The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Science Fiction and Edgar Allan Poe's "A Descent Into the Maelstrom"
This short story is what Poe called a 'Tale of Ratiocianation;" one where we look for reasons to solve a mystery. It is also an early science fiction thriller.
In previous podcasts I read and discussed Hawthorne and the birth of Sci-fi, now we turn to Edgar Allan Poe.
Hawthorne wrote science fiction in a romantic style, with elevated even poetic language; Poe, on the other hand, wrote science fiction in the precise literature of empirical science.
In this episode I give you a brief history of the first five years of the Royal Society of Science in the mid 17th century, and how that has shaped our minds through fiction to this day.