Discoveries: Essays in Literary Criticism
John Middleton Murry
Read by Jim Locke
Introductory Note: I have called these essays and lectures by a title that some people may think presumptuous: first, because it is the title of a book by Ben Jonson, and second, because it could be interpreted as meaning that I think there is something final in the results of these explorations of mine.
For the first, I believe the fine ghost of Ben Jonson will forgive me. For the second, I do not believe there is anything final in criticism, But I wanted my title to contain a suggestion of the curious elation which criticism sometimes brings to me. " To me," I insist, because I subscribe wholeheartedly to the famous dictum of Anatole France that criticism is the adventures of a man's soul among books and more criticism appears to me to be an intensely personal affair. Every honest critic and by an honest critic I mean a man who builds his schemes and classifications solely on the basis of his own reactions makes a great cross-section of the universe of literature in accordance with his temperament. What he is and believes is more surely reflected in his criticism than in his direct professions of faith. The more he can lose himself in the object, the more himself he is. And the excitement of losing oneself in exploration, the elation of being possessed by the very process of discovery, is the most precious thing I have found in criticism. (Summary by author) (6 hr 32 min)
Chapters
The Nature of Poetry | 46:45 | Read by Jim Locke |
The Significance of Russian Literature | 49:58 | Read by Jim Locke |
Anton Tchehov | 30:14 | Read by Jim Locke |
Marcel Proust | 30:22 | Read by Jim Locke |
The Break-Up of the Novel | 34:23 | Read by Jim Locke |
English Poetry in the Eighteenth Century | 30:46 | Read by Jim Locke |
A Note on the Madness of Christopher Smart | 11:12 | Read by Jim Locke |
Poe's Poetry | 13:07 | Read by Jim Locke |
Matthew Arnold the Poet | 13:11 | Read by Jim Locke |
English Prose in the Nineteenth Century | 13:52 | Read by Jim Locke |
The Creation of Falstaff | 48:14 | Read by Jim Locke |
Coriolanus | 30:36 | Read by Jim Locke |
Flaubert and Flaubart | 39:59 | Read by Jim Locke |