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In Search of the Medieval Outlaw: The Tales of Robin Hood

Examination of the outlaw in medieval literature tells us much about the mentality of the medieval English mind.

Shakespeare's Ghosts and Spirits

In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will summon up the ghosts of Old Hamlet, the victims of Richard III and Julius Caesar, revealing their origins in the bloody plays of Seneca.

Slave Stories: Aesop and Walter Crane

The lecture asks how the ancient fables address power relations in a slave society. Were they primarily stories for and by slaves, or did they serve ruling-class interests?

Grasping Shadows: The Dark Side in Painting

Starting with literary examples from Dickens, this lecture will untangle the complexity of shadow-meaning by exploring how artists have used shadows since ancient times.

Shakespeare's Politics

It is well known that Shakespeare lived in an age of monarchy and wrote powerfully in his English history plays about the duties of the sovereign. In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will tell another, forgotten story: of how Shakespeare was also fascinated by Roman political models.

The 19th Century Craze for Stereoscopic Photography

Stereoscopic photography rapidly became a worldwide craze after the Great Exhibition of 1851. Cheap viewers and mass-produced stereographs brought startlingly vivid images within reach of a mass audience, making this the form in which most people first encountered photography.

Shakespeare's Lovers

The Rape of Lucrece set the mould for Shakespeare’s exploration of the tragic consequences of sexual desire turning to violence. Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare developed these themes from his reading of the great Roman poet Ovid.

Happily Ever After: The Romance Story

Catherine Roach uncovers what we learn from the romance story about today’s changing norms for gender and sexuality and about the nature of happiness and love.

Shakespeare's Heroes

What do we mean by a hero and where does our understanding of the ‘heroic’ idiom come from? In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare’s idea of the hero was shaped by the classical tradition, going back to the ancient tale of Troy and Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid.

English Landscape: Samuel Palmer and the Pastoral

Samuel Palmer, in his Shoreham period in the 1820s and 30s, seized on the long tradition of classical pastoral landscapes, and wrested it into an English idiom.

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