In Our Time: Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world. Plutarch was clear that he was writing lives, not histories, and he wrote these very focussed accounts in pairs to contrast and compare the characters of famous Greeks and Romans, side by side, along with their virtues and vices. This focus on the inner lives of great men was to fascinate Shakespeare, who drew on Plutarch considerably when writing his Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and Antony and Cleopatra. While few followed his approach of setting lives in pairs, Plutarch's work was to influence countless biographers especially from the Enlightenment onwards.WithJudith Mossman Professor Emerita of Classics at Coventry UniversityAndrew Erskine Professor of Ancient History at the University of EdinburghAnd Paul Cartledge AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Mark Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2013), especially chapter 6Raphaëla Dubreuil, Theater and Politics in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (Brill, 2023)Tim Duff, Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford University Press, 1999)Noreen Humble (ed.), Plutarch’s Lives: Parallelism and Purpose (Classical Press of Wales, 2010)Robert Lamberton, Plutarch (Yale University Press, 2002)Hugh Liebert, Plutarch's Politics: Between City and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2016)Christopher Pelling, Plutarch and History (Classical Press of Wales, 2002)Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Greek Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Hellenistic Lives (Oxford University Press, 2016)Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2023) Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2011) Plutarch (trans. Richard Talbert), On Sparta (Penguin, 2005)Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), The Rise of Rome (Penguin, 2013) Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis: Nine Lives (Penguin, 2010)Plutarch (trans. Rex Warner), The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives (Penguin, 2006)Plutarch (trans. Thomas North, ed. Judith Mossman), The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Wordsworth, 1998)Geert Roskam, Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2021)D. A. Russell, Plutarch (2nd ed., Bristol Classical Press, 2001)Philip A. Stadter, Plutarch and his Roman Readers (Oxford University Press, 2014)Frances B. Titchener and Alexei V. Zadorojnyi (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2023)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest romantic poets in Persian literature. Nizami Ganjavi (c1141–1209) is was born in the city of Ganja in what is now Azerbaijan and his popularity soon spread throughout the Persian-speaking lands and beyond. Nizami is best known for his Khamsa, a set of five epic poems that contains a famous retelling of the tragic love story of King Khosrow II (c570-628) and the Christian princess Shirin (unknown-628) and the legend of Layla and Majnun. Not only did he write romances: his poetry also displays a dazzling knowledge of philosophy, astronomy, botany and the life of Alexander the Great.With Christine van Ruymbeke Professor of Persian Literature and Culture at the University of CambridgeNarguess Farzad Senior Lecturer in Persian Studies at SOAS, University of LondonAndDominic Parviz Brookshaw Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at the University of OxfordProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Laurence Binyon, The Poems of Nizami (The Studio Limited, 1928)Barbara Brend, Treasures of Herat: Two Manuscripts of the Khamsah of Nizami in the British Library (Gingko, 2020)Barbara Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami (British Library, 1995)J-C. Burgel and C. van Ruymbeke, A Key to the Treasure of the Hakim: Artistic and Humanistic Aspects of Nizami Ganjavi’s Khamsa (Leiden University Press, 2011)Nizami Ganjavi (trans. P.J. Chelkowski), Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975)Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Dick Davis), Layli and Majnun (Penguin Books, 2021)Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke), The Story of Layla and Majnun (first published 1966: Omega Publications, 1997)Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke), The Story of the Seven Princesses (Bruno Cassirer Ltd, 1976)Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Julie Scott Meisami, The Haft Paykar: A Medieval Persian Romance (Oxford University Press, 1995)Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Colin Turner), Layla and Majnun (Blake Publishing, 1997) Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran (Bloomsbury, 2019)Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton University Press, 2014)Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Layli and Majnun: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Nizami’s Epic Romance (Brill, 2003)Kamran Talattof, Jerome W. Clinton, and K. Allin Luther, The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric (Palgrave, 2000)C. van Ruymbeke, Science and Poetry in Medieval Persia: The Botany of Nizami's Khamsa (Cambridge University Press, 2007) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Italian author of Invisible Cities, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Cosmicomics and other celebrated novels, fables and