Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 354, Encountering Poe’s Ghost RevisitedI looked at the time I have left for podcasts this month, and realized that I had just enough for one more episode - and this will not be a long episode at all...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - and this is episode 353 - Loathsome Mass of Detestable PutridityHello, my name is George Bartley, and the Ghost of Mr. Poe is here right beside me. I hope you have listened to the previous episode for secti...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 352 - Poe’s Hoaxes, Part One Being April Fool’s day, today I want to look at Poe’s six hoax stories - in fact, Edgar Allan Poe approvingly called his time the “epoch of the hoax.” Even though P...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 351 - From Feast of Blood -This is the final episode of Celebrate Poe - at least for now - devoted to Varney the Vampire.   Now, as mentioned in a previous episode, the entire work spans 876 do...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Be Content to Suffer - This is episode 350 of Celebrate Poe - a bit of a milestone for this podcast.  And I must admit that when I started Celebrate Poe, I had no idea I would make it this far - and there is s...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - episode 349 - Varner (I mean, Varney) the VampireHope you have listened to episode 348 about Varney the Vampire but you might be asking yourself, How does Varney's sympathetic portrayal differ from other va...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 348 Feast of BloodVarney the Vampire is an extremely influential work in the vampire genre, first appearing as a serialized gothic horror story between 1845 and 1847. The was well before Bram Stoker...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 347 - The Origins of Vampires -Today I would like to delve into what is believed to be the beginnings of the vampire myth. So this specific episode will NOT be dealing with Dracula or Nosferatu, or ...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 345 - Challenging Male AuthorityWell, I had planned for the previous episode to be the last one where I dealt with Carmilla - but I soon found out that the work was easy to get into, but hard to get...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - This is episode 345 - Stirring Sexual DesireI was looking at the podcast episodes I have done, and realized that I had written three or more episodes for each subject.  But I only did two fo...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - This is episode 344 - Leaving Me TremblingHope you are doing well, and I will just jump right into it -One of the most explicit passages in Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla that hints at lesbian desire, ...

Welcome to Celebrate 343 - The First Lesbian VampireAfter looking at some of the alleged crimes of Elizabeth - and by this time, I am ready to call her actions a part of folklore - I’d like to delve in a definitely fictional female c...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - This is episode 342 - Confined to a CastleThis episode is the fourth episode of Celebrate Poe dealing with Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian countess accused of serial murder.  Now it was next to imposs...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 341 - Liz in CourtWell, today’s episode continues an examination of Elizabeth Nadasdy and what might be called her torture trial - probably full of half-truths and political lies.First, the ...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 340 - Teaching Torture Techniques?  Elizabeth Bathory is certainly a fascinating figure.  I guess that ultimately we will never know exactly what she did or did not do, but the reacti...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 339 - “Blood is My Beauty Secret”I want to devote the next few episodes to Elizabeth Bathory -I read that she was a distant descendant of Vlad the Impaler - sounds interest...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 338 - The Haunted PalaceAs you may know, The Castle of Otranto was written by Horace Walpole and first published on December 24, 1764. While the first edition was dated 1765, it was released at the ...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 337, The First Gothic NovelI’d like to begin this podcast episode with an excerpt from the opening chapter of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole - an excerpt which captures the dramatic and sup...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 336 - A Medieval Soap OperaLet’s jump right into The Castle of Otranto - a book that is widely regarded as the first Gothic novel and the foundation of all Gothic literature. Written by Horace Walpo...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 335- Meddling With Life and DeathThis episode is a continuation of a discussion between Mr. Bartley and the Ghost of Edgar Allan Poe regarding Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. 

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 334 Poe and FrankensteinBoth Mary Shelley and Poe delve into Gothic themes such as monstrosity, isolation, guilt, and the boundaries of human experience.  For example, in Frankenstein, Victor F...

In this episode, I want to delve into what is generally viewed as the first vampire novel - the VAMPYRE by John William Polidori and published in 1819. This novella marked the beginning of modern vampire fiction and introduced the archetype ...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 332 - DarknessThe Vampyre and Frankenstein are two liteary works that came out of the literary competition at the Villa Diadati - but another lesser known work is Lord George Gordon Byron’s Darkness...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - episode 331 - The Year Without a Summer, Part TwoIn the previous episode, I talked about the basic background behind the eruption of Mount Tamboro - but in this episode I would like to delve into not only t...

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - This is Episode 330 - The Year Without a Summer, Part One - the 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora would have been much longer, and much louder, and become an ecological terror.Now, In the past few episodes, P...