Send us a text

I'm back before you even had a chance to miss me!

Today, a bit of a genealogy of a now little read mock epic -- Samuel Butler's Hudibras -- which takes Chaucer and Spenser and Cervantes, mixes them all up into a gloopy goo, and sprays it all over lemon-sucking Puritans!

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.com

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

Put on your comfortable shoes and grab your walking stick because today we're embarking on the most famous allegory in the English language: John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress from 1678. We'll cross plains, endure temptations, descend valleys, fight monsters, and ford rivers in our quest for the Celestial City! Along the way, we'll talk about how this most Puritanical of texts is, ironically, deeply indebted to the ideas of the preceding religions it rejects. Last one there's a rotten egg!

An apology: please do forgive the plosives on this episode. Reckon I got too near the microphone's pop filter. I shall work on my technique in future.

Link to The Pilgrim's Progress:

https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/bunyan/The%20Pilgrim's%20Progress%20-%20John%20Bunyan.pdf

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.com

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!

Send us a text

The political upheavals of 17th century England demanded new answers for old political questions: what is the purpose of government, how is power legitimated, and who may wield it? Philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke reasoned from the same premises, but arrived at rather different conclusions. Balancing those conclusions is the primary task of liberal democracies to this day.

Texts:

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes: https://gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm

"Second Treatise on Government" by John Locke: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm

Leviathan frontispiece: https://www.worldhistory.org/image/18182/leviathan-frontispiece/

Support the show

Please like, subscribe, and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you listen. Thank you!

Email: classicenglishliterature@gmail.com

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and YouTube.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it with a small donation. Click the "Support the Show" button. So grateful!

Podcast Theme Music: "Rejoice" by G.F. Handel, perf. The Advent Chamber Orchestra
Subcast Theme Music: "Sons of the Brave" by Thomas Bidgood, perf. The Band of the Irish Guards
Sound effects and incidental music: Freesounds.org
My thanks and appreciation to all the generous providers!