27. Pope Joan

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about the twenty-seventh poem in the collection, 'Pope Joan', focusing in particular on: (i) the figure of Pope Joan, a woman who reigned as pope for a few years during the Middle Ages; (ii) the structure of the poem – it's all one sentence; (iii) Pope Joan's reflections on faith; and (iv) the importance of childbirth to Joan.

Course

In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores Carol Ann Duffy’s 1999 collection, 'The World's Wife'. After a brief introduction to the collection as a whole, the course continue with a read-through and analysis of each of the thirty poems in the collection, one by one.

Lecturer

John McRae is Special Professor of Language in Literature Studies and Teaching Associate in the School of English at Nottingham University, and holds Visiting Professorships in China, Malaysia, Spain and the USA. He is co-author of The Routledge History of Literature in English with Ron Carter, and also wrote The Language of Poetry, Literature with a Small 'l' and the first critical edition of Teleny by Oscar Wilde and others.