Ep18 Portraits of Landscapes

Highlighting some of the amazing achievements and highlights of the Tang Dynasty, and considering its eventual decline and fall. 

The home of the Tang – the great city of Chang’an, and how it helped the Tang become so prosperous. 

The Tang preference for realism in their paintings. 

<p>A discussion on the source material used for the Tang Dynasty episode, plus a brief look at what&#39;s ahead in 2024, plus some information about the challenges of writing chronological medieval history and pronouncing words in different languages that you have no knowledge of ... Show More

1750 - 1046 BCE - Plotting the rise and fall of the Shang dynasty where archaeology meets traditional stories.  An incredible bronze age with innovative techniques and the comparison of cultural advances with the rest of the world. 

Curtis Runstedler's book Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) explores the different functions and metaphorical concepts of alchemy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English poetry and bridges them together with the exempl ... Show More

Irina Mashinski is a bilingual Russophone American writer, poet, essayist, teacher, and translator, whose works include Giornata and eleven books of poetry and essays in Russian. She is also the co-editor of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. In this episode, Irina talks with Ja ... Show More

In this episode, we examine the connection between poetry and plague in the early 1590s. An outbreak of the recurring sickness contributed to Shakespeare’s early career as a poet, and that poetry likely included his many sonnets. We also examine how an old acquaintance from Shake ... Show More

In The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya (SUNY Press, 2024), Steven E. Lindquist investigates the intersections between historical context and literary production in the "life" of Yājñavalkya, the most important ancient Indian literary figure prior to the Buddha. Known for his sharp t ... Show More

In 1819, John Keats quit his job as an assistant surgeon, abandoned an epic poem he was writing, and focused his poetic energies on shorter works. What followed was one of the most fertile periods in the history of poetry, as in a few months' time Keats completed six masterpieces ... Show More

[Summer of Epics]Some treasures disappear forever ... but others resurface.Like the sunken treasure of Belitung.Once submerged in a reef, somewhere in the Java Sea, the treasure now holds pride of place, in the heart of the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore.Presented in a d ... Show More