On Satire

Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell present their series, On Satire. Over twelve episodes, Colin and Clare will attempt to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in English literature, as they ask what satire is, what it’s for and why we seem to like it so much. Authors covered: Erasmus, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Earl of Rochester, John Gay, Alexander Pope, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark. Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, and regular contributors to the LRB. Non-subscribers will only hear an extracts of most of the episodes in this series. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Read more on satire in the LRB: Jonathan Coe: Sinking Giggling into the Sea https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n14/jonathan-coe/sinking-giggling-into-the-sea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Clare and Colin begin their twelve-part series on satire with the big question: what is satire? Where did it come from? Is it a genre, or more of a style, or an attitude? They then plunge into their first text, The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus, a prose satire from 1511 that lampoons pretty much the whole of sixteenth century life in the voice of Folly herself.  Erasmus’s influential work grew partly out of his close friendship with Thomas More, and their shared love of the 2nd century satirist Lucian, but also emerged at a moment (a few years before Luther’s 95 theses) when the worldliness of the Catholic Church could by satirised without necessarily being heretical. Folly’s harshest critiques are levelled at Erasmus’ particularly bugbear, those theologians who resisted humanist reformers (such as Erasmus) who sought to make textually accurate translations of scripture. But she also targets the whole panoply of human weaknesses, arguing (controversially) that not only is folly a necessary human quality that we couldn’t survive without, but that Christianity is folly and Christ himself was a fool. Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from most of the episodes in this series. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Further Reading in the LRB: James McConica: A Foolish Christ https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n21/j.b.-trapp/the-miller-s-tale J.B. Trapp: On Erasmus https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n21/j.b.-trapp/the-miller-s-tale M.A. Screech: Possible Enemies https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n11/m.a.-screech/possible-enemies James Wood: Thomas More https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n08/james-wood/the-great-dissembler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In their second episode, Colin and Clare look at the dense, digressive and often dangerous satires of John Donne and other poets of the 1590s. It’s likely that Donne was the first Elizabethan author to attempt formal verse satires in the vein of the Roman satirists, and they mark not only the chronological start of his poetic career, but a foundation of his whole way of writing. Colin and Clare place the satires within Donne’s life and times, and explain why the secret to understanding their language lies in the poet's use of the ‘profoundly unruly parenthesis’. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. 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 Read more on John Donne in the LRB: Catherine Nicholson: Who was John Donne? https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n02/catherine-nicholson/batter-my-heart Blair Worden: Donne and Milton's Prose https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n12/blair-worden/things-the-king-liked-to-hear Tobias Gregory: Lecherous Goates https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n20/tobias-gregory/lecherous-goates Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford. Get in touch: [email protected]

What did English satirists do after the archbishop of Canterbury banned the printing of satires in June 1599? They turned to the stage. Within months of the crackdown, the same satirical tricks Elizabethans had read in verse could be enjoyed in theatres. At the heart of the scene was Ben Jonson, who for many centuries has maintained a reputation as the refined, classical alternative to Shakespeare, with his diligent observance of the rules extracted from Roman comedy. In this episode, Colin and Clare argue that this reputation is almost entirely false, that Jonson was as embroiled in the volatile and unruly energies of late Elizabethan London as any other dramatist, and nowhere is this more on display than in his finest play, Volpone. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Read more in the LRB: Blair Worden: The Tribe of Ben https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/blair-worden/the-tribe-of-ben Terence Hawkes: Jonson and digestion https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n10/terence-hawkes/lore-and-ordure Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford. Get in touch: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

According to one contemporary, the Earl of Rochester was a man who, in life as well is in poetry, ‘could not speak with any warmth, without repeated Oaths, which, upon any sort of provocation, came almost naturally from him.’ It’s certainly hard to miss Rochester's enthusiastic use of obscenities, though their precise meanings can sometimes be obscure. As a courtier to Charles II, his poetic subject was most often the licentiousness and intricate political manoeuvring of the court’s various factions, and he was far from a passive observer. In this episode Clare and Colin consider why Restoration England was such a satirical hotbed, and describe the ways in which Rochester, with a poetry rich in bravado but shot through with anxiety, transformed the persona of the satirist. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Read more in the LRB: Germaine Greer: Doomed to Sincerity https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n18/germaine-greer/doomed-to-sincerity Terry Eagleton: In an Ocean of Elizabeths https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n20/terry-eagleton/in-an-ocean-of-elizabeths Christopher Hill: Reason, Love and Life https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n22/christopher-hill/reason-love-and-life Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford. Get in touch: [email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.