PODCAST · education
Great Writers Inspire
by Oxford University
PLEASE NOTE: The 'Great Writers Inspire' project has its own website which features much more extensive, diverse and updated content. Please visit https://writersinspires.orgFrom 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.
Episodes
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Oscar Wilde's Women
Sophie 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.
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Great Writers Inspire Great Writing
Alex 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...
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Julian Thompson on Rudyard Kipling
Dr 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...
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Julian Thompson on Sir Walter Scott
Dr 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.
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Shakespeare and Voice
Linda 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'.
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What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 3
Baroness 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?'.
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What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 2
Judith 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?'.
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What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 1
Dr 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.
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Dickens's Points of View
Professor 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.
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Jane Austen's Manuscripts Explored
Professor 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.
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The Watsons: Jane Austen Practising
Professor 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.
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Great Writers Inspire- A Video Introduction to the Project
A short introductory video to the "Great Writers Inspire project.
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What is a Great Writer? An academic panel discusses the question.
In 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...
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Julian Thompson on Wilkie Collins
Dr. 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...
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Chaucer
Professor 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.
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Ezra Pound
Dr 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....
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Mary Leapor
Dr Jennifer Batt talks about Mary Leapor, an 18th Century kitchen maid who wrote accomplished verses and won accolades from literary society.
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John Milton
Dr 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.
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The Lure of the East: the Oriental and Philosophical Tale in Eighteenth-Century England
Professor 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.
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Only Collect: An Introduction to the World of the Poetic Miscellany
Dr 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.
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Why Dickens?
Dr Robert Douglas-Fairhurst talks of Dickens' life and influences and why these have made his works so popular.
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J.M. Coetzee
Professor 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...
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Olive Schreiner
Professor 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...
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Katherine Mansfield and Rhythm Magazine
Dr 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...
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George Eliot - A Very Large Brain
Dr Catherine Brown gives a talk on George Eliot and her influences.
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William Blake
Dr 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…
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18th Century Labouring Class Poetry
Dr Jennifer Batt gives a talk on Stephen Duck, one of the 18th Century labouring-class poets.
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Jonathan Swift and the Art of Undressing
Dr Abigail Williams gives a talk on Jonathan Swift and the Art of Undressing.
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Beowulf
Dr 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...
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Shakespeare and the Stage
Professor Tiffany Stern gives a talk on William Shakespeare and how his plays were performed in Elizabethan England.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
PLEASE NOTE: The 'Great Writers Inspire' project has its own website which features much more extensive, diverse and updated content. Please visit https://writersinspires.orgFrom 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.
HOSTED BY
Oxford University
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Great Writers Inspire have?
Great Writers Inspire currently has 30 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Great Writers Inspire about?
PLEASE NOTE: The 'Great Writers Inspire' project has its own website which features much more extensive, diverse and updated content. Please visit https://writersinspires.orgFrom Dickens to Shakespeare, from Chaucer to Kipling and from Austen to Blake, this significant collection contains...
How often does Great Writers Inspire release new episodes?
Great Writers Inspire has 30 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Great Writers Inspire?
You can listen to Great Writers Inspire on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Great Writers Inspire?
Great Writers Inspire is created and hosted by Oxford University.
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