Explore every episode of the podcast Open Book

Examine Shakespeare's tragedy of love, jealousy, and manipulation. From Venice's political intricacy to Cyprus's contested shores, we analyse how Shakespeare intertwines personal drama with geopolitical conflict. Explore why *Othello* continues to engage audiences over 400 years after its premiere.

Sir Philip Sidney's The Defence of Poesy, written around 1580 and published posthumously in 1595, is the first significant work of literary criticism in English. This episode explores Sidney's arguments for poetry's power to teach and delight, his concept of the poet as a creator of "golden worlds," and his assertion of poetry's superiority over other disciplines in moving readers to virtuous action.

NOTE: I say 1580 was “340 years ago,” but of course that’s off by a century. English professors evidently can’t do math.

For my complete read-through of The Defence of Poesy, start here.

Richard Wagamese’s 2014 novel Medicine Walk is the story of Franklin Starlight’s journey of mutual discovery with his dying father. It’s a novel about storytelling, and the personal and cultural identities that stories confer; but also about humans knowing their place on the land — a knowledge that goes beyond words and theories to experience, to embodiment rather than mental understanding.

Tom McCarthy’s C is a 2010 novel of ideas that addresses a wide array of scientific, historical, and cultural topics. Like McCarthy’s five other novels, it tells a complex and multi-layered story intertwined with disquisitions on art, memory, trauma, science, technology, and other mid-expanding topics. It’s written in a style that calls attention to its methods, surprising you recurrently with its perceptive and beautiful language.

An introduction to the major themes of Forster’s 1910 novel of modern life. It’s the story of two sisters, Helen and Margaret Schlegel, and their relationships with the Wilcox family, headed by its patriarch Henry Wilcox: a successful industrial capitalist, who has neither the Schlegels’ values of literature and art, nor sympathy for the lower classes of men like Leonard Bast, who aspires to those higher values.

An introduction to the biographical circumstances and major themes of Wuthering Heights, a novel by Emily Brontë published in two volumes in 1847 — a year before her death the age of 30. It’s a love story, a portrait of two families in rural northern England. Its most compelling character, Heathcliff, provokes varying reactions of sympathy and exasperation for his responses to others’ mistreatment and disregard.

Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, The Hours, tells the intertwined stories of three 20th-century women: the modernist author Virginia Woolf, in London; the midcentury housewife Laura Brown, in Los Angeles; and the late-90s literary editor and hostess Clarissa Vaughan, in New York City. Although Clarissa imagines an alternate “life as potent and dangerous as literature itself,” ultimately she reconciles herself to “an hour here or there when our lives … burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined.”

Like a cubist painting, Virginia Woolf’s narrative style offers multiple simultaneous perspectives on simple objects: dogs, trees, a day in June 1923. Were Woolf a realist writer, Mrs Dalloway would be far more straightforward: a middle-aged woman reflects on her life and reunites with friends as she prepares to host a party; a war veteran, meanwhile, dies by suicide after unsympathetic medical treatment of his PTSD. By using stream-of-consciousness methods for multiple characters in this novel, Woolf grants us access to their minds — excavating insight and beauty from the very ordinariness of life.

If you like this episode, you’ll also enjoy S02E07, “How to Read Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.”

Bernardine Evaristo’s 2019 Booker-Prize-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other, is a perfect illustration of the novel’s power to make you empathize with characters unlike yourself. It’s about black womanhood, but it’s also about being unconfined to your identity. 

Correction: The character married to Giles, who reads Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, is not Shirley but Penelope.

“I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” Jane Austen declared about Emma Woodhouse, the only heroine of her six novels to earn its title. The first novel in English written in a free indirect style, Emma has the lasting effect of making novels the standard form for readers to empathize with characters who may be very unlike ourselves.

An introduction to the second book of Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.

An introduction to the life of Geoffrey Chaucer and to his five-book romance Troilus and Criseyde. 

We focus in this episode on the third book and final book of “one of the most important [novels] to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation.” Midnight’s Children (1981) consists of three books narrated by Saleem Sinai: the first about events preceding his birth; the second about his life intertwining with the histories of India and Pakistan; and the third about his experiences after the deaths of his family in bombing raids in 1965. He is embroiled in the 1971 Bangladeshi independence struggle, returns to India, and finally  undertakes to preserve his memories in the book we have been reading, before he prophecies his impending death.

Page references throughout refer to the 2006 Vintage Canada edition.

Covering the second of three books in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), in which the narrator Saleem Sinai recounts the history of his life from 1947 to 1965. He learns that his parents are more complex than he knew, his family is his by adoption rather than by birth, and that his own mind is like a radio receiver for the thoughts of 1,001 other children born with the nation of India.

