Radio essays: Kaleidesope of Muses and Kafka.
1) BBC Series – Kaleidesope of Muses, focusing on the lives and works of five key writers of the 19th and 20th centuries Terence Davis, Malcolm Lowry, Gregory Corso, WS Graham, Giovanni Segantini.
2) Stand-alone BBC radio programme – Transformer