Episodes
Title | First Broadcast | Comments |
---|---|---|
Beasts | 20010508 | Joanna Pinnock explores attitudes to animals tame and wild in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. Through popular verse, she explores the biblical significance of beasts and traces the gradual emergence of animal welfare concerns. |
Birds | 20010507 | Joanna Pinnock explores the role of wildlife in the works of the Romantic poets and asks whether they really knew their natural history. |
Low Life | 20010510 | Joanna Pinnock tries to determine why small things, such as John Donne's flea and William Blake's fly, have often inspired great verse. |
Monsters | 20010509 | Joanna Pinnock investigates the importance of monsters in verse and prose, such as Alfred Tennyson's kraken and John Milton's leviathan. She finds that some of these monsters are more familiar than our ancestors could have imagined. |
Pets | 20010511 | Joanna Pinnock explores the role of pets in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and finds out why they make such good subjects for epitaphs. |