Page references throughout refer to the 2006 Vintage Canada edition.

An interpretive overview of the first Book of Salman Rushdie’s consummate novel of India, Midnight’s Children (1981).

Page references throughout refer to the 2006 Vintage Canada edition.

This is a recording of John Keats' "Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818)," read by Michael Ullyot.

The text is from the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series, edited in 2017 by John Barnard. 

This is a recording of John Keats' "Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818)," read by Michael Ullyot.

The text is from the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series, edited in 2017 by John Barnard. 

This is a recording of John Keats' "Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818)," read by Michael Ullyot.

The text is from the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series, edited in 2017 by John Barnard. 

This is a recording of John Keats' Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818), read by Michael Ullyot.

The text is from the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series, edited in 2017 by John Barnard. 

This is a recording of Jonathan Swift's "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift," read by Michael Ullyot.

The text is from the 6th edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, edited in 2018 by Margaret Ferguson, Tim Kendall, and Mary Jo Salter. 

This is a recording of Matthew Arnold's "The Scholar-Gypsy," read by Michael Ullyot.

The text is from the 6th edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, edited in 2018 by Margaret Ferguson, Tim Kendall, and Mary Jo Salter. 

This is a recording of Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy, or An Apology for Poetry, read by Michael Ullyot in three episodes. 

The text is from R.W. Maslen's 2002 edition for Manchester University Press.

This is a recording of Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy, or An Apology for Poetry, read by Michael Ullyot in three episodes. 

The text is from R.W. Maslen's 2002 edition for Manchester University Press.

This is a recording of Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy, or An Apology for Poetry, read by Michael Ullyot in three episodes. 

The text is from R.W. Maslen's 2002 edition for Manchester University Press.

This is a recording of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," read by Michael Ullyot in two episodes. 

The text is from The Collected Poems, 1909-1962, published by Faber & Faber in 1974.

This is a recording of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," read by Michael Ullyot in two episodes. 

The text is from The Collected Poems, 1909-1962, published by Faber & Faber in 1974.

This is a recording of Andrew Marvell's "Upon Appleton House," read by Michael Ullyot. 

The text is from The Complete Poems, edited by Elizabeth Story Donno, published by Penguin in 2005.

A recording of Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village," read by Michael Ullyot. 

The text is from The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 6th edition, edited by Margaret Ferguson, Tim Kendall, and Mary Jo Salter, published by W. W. Norton in 2018.

A recording of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," read by Michael Ullyot.  The text is from The Collected Poems: 1947-1985, published by Penguin in 1995.

A recording of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Adonais," an elegy for John Keats, read by Michael Ullyot. 

The text is from The Major Works, edited by Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill, published by Oxford University Press in 2003.

This is the second of a two-episode recording of “Hero and Leander,” by Christopher Marlowe -- read by Michael Ullyot. It covers the second of the poem's two parts, or Sestiads.

The text is from the Oxford University Press edition of *The Collected Poems* (2006), edited by Patrick Cheney and Brian J. Striar.

This is the first of a two-episode recording of “Hero and Leander,” by Christopher Marlowe -- read by Michael Ullyot. It covers the first of the poem's two parts, or Sestiads.

The text is from the Oxford University Press edition of *The Collected Poems* (2006), edited by Patrick Cheney and Brian J. Striar.

This is the second of a two-episode recording of “Pearl,” by an anonymous medieval poet, translated into modern English by Simon Armitage -- and read by Michael Ullyot. It covers sections 11-20 of the poem.

The text is from the Faber & Faber edition of 2016. 

This is the first of a two-episode recording of “Pearl,” by an anonymous medieval poet, translated into modern English by Simon Armitage -- and read by Michael Ullyot. It covers sections 1-10 of the poem.

The text is from the Faber & Faber edition of 2016. 

This is the fourth of a four-part recording of “Song of Myself,” by Walt Whitman -- read by Michael Ullyot. It covers sections 38-52 of the poem.

The text is from the Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Poems (1986), edited by Francis Murphy.

This is the third of a four-part recording of “Song of Myself,” by Walt Whitman -- read by Michael Ullyot. It covers sections 27-37 of the poem.

The text is from the Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Poems (1986), edited by Francis Murphy.

This is the second of a four-part recording of “Song of Myself,” by Walt Whitman -- read by Michael Ullyot. It covers sections 16-26 of the poem.

The text is from the Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Poems (1986), edited by Francis Murphy.

This is the first of a four-part recording of “Song of Myself,” by Walt Whitman -- read by Michael Ullyot. It covers sections 1-15 of the poem.

The text is from the Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Poems (1986), edited by Francis Murphy. 

