Literature
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In this episode, Peter talks about the Greek gods in Homer and Hesiod, and the criticism of the poets by the Presocratic philosopher Xenophanes.
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In the first of several episodes on Socrates, Peter discusses his portrayals in "The Clouds" of Aristophanes and in the works of the historian Xenophon.
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In this episode, Peter Adamson of King’s College London discusses the life story and writings of Plato, focusing on the question of why he wrote dialogues.
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Plato criticized both the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod, and the tragic and comic poets. Yet he invented myths of his own. So what was his attitude towards literature and myth? Peter tackles this question in a final episode on Plato.
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A penultimate episode on Aristotle considers his discussion of persuasive speech in the Rhetoric and his account of ancient tragedy in the Poetics.
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Peter looks at the interaction between rhetoric and philosophy in the Roman Empire, discussing authors like Quintilian, Lucian and Themistius.
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Miskawayh, al-‘Āmirī, al-Tawḥīdī, the Brethren of Purity and Ismā'īlī missionaries bring together philosophy with Persian culture, literature and Islam.
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As early medieval science blossoms, Bernard Silvestris and Alan of Lille personify Nature in their philosophical prose-poems.
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The ancient texts known as the Upaniṣads claim to expose the hidden connections between things, including the self and the world.
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An interview with Brian Black about the philosophical and social aspects of the Upaniṣads.
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Sex, reason, and religion in Jean de Meun’s completion of an allegory of courtly love, the Roman de la Rose.
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Italy’s greatest poet Dante Alighieri was also a philosopher, as we learn from his Convivio and of course the Divine Comedy.
This episode is dedicated to John Kleiner, the inspirational teacher with whom I had my first experience reading Dante.
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Philosophical themes in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and “Troilus and Criseyde,” as well as Langland’s “Piers Plowman.”
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Medieval attitudes towards homosexuality, sex and chastity, and the status of women. Authors discussed include Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, and Chaucer.
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An interview about the status of nonhuman animals in ancient Indian philosophy and literature.
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Peter is joined by Isabel Davis to discuss marriage, sex and chastity in Chaucer, focusing on the Wife of Bath's speech.
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The host of the History of India podcast joins us for the final episode on India.
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The Renaissance ideals of humanism and universal science flourish already in the medieval period, in the works of Petrarch and Ramon Llull.
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Demands for ma’at (justice or truth) and a confrontation with the soul, in the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant and Dispute Between a Man and his Ba.
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Egyptologist Richard Parkinson joins us to talk about the context and meaning of the Eloquent Peasant and other literary works of ancient Egypt.
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Translations of religious and philosophical texts into Ge’ez, a national epic called the Kebra Nagast, and other developments in the story of philosophy in Ethiopia.
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Photius, “the inventor of the book review,” and other Byzantine scholars who preserved ancient learning.
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Psellos and other experts in rhetoric explore how this art of persuasion relates to philosophy.
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A conversation with Sam Imbo on approaching oral traditions as philosophy and the Ugandan thinker and poet Okot p'Bitek.
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An interview with Kai Kresse (pictured here with Ustadh Mahmoud Mau) who discusses his efforts to do "anthropology of philosophy" on the Swahili Coast.
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An introduction to Africana philosophical thought as it emerged from the modern experience of slavery and colonization by Europeans.
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Eighteenth century black authors touch on philosophical themes in autobiographical narratives, poetry, and other literary genres.
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Phillis Wheatley astonishes colonial Americans with her exquisite and precocious poetry and reflects on the liberating power of the imagination.
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Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni combine eloquence with philosophy, taking as their model the refined language and republican ideals found in Cicero.
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Ignatius Sancho and Benjamin Banneker make their mark on the history of Africana thought through letters that reflect on the power of sentiment.
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Cassandra Fedele, Isotta Nogarola, and Laura Cereta seek fame and glory through eloquence and learning.
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Frederick Douglass' journey from slave to leading figure of 19th century American thought.
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He is called a “father of black nationalism,” but Martin Delany also promoted integration in American society. Can the apparent tension be resolved?
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The moral crusades of Sojourner Truth and Frances Harper, activists against racial and gender oppression.
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Abolitionists Luiz Gama and Joaquim Nabuco, and the great novelist Machado de Assis, react to the injustices of slaveholding in Brazil.
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Co-host Chike joins Peter to look back at series two and ahead to series three.
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The artistic flowering of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance raises important questions about identity and the purpose of art.
