Anthony Kenny describes Arthur Hugh Clough as an unjustly neglected British Victorian poet. Clough was influenced by his study of the Tübingen School of German Protestant theology and by his colleague John Henry Newman, who saw only two valid paths–Catholicism or agnosticism–rather than the Protestant Church of England.
In the second segment [14:05], Robert Yeager looks at the poetry of the Middle Ages, from Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower to John Skelton. Yeager notes that the original audience for these writers consisted of courtiers, gentry, and lower nobles. While little of literary note in England occurred during “the swamp” of the fifteenth century, the swamp consisted of small channels that ran in different directions and ultimately led to the flourishing of Renaissance literature.
At the time of this interview, Kenny was master of Balliol College at the University of Oxford.
Yeager, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1986-87), was professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
