In Our Time Folgen

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emile Zola's greatest literary success, his thirteenth novel in a series exploring the extended Rougon-Macquart family. The relative here is Etienne Lantier, already known to Zola’s readers as one of the blighted branch of the family tree and his story is set in Northern France. It opens with Etienne trudging towards a coalmine at night seeking work, and soon he is caught up in a bleak world in which starving families struggle and then strike, as they try to hold on to the last scraps of their humanity and the hope of change.WithSusan Harrow Ashley Watkins Chair of French at the University of BristolKate Griffiths Professor in French and Translation at Cardiff UniversityAndEdmund Birch Lecturer in French Literature and Director of Studies at Churchill College & Selwyn College, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:David Baguley, Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision (Cambridge University Press, 1990)William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond and Emma Wilson (eds.), The Cambridge History of French Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011), particularly ‘Naturalism’ by Nicholas WhiteKate Griffiths, Emile Zola and the Artistry of Adaptation (Legenda, 2009)Kate Griffiths and Andrew Watts, Adapting Nineteenth-Century France: Literature in Film, Theatre, Television, Radio, and Print (University of Wales Press, 2013) Anna Gural-Migdal and Robert Singer (eds.), Zola and Film: Essays in the Art of Adaptation (McFarland & Co., 2005)Susan Harrow, Zola, The Body Modern: Pressures and Prospects of Representation (Legenda, 2010)F. W. J. Hemmings, The Life and Times of Emile Zola (first published 1977; Bloomsbury, 2013)William Dean Howells, Emile Zola (The Floating Press, 2018)Lida Maxwell, Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt, and the Politics of Lost Causes (Oxford University Press, 2014)Brian Nelson, Emile Zola: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020)Brian Nelson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Emile Zola (Cambridge University Press, 2007)Sandy Petrey, Realism and Revolution: Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, and the Performances of History (Cornell University Press, 1988)Arthur Rose, ‘Coal politics: receiving Emile Zola's Germinal’ (Modern & contemporary France, 2021, Vol.29, 2) Philip D. Walker, Emile Zola (Routledge, 1969)Emile Zola (trans. Peter Collier), Germinal (Oxford University Press, 1993)Emile Zola (trans. Roger Pearson), Germinal (Penguin Classics, 2004)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the anchoress and mystic who, in the late fourteenth century, wrote about her visions of Christ suffering, in a work since known as Revelations of Divine Love. She is probably the first named woman writer in English, even if questions about her name and life remain open. Her account is an exploration of the meaning of her visions and is vivid and bold, both in its imagery and theology. From her confined cell in a Norwich parish church, in a land beset with plague, she dealt with the nature of sin and with the feminine side of God, and shared the message she received that God is love and, famously, that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.WithKatherine Lewis Professor of Medieval History at the University of HuddersfieldPhilip Sheldrake Professor of Christian Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology, Texas and Senior Research Associate of the Von Hugel Institute, University of CambridgeAnd Laura Kalas Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Swansea UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:John H. Arnold and Katherine Lewis (eds.), A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe (D.S. Brewer, 2004)Ritamary Bradley, Julian’s Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich (Harper Collins, 1992)E. Colledge and J. Walsh (eds.), Julian of Norwich: Showings (Classics of Western Spirituality series, Paulist Press, 1978)Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (D.S. Brewer, 2008) Liz Herbert McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (D.S. Brewer, 2004)Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (new edition, Paulist Press, 2010)Julian of Norwich (trans. Barry Windeatt), Revelations of Divine Love (Oxford World's Classics, 2015)Julian of Norwich (ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins), The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and a Revelation of Love, (Brepols, 2006) Laura Kalas, Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course (D.S. Brewer, 2020)Laura Kalas and Laura Varnam (eds.), Encountering the Book of Margery Kempe (Manchester University Press, 2021)Laura Kalas and Roberta Magnani (eds.), Women in Christianity in the Medieval Age: 1000-1500 (Routledge, forthcoming 2024) Ken Leech and Benedicta Ward (ed.), Julian the Solitary (SLG, 1998)Denise Nowakowski Baker and Sarah Salih (ed.), Julian of Norwich’s Legacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)Joan M. Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich (Crossroad Publishing, 1999) Philip Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich: “In God’s Sight”: Her Theology in Context (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019)E. Spearing (ed.), Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love (Penguin Books, 1998)Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian (Yale University Press, 2011) Wolfgang Riehle, The Secret Within: Hermits, Recluses and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2014) Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (University of California Press, 1982)Ann Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (University of California Press, 1985)Hugh White (trans.), Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses (Penguin Classics, 1993)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay's essays written in 1787/8 in support of the new US Constitution. They published these anonymously in New York as 'Publius' but, when it became known that Hamilton and Madison were the main authors, the essays took on a new significance for all states. As those two men played a major part in drafting the Constitution itself, their essays have since informed debate over what the authors of that Constitution truly intended. To some, the essays have proved to be America’s greatest contribution to political thought.WithFrank Cogliano Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh and Interim Saunders Director of the International Centre for Jefferson Studies at MonticelloKathleen Burk Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History at University College LondonAndNicholas Guyatt Professor of North American History at the University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders (Knopf, 2003)Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention (Harvard University Press, 2015)Noah Feldman, The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President (Random House, 2017)Jonathan Gienapp, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (Harvard University Press, 2018)Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison (eds. George W. Carey and James McClellan), The Federalist: The Gideon Edition (Liberty Fund, 2001)Alison L. LaCroix, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism (Harvard University Press, 2010)James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (Penguin, 1987)Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (Simon and Schuster, 2010)Michael I. Meyerson, Liberty's Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World (Basic Books, 2008)Jack Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (Knopf, 1996)Jack N. Rakove and Colleen A. Sheehan, The Cambridge Companion to The Federalist (Cambridge University Press, 2020)