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The aesthetics of Alain Locke and its basis in his theory of value judgments.
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Zora Neale Hurston’s interest in Africana folklore feeds into her great novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
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Du Bois moves to the left, and revisits and refines older positions during the latter half of his very long life.
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Our first look at the emergence of the Negritude movement in Paris in the 1930s, with a focus on the early leadership of the Nardal sisters and Leon Damas.
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Leopold Senghor compares different ways of knowing while developing his theory of Negritude and combining the roles of poet and politician.
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Negritude thinkers Aimé and Suzanne Césaire embrace surrealism and reflect on the relationships between poetry, knowledge, and identity.
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The Trinidadian historian and cultural critic C.L.R. James applies Marxist analysis to the Haitian Revolution, American cinema, and Shakespeare.
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Famous for his incendiary novel Native Son, Richard Wright responds in his multifaceted writings to sociology, communism, colonialism, and existentialism.
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Ralph Ellison provides a new metaphor for the experience of racism in his Invisible Man and tackles topics of art and identity in his essays.
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In The Fire Next Time and other writings, the essayist and novelist James Baldwin seeks to dispel the illusions surrounding racial and sexual difference.
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We begin to look at philosophy in Renaissance France, beginning with humanists like Budé and the use of classical philosophy by poets du Bellay and Ronsard.
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A Renaissance queen supports philosophical humanism and produces literary works on spirituality, love, and the soul.
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In his outrageous novel about the giants Pantagruel and Gargantua, Rabelais engages with scholasticism, humanism, medicine, the reformation, and the querelle des femmes.
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Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Julius Caesar Scaliger fuse Aristotelianism with humanism to address problems in logic and literary aesthetics.
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Fanon’s incendiary final work explores the violent process of decolonization.
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The author of the famous play, A Raisin in the Sun, explores questions of violence, sexuality, and more during her too brief life.
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African American literature of the late 1960s reflects the Black Power movement, in the works of such authors as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Larry Neal, and Sonia Sanchez.
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Abdias do Nascimento, a leader in Brazilian theater and politics, and his theory of Quilombismo.
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Marie le Jars de Gourney, the “adoptive daughter” of Montaigne, lays claim to his legacy and argues for the equality of the sexes.
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The political and musical revolution of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, the social critique of his cousin, the playwright Wole Soyinka, and the extraordinary career of Fela's mother Funmilayo.
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Humanism comes to England and Scotland, leading scholars like Thomas Eylot and Andrew Melville to rethink philosophical education.
Image: Queen Elizabeth's translation of Boethius
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What is the message of the famous, but elusive, work Utopia, and how can it be squared with the life of its author?
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Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou explore the themes of black feminism (or “womanism”) in their fiction.
Warning: this episode contains discussion of sexual violence and suicide.
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We begin to look at Elizabethan literature, as Sidney argues that poetry is superior to philosophy, and philosophy is put to use in Spenser’s Fairie Queene.
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How should we approach Shakespeare’s plays as philosophical texts? We take as examples skepticism and politics in Othello, King Lear, and Julius Caesar.
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In poetry and prose, especially her collection Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde explores ideas of difference, eroticism, and feminist theory.
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We're joined by Patrick Gray to discuss Shakespeare's knowledge of philosophy, his ethics, and his influence on such thinkers as Hegel.
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We bring the story of black feminism up to the turn of the century with the incisive works of bell hooks and Patricia Hill Collins.
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How the Renaissance turn towards individual identity is reflected in Shakespeare's most famous play.
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How one of Kenya's greatest writers came to argue that African literature should be written in African languages.
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Can Shakespeare’s Tempest be read as a reflection on the English encounter with the peoples of the Americas?
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The great Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o joins us to speak about his career, his influences, and the power and politics of language.
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How Macbeth reflects the anxieties and explanations surrounding witchcraft and witch-hunting in early modern Europe.
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Poet, novelist, playwright and philosopher Edouard Glissant, his theory of "creolization", and the Creolists who were influence by him.
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The author of an important book on Glissant joins us to talk about his approach to this major Caribbean thinker.
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Cornel West joins us to look back on the development of his thought and the many authors who have inspired him.
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Fray Luis de Leon, Antonio Nebrija, Beatriz Galindo and other scholars bring the Renaissance to Spain.
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Why do critics consider Don Quixote the first “modern” novel, and what does it tell us about the aesthetics of fiction?
