Close Readings Plus: On Satire

Close Readings, the LRB’s acclaimed programme of year-long literary courses, returns with three new series. Subscribe to the podcast to listen to them all (as well as all past series) next year, or sign up for a full Close Readings Plus course: you’ll still get podcast access to everything but also a host of other features to transform your reading in 2024.

In which Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow attempt, over twelve episodes, to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in all of English literature. What is satire, what is it for, and why do we seem to like it so much?

Close Readings Plus subscribers to the series will receive:

• The twelve monthly episodes, beginning in January 2024
• Subscriber access to the Close Readings podcast to the end of 2024, so you can listen to the other two new series too, and our 2023 series 
• The twelve texts under discussion – by Erasmus, Donne, Jonson, Rochester, Gay, Pope, Sterne, Austen, Byron, Wilde, Waugh and Spark – delivered to your door.
• Live webinars with the presenters and special guests, including Katherine Rundell, author of Super Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, and Succession’s Lucy Prebble
• Transcripts, shownotes and further reading from the LRB archive
• Limited numbers: sign up early!

Close Readings Plus subscriptions will close on 31 January 2024. Books and course materials will be shipped from the start of January.