A playlist bringing together all videos on medieval poetry, including anonymous lyrics, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and readings from Chaucer and other Middle English texts.
A combined reading and analysis of the anonymous medieval riddle lyric I Have a Yong Suster, exploring its playful treatment of courtly love conventions through a series of witty paradoxes.
A combined reading and analysis of the anonymous medieval lyric Westron Wynde, exploring its expression of love, longing, and desire for homecoming in just four lines.
A reading of Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, one of the finest carpe diem poems in English, urging the beloved to seize the pleasures of life before time runs out.
A combined reading and analysis of Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, examining its carpe diem argument, witty conceits, and the urgency of love in the face of mortality.
A combined reading and analysis of Donne’s The Sun Rising, exploring its witty metaphysical conceit, themes of love and the transcendence of time, and its characteristically bold opening.
An experimental reggae setting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, demonstrating how the poem’s themes of love and immortality translate into a contemporary musical form.
A combined reading and analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, exploring its themes of beauty, love, and the power of poetry to confer immortality.
An illustrated reading of Hardy’s The Voice, accompanied by images evoking the poem’s landscape of grief, memory, and lost love.
A combined reading and analysis of Hardy’s The Voice, a moving elegy exploring grief, memory, and the haunting presence of a lost love.