Narrative Poems

‘Tam o’ Shanter’ by Robert Burns and ‘Peter Grimes’ by George Crabbe

‘Tam o’ Shanter’ first appeared as a lengthy footnote in Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland (1791) after Robert Burns convinced Grose to include the ruined Alloway Kirk in his volume, and its supernatural associations (invented by Burns). Its story of the drunken Tam's encounter with witches in the stormy Ayrshire landscape has served as both a celebration and chastisement of Scottish masculinity ever since its publication, but the attitude of its narrator remains elusive throughout. In this episode, Seamus and Mark discuss the poem’s moral and stylistic turns, its influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge, and what it owes to the Augustan perfectionism of Pope. They then turn to a much darker example of Romantic narrative poetry, George Crabbe’s ‘Peter Grimes’ (published in his collection The Borough in 1810), and explore the bracing realism and psychological insight in the story of a cruel Suffolk fisherman who destroys the apprentices placed in his care. This episode also features a bonus conversation with Andrew O’Hagan, who reads extracts from 'Tam o’ Shanter' and explains why the poem’s reliably contradictory narrative voice is so useful for anyone learning to write stories. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignupnp [https://lrb.me/applesignupnp] Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignupnp [https://lrb.me/scsignupnp] Read more in the LRB: Karl Miller: Peeping Tam: ⁠https://lrb.me/npep501⁠ [https://lrb.me/npep501] Neal Ascherson on Burns's life: ⁠https://lrb.me/npep502 [https://lrb.me/npep502]

‘The Rape of the Lock’ by Alexander Pope

Sometime in 1711, a twenty-year-old aristocrat, Lord Petre, snipped a lock of hair, without permission, from the head of Arabella Fermor, a celebrated beauty. The incident caused an irreconcilable rift between the two families, who were both Catholic. Shortly afterwards, the young poet Alexander Pope, also Catholic, was approached by a friend who suggested he turn the incident into a comic poem. The result was one of the bestselling poems of the age, ‘The Rape of the Lock’ (1712), a mock-epic that fused the grand styles of Homer, Virgil and Milton with an acerbic social satire, in which the gods are reimagined as airy sylphs guarding the honour of the heroine, Belinda. William Hazlitt wrote of the poem that ‘you hardly know whether to laugh or weep’, and in this episode Seamus and Mark discuss why Pope's masterpiece is at once the funniest poem in the English language and an essay on the seriousness of trivial things. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignupnp [https://lrb.me/applesignupnp] Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignupnp [https://lrb.me/scsignupnp] Read more in the LRB: Claude Rawson on 'The Rape of the Lock': https://lrb.me/nppope01 [https://lrb.me/nppope01] Colin Burrow on Pope: https://lrb.me/nppope02 [https://lrb.me/nppope02]

‘Paradise Lost’ (Book 9) by John Milton

When Milton came to describe Eve’s tasting of the forbidden fruit, he knew he couldn’t rely on suspense to grip the reader. Instead, he used multiple genres and perspectives to interrogate the moral and emotional significance of ‘man’s first disobedience’, self-consciously drawing on the resources of Renaissance tragedy, pastoral and love poetry to achieve his great innovation, the Christian epic. In this episode, Seamus and Mark look at the ways in which Milton’s study of temptation and free will became an unparalleled expression of poetic brilliance, from its thrillingly ambiguous and seductive depiction of Satan to its vivid dramatisation of the reproachful lovers confronting the consequences of their misdeeds, and ultimately its claim to being the finest love poem in English. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignupnp [https://lrb.me/applesignupnp] Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignupnp [https://lrb.me/scsignupnp] Read more in the LRB: Colin Burrow: Loving Milton https://lrb.me/npmilton01 [https://lrb.me/npmilton01] Tom Paulin: Milton and the Regicides: https://lrb.me/mpmilton02 [https://lrb.me/mpmilton02] Tobias Gregory: Milton’s Theology: https://lrb.me/npmilton03 [https://lrb.me/npmilton03]

‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ by William Shakespeare

Like Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare made good use of his time off when the theatres were shut for plague in 1593. Venus and Adonis appeared in quarto that year and become by far the most popular work Shakespeare published in his lifetime, running to ten editions before his death (compared to just four for Romeo and Juliet). In this episode, Seamus and Mark consider the many ways in which Shakespeare’s poem displays its author's remarkable originality, from its peculiar reshaping of the Ovidian myth into a tale of comic mismatch, to its surprising diversion into the psychology of grief. They then look at his disturbing follow-up, The Rape of Lucrece (1594), in which a chilling depiction of self-conscious, premeditated evil anticipates characters such as Iago and Macbeth. Further reading in the LRB: Stephen Orgel on Shakespeare's poems: https://lrb.me/npshakespeare01 [https://lrb.me/npshakespeare01%E2%81%A0] Barbara Everett on the sonnets: https://lrb.me/npshakespeare02 [https://lrb.me/npshakespeare02]

‘Hero and Leander’ by Christopher Marlowe

‘Hero and Leander’ was published in 1598, and anyone who came across it in a stationer’s shop in Elizabethan London would have known that its author was dead, killed in a brawl in Deptford in 1593. Christopher Marlowe’s sensational life as playwright and spy is matched by the wit, sophistication and eroticism of his eccentric retelling of Ovid’s myth, based on a 6th-century version by Musaeus. Seamus and Mark begin their new series by looking at the playful but often troubling treatment of desire in a poem that contains one of the most explicit depictions of sex in English poetry. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignupnp [https://lrb.me/applesignupnp] Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignupnp [https://lrb.me/scsignupnp] Further reading in the LRB: Michael Dobson on the life of Marlowe https://lrb.me/np1marlowe1 [https://lrb.me/np1marlowe1] Hilary Mantel on the murder of Marlowe: https://lrb.me/np1marlowe2 [https://lrb.me/np1marlowe2] Charles Nicholl on Faustus: https://lrb.me/np1marlowe3 [https://lrb.me/np1marlowe3]