis as 'our greatest writer of short stories'. In this discussion of Rudyard Kipling, Julian acknowledges Kipling's lack popularity with readers, but argues for the greatness of short stories from across his ouvre and positions them as precursors to modernism.
Julian Thompson on Sir Walter Scott
August 01, 2012 13:08 - 18 minutes - 16.7 MBDr Julian Thompson introduces 'the least read great writer in our literature'. He describes the popularly of Walter Scott in his own time and suggests some highlights of the 'living Scots' of his fiction.
Shakespeare and Voice
August 01, 2012 12:42 - 8 minutes - 7.54 MBLinda Gates, Professor of Voice at Northwestern University (USA) discusses how Shakespeare's poetry and plays lend themselves to vocal performance by discussing how breath can be used to 'punctuate the thought'.
What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 3
July 19, 2012 14:13 - 13 minutes - 29.9 MBBaroness Helena Kennedy QC, draws on her experience as a trustee of the Booker Prize and as a judge for many other literary prizes to offer a response to the question, 'What is a Classic?'.
What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 2
July 19, 2012 11:35 - 6 minutes - 6.64 MBJudith Luna, the Senior Commissioning Editor at Oxford World's Classics, draws on her practical involvement in re-launching the Oxford World's Classics series in 2008 to give a publisher's take on the question, 'What is a Classic?'.
What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 1
July 19, 2012 11:13 - 19 minutes - 44.6 MBDr Ankhi Mukherjee, Wadham college, Oxford, speaks to the question 'What is a Classic?' by examining the residual influence of the Eurocentric literary canon in the age of world literature and emergent formations of canons and classics.
Dickens's Points of View
June 14, 2012 12:38 - 30 minutes - 27.7 MBProfessor Jon Mee, University of Warwick, discusses how Dickens's fiction can be considered 'cinematic' by drawing attention to the shifting points of view in Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend, and other novels. He relates this to work done in recent and historical adaptations of Dickens's work.
Jane Austen's Manuscripts Explored
June 08, 2012 14:07 - 9 minutes - 21.8 MBProfessor Kathyrn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks around the manuscripts of Jane Austen, what we can learn from them about her family life but also her writing style and techniques.
The Watsons: Jane Austen Practising
June 08, 2012 14:00 - 27 minutes - 62.1 MBProfessor Kathryn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks about some of Jane Austen's manuscripts from the novel "The Watsons" and what we can learn about her from these.
What is a Great Writer? An academic panel discusses the question.
May 15, 2012 16:38 - 48 minutes - 110 MBIn this panel discussion from the Great Writers Inspire Engage Event workshop, Dr Seamus Perry, Dr Margaret Kean, Professor Peter McDonald and Dr Ankhi Mukherjee discuss what we mean when we talk about greatness in writing. Seamus Perry chooses Samuel Taylor Coleridge, inspired as he is by the 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and its myriad possible interpretations. Margaret Kean chooses John Milton, who used his Paradise Lost to position himself in the canon of great writers during his lifetime...
Julian Thompson on Wilkie Collins
May 15, 2012 11:09 - 17 minutes - 15.7 MBDr. Julian Thompson considers how Wilkie Collins's fiction was pioneering across a variety of genres, including detective fiction and gothic thrillers. He also considers Collins's progressive political outlook, picks out his 'great' work, and indicates how Collins may have influenced Charles Dickens.
Chaucer
April 17, 2012 15:16 - 14 minutes - 32.1 MBProfessor Daniel Wakelin discusses the work of Chaucer and explains how he was one of the first to use everyday spoken English as a literary language in the 14th Century.
Ezra Pound
April 10, 2012 12:09 - 15 minutes - 25.7 MBDr Rebecca Beasley explains why we should read Pound, someone she considers as the central figure in early 20th Century poetry movements. In this podcast, Rebecca Beasley talks about a poem that Pound published in Blast, the magazine of the vorticist movement -- which Pound joined in 1914. Vorticism was mainly a visual arts movement, founded by Percy Wyndham Lewis. Blast is available on the Modernist Journals Project website with certain usage restrictions: the poem discussed, Et Faim Sallir ...
Mary Leapor
March 27, 2012 18:07 - 12 minutes - 28.9 MBDr Jennifer Batt talks about Mary Leapor, an 18th Century kitchen maid who wrote accomplished verses and won accolades from literary society.