short stories of the 20th Century. Calvino (1923 -1985) had a passionate belief that writing and art could make life better for everyone. Despite his parents being scientists, who dearly wanted him to be a scientist too, and his time fighting with the Partisans in Liguria in WWII during which his parents were held hostage by the Nazis, Calvino turned away from realism in his writing. Ideally, he said, he would have liked to be alive in the Enlightenment. He moved towards the fantastical, drawing on his childhood reading while collecting a huge number of the fables of Italy and translating them from dialect into Italian to enrich the shared culture of his fellow citizens. His fresh perspective on the novel continues to inspire writers and delight readers in Italian and in translations around the world.With Guido Bonsaver Professor of Italian Cultural History at the University of OxfordJennifer Burns Professor of Italian Studies at the University of WarwickAndBeatrice Sica Associate Professor in Italian Studies at UCLProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: Elio Baldi, The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020)Elio Baldi and Cecilia Schwartz, Circulation, Translation and Reception Across Borders: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities Around the World (Routledge, 2024)Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially the chapter ‘Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco: Postmodern Masters’James Butler, ‘Infinite Artichoke’ (London Review of Books, vol. 45, no. 12, 15 June 2023)Italo Calvino (trans. Martin McLaughlin), The Path to the Spiders’ Nests (first published 1947; Penguin Classics, 2009)Italo Calvino (trans. Mikki Taylor), The Baron in the Trees (first published 1957; Vintage Classics, 2021)Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo (first published 1963; Vintage Classics, 2023) Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver and Ann Goldstein), Difficult Loves and Other Stories (first published 1970; Vintage Classics, 2018)Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver), Invisible Cities (first published 1972; Vintage Classics, 1997)Italo Calvino (trans. Patrick Creagh), The Uses of Literature (first published 1980; Houghton Mifflin, 1987)Italo Calvino (trans. Geoffrey Brock), Six Memos for the Next Millennium (first published 1988; Penguin Classics, 2016) Italo Calvino (trans. Tim Parks), The Road to San Giovanni (first published 1990; HMH Books, 2014) Italo Calvino (trans. Ann Goldstein), The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays (Mariner Books Classics, 2023)Kathryn Hume, Calvino's Fictions: Cogito and Cosmos (Clarendon Press, 1992)Martin McLaughlin, Italo Calvino (Edinburgh University Press, 1998)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet George Herbert (1593-1633) who, according to the French philosopher Simone Weil, wrote ‘the most beautiful poem in the world’. Herbert gave his poems on his relationship with God to a friend, to be published after his death if they offered comfort to any 'dejected pour soul' but otherwise be burned. They became so popular across the range of Christians in the 17th Century that they were printed several times, somehow uniting those who disliked each other but found a common admiration for Herbert; Charles I read them before his execution, as did his enemies. Herbert also wrote poems prolifically and brilliantly in Latin and these he shared during his lifetime both when he worked as orator at Cambridge University and as a parish priest in Bemerton near Salisbury. He went on to influence poets from Coleridge to Heaney and, in parish churches today, congregations regularly sing his poems set to music as hymns. WithHelen Wilcox Professor Emerita of English Literature at Bangor UniversityVictoria Moul Formerly Professor of Early Modern Latin and English at UCLAndSimon Jackson Director of Music and Director of Studies in English at Peterhouse, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: Amy Charles, A Life of George Herbert (Cornell University Press, 1977)Thomas M. Corns, The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell (Cambridge University Press, 1993) John Drury, Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert (Penguin, 2014)George Herbert (eds. John Drury and Victoria Moul), The Complete Poetry (Penguin, 2015)George Herbert (ed. Helen Wilcox), The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 2007)Simon Jackson, George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2022)Gary Kuchar, George Herbert and the Mystery of the Word (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)Cristina Malcolmson, George Herbert: A Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)Victoria Moul, A Literary History of Latin and English Poetry: Bilingual Literary Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2022)Joseph H. Summers, George Herbert: His Religion and Art (first published by Chatto and Windus, 1954; Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, New York, 1981)Helen Vendler, The Poetry of George Herbert (Harvard University Press, 1975)James Boyd White, This Book of Starres: Learning to Read George Herbert (University of Michigan Press, 1995)Helen Wilcox (ed.), George Herbert. 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press, 2021) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production