Season 3 of “Open Book” is about reading literature, specifically long-form poetry. Some are old favourites, and some are poems I’ve been meaning to read for years: Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”; Simon Armitage’s modern translation of the medieval dream-vision “Pearl”; and a host of other narrative and lyrical selections. It’s about hearing the language, and not worrying quite so much about interpreting it. 

As ever I welcome comments and suggestions at ullyot@ucalgary.ca -- and I end this trailer with a reading of Christina Rossetti’s sonnet, “Remember.”

The closing episode of Season 2 is about two giants of late-20th-century poetry: the Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. We’ll read Heaney’s “Punishment,” Hughes’s “Hawk Roosting” and “The Thought-Fox,” and Heaney’s “Digging” — in that order, to draw out shared themes of nature, violence, and the origins of poetry.

This ends Season 2, and the start of the summer sabbatical: a time of pleasure reading planning and reflecting on what's to come in this series. To suggest future topics, particularly on subjects of broad interest (i.e. rather than on particular texts), or to share your thoughts on the show's format and style, please write to ullyot@ucalgary.ca. 

Analyses of four poems about time and change by the midcentury poet Philip Larkin. In “Church Going,” “An Arundel Tomb,” “The Trees,” and “This be the Verse,” there’s a sense of continuity tinged with melancholy: things survive and renew, but always in a compromised form.

An introduction to Waiting for Godot (1954), by the Franco-Irish novelist, playwright, Nobel laureate, and nihilist Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). This is a play in which nothing happens, twice — as the critic Vivian Mercier memorably wrote.  In this three-part episode, you’ll learn first about Beckett’s style; and about the play’s structure, plot, and setting. Then we’ll address what it means to wait. What are we waiting for? How do we wait? What do we do as we wait? Finally, we’ll address the meaning of Godot. Who is he? What is he? What resolution does Godot offer and withhold? If you ever have, or someone you know has, suicidal thoughts — caused by existential dread or any reason whatsoever — reach out to the Distress Centre 24/7 at 403-266-HELP(4357).

Readings and analysis of the three best-known poems by the Anglo-Welsh poet: “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” “Fern Hill,” and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.”  For my annotation and analysis of “In My Craft or Sullen Art,” see this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/JsSgPNoCQUM?t=279

Three poems about death, war, suffering, and other cheery 20th-century subjects by the Anglo-internationalist poet Wystan Hugh Auden: the elegy “Funeral Blues,”  and the ekphrastic or descriptive poems “Musée des Beaux Arts,” and “The Shield of Achilles.” 

An introduction to the twentieth century’s most beautiful novel — with a simple plot but an astonishingly complex, even disorienting style. Ten characters spend two ordinary days, ten years apart, at a summer cottage in the western isles of Scotland. But it’s their interior thoughts, impressions, and emotions, rather than exterior events, that carry the narrative forward. Woolf turns tiny details into questions as grand as the nature of love, the habit of art, and (yes) even the meaning of life. 

MEA CULPA: I misquote Shakespeare's Hamlet; it's actually "the trappings [not 'habits'] and the suits of woe" (1.2.86).

Readings and interpretations of four poems by the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats: the rustic simplicity of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”; the tender regret of “When You Are Old”; the evocative weariness of “Adam’s Curse”;  and the apocalyptic thrill of “The Second Coming.”

• Here is my YouTube video about Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan."
• Sprezzatura is the Italian term I mention, for seemingly careless artificiality or "studied carelessness" (OED); it first appeared in The Book of the Courtier (1528) by Baldassare Castiglione.
• CORRECTION: At the end, I mistakenly say that the next episode is on Samuel Beckett -- but it is actually on Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse (1927).

The novel of a beautiful young English aristocrat whose painted portrait ages and declines while he himself stays eternally young, exhibiting no outward signs of his inward moral decay. 

Readings and analysis of three poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson — “Mariana,” “The Lady of Shalott,” and “Ulysses” — that fall into two categories: the lives of women sequestered from a hostile or indifferent world, and the longing of a man to impose his will on the world. As we learn, all three should beware what they wish for. 

Readings and analysis of two poems, “To Autumn” and “The Eve of St. Agnes,” whose sensual richness and beauty counter the antipathies and harsh frigidity of their surrounding worlds. They underscore Keats’s claim that “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination.” 

This episode reads Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” in the context of Romantic poetry. We start with Coleridge’s vision in which “images rose up before him as *things*,” before we turn to Wordsworth: “well pleased to recognize / In nature and the language of the sense / The anchor of my purest thoughts.” The poetry they wrote to capture these things and these thoughts is their legacy — for every reader who feels deeply and struggles to describe those sensations.