John Milton
March 15, 2012 12:26 - 18 minutes - 42.4 MBDr Anna Beer shares a few short extracts of Milton's poem Lycidas and discusses what they show about Milton's very special qualities as a writer.
The Lure of the East: the Oriental and Philosophical Tale in Eighteenth-Century England
March 13, 2012 09:34 - 13 minutes - 30 MBProfessor Ros Ballaster discusses the objectives of oriental tales published in the second half of the 18th Century which use the sheer power of storytelling to conjure up alternative worlds.
Only Collect: An Introduction to the World of the Poetic Miscellany
March 09, 2012 16:01 - 13 minutes - 31.4 MBDr Abigail Williams, Director of the Digital Miscellanies Index, explains how these popular collections of poetry designed to suit contemporary tastes were used in the 18th Century.
Why Dickens?
March 02, 2012 10:20 - 10 minutes - 23.9 MBDr Robert Douglas-Fairhurst talks of Dickens' life and influences and why these have made his works so popular.
J.M. Coetzee
February 07, 2012 13:56 - 12 minutes - 11.6 MBProfessor Peter McDonald gives a talk on the work of South African Nobel Laureate, J.M. Coetzee. Professor McDonald sets out the various less-than-great guises of the writer in Coetzee's fiction. He goes on to consider passages from Foe (1986) and Disgrace (1999) to highlight Coetzee's linguistic disruptiveness that might be considered traits of postmodern or post-colonial writing. In these close readings, Professor McDonald demonstrates how in just a few words, we can see that J.M. Coetzee i...
Olive Schreiner
February 07, 2012 13:54 - 11 minutes - 12.9 MBProfessor Elleke Boehmer gives a talk on Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), the South African novelist, pioneering feminist, and anti-imperialist polemicist. For Boehmer, Schreiner is not 'great' in the conventional sense (she did not possess the great literary brain of George Eliot, for example), but she is a great inspiration in many spheres: she influenced other writers (fellow South African J.M. Coetzee, in particular); other critical thinkers and activists (including John A. Hobson and Vladimi...
Katherine Mansfield and Rhythm Magazine
February 07, 2012 13:51 - 20 minutes - 18.5 MBDr Faith Binckes explains why modernist short story writer and critic Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is a great writer, highlighting her involvement with the 1911-1913 periodical Rhythm, edited by her second husband John Middleton Murry. Dr Binckes discusses how three stories from 1912 - 'The Woman at the Store', 'How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped', and 'Sunday Lunch' - illustrate different facets of Mansfield's writing. Though she has in the past been considered a domestic writer of women's an...
George Eliot - A Very Large Brain
February 07, 2012 13:46 - 11 minutes - 9.95 MBDr Catherine Brown gives a talk on George Eliot and her influences.
William Blake
February 07, 2012 13:43 - 12 minutes - 11.2 MBDr David Fallon introduces the poetry, painting, and engraving of William Blake, focusing on the imaginative and visionary aspects of Blake's work and his desire to break the publics 'mind-forg'd manacles'. Dr Fallon also highlights Blake's exposure to the political radicalism of the 1780s and 90s through his work as an engraver for the Unitarian publisher Joseph Johnson. Blake's unorthodox Christianity led him to challenge conventional notions of good and evil in his visionary 'The Marriage ...
18th Century Labouring Class Poetry
February 07, 2012 13:41 - 10 minutes - 9.37 MBDr Jennifer Batt gives a talk on Stephen Duck, one of the 18th Century labouring-class poets.
Jonathan Swift and the Art of Undressing
February 07, 2012 13:38 - 11 minutes - 10.1 MBDr Abigail Williams gives a talk on Jonathan Swift and the Art of Undressing.
Beowulf
February 07, 2012 13:35 - 12 minutes - 11.3 MBDr Francis Leneghan gives a talk on Beowulf, one of the most important works in Anglo-Saxon literature. The title of this collaborative project, 'Great Writers Inspire', naturally brings up several questions, most importantly of which is, 'What is a Writer?' In his talk on the Old English poem Beowulf, Francis Leneghan discusses that very concern. The term 'author' does not convey the same static quality in the Anglo-Saxon period as it does in the modern day. Beowulf could have existed in a m...
Shakespeare and the Stage
February 07, 2012 13:32 - 15 minutes - 13.8 MBProfessor Tiffany Stern gives a talk on William Shakespeare and how his plays were performed in Elizabethan England.