The Moth
The Moth
Arts
The History of Literature
by Jacke Wilson / The Podglomerate
Today: #160 in Arts on our combined chart.
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| Date | Apple Podcasts |
|---|---|
| Oct 3 | #130 |
About the show
Amateur enthusiast Jacke Wilson journeys through the history of literature, from ancient epics to contemporary classics. Episodes are not in chronological order and you don't need to start at the beginning - feel free to jump in wherever you like! Find out more at historyofliterature.com and facebook.com/historyofliterature. Support the show by visiting patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. Contact the show at historyofliteraturepodcast@gmail.com.
Latest episodes
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833 Galahad and the Grail (with Malcolm Guite)
September 28, 2026 · 55 minEverywhere we look, we see the benefits of the modern world. But what have we lost? In this episode, Jacke talks to Malcolm Guite about his new book Galahad and the Grail, the first of a four-volume Arthuriad, which poetically retells the…
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832 Stendhal [Revisited]
September 24, 2026 · 48 minAs we recently discussed with Hadley Suter, nineteenth-century French novelist Stendhal (1783-1842) came of age in an era when identity was up for grabs. So who was he? How did he view himself? What did he write, and why do we care so much…
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831 Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" (with Rachel Pastan) | My Last Book with David Denby
September 21, 2026 · 59 minWhen times are tough, can literature help? After sharing an email from a listener, Jacke talks to author Rachel Pastan about her novel We're So Lucky to Live Here, in which a woman copes with a tragic loss by staging a production of…
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830 Becoming Stendhal (with Hadley Suter) | A Literary Tribute to Dolly Parton
September 20, 2026 · 1 hr 38 minWe often say it's important for a person to be "authentic," but what does that mean? Why is that necessarily a good thing? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Hadley Suter (Becoming Stendhal: The Performance of Authenticity and the…
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829 Charlotte Brontë and Her Biographer Elizabeth Gaskell (with Susan Dunne) | My Last Book with Travis Franks | The Odyssey Kerfuffle
September 10, 2026 · 1 hr 11 minCharlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell, two of the leading novelists of the 19th century, shared a remarkable literary friendship. After Charlotte's death, Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë became one of the most famous--and…
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828 Confucius (with Mark Csikszentmihalyi) | Celia Bookshop! (with Rachel Pastan) | Jacke in Taiwan
September 7, 2026 · 1 hr 22 minWhat do we know about the Chinese philosopher and teacher Confucius? Although people have written biographies of Confucius for over 2,000 years, a recent discovery of a Chinese tomb containing the oldest written account of his life gives…
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827 American Literature's War on Crime (with Theodore Martin) | W.E.B. DuBois Sits with Shakespeare
August 31, 2026 · 1 hr 23 minThe second half of the twentieth century was marked by an extreme increase in America's prison population, from roughly 250,000 inmates in 1940 to well over two million by 2008. At the same time, American readers were devouring mysteries…
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826 The Essayist's Essayist - Phillip Lopate on the Pleasures of Reading Washington Irving and Other "Minor Writers" | Notes from the History of Literature Podcast Tour!
August 27, 2026 · 1 hr 19 minAt the time of Washington Irving's death, he was the most famous and widely praised American writer of his or any other era. But his reputation soon dwindled, and today he's known primarily as the author of just two stories ("The Legend of…