Mouse Book Club

Introducing: The Mouse Book Club Podcast

MBC-002-THE PROPHET by Gibran

MBC-003 THE DECAMERON by Boccaccio

MBC-004 THE ENCHIRIDION by Epictetus

MBC-005-WALKING by Thoreau

MBC-006 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS-Whitman

MBC-007 SPECIMEN DAYS by Whitman

MBC-008 SONG OF MYSELF by Whitman

MBC-009 ILIAD by Homer

Our Guest in this episode is Professor Emily Austin from the University of Chicago, and author of Grief and the Hero: the Futility of Longing in the Iliad.

MBC-010 PARADISE LOST by Milton

Our guest for this episode is Professor Stanley Fish, who became one of the world's leading scholars of the work of John Milton upon the publication of Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost in 1967. His scholarly work on Milton is collected in the 2001 book How Milton Works. He has also solidified himself as one of the formidable public intellectuals of the last fifty years.

 

SHOW NOTES

How to accidentally becoming a world-class expert on Milton [2:00]

A bracing description of how the character of Satan works [4:30]

Viewing Satan after realizing you've been duped [12:30]

Milton's techniques for describing the indescribable [16:23]

Paradise Lost as a presentation of the political and cultural conflicts [20:28]

Introducing George Herbert: champion of stringency of thought [27:00]

The core challenge of cultural literacy in the 21st century [30:50]

An individual's intimate and immediate relationship to liberty [37:42]

Inner versus worldly prosperity. Achieving the paradise within [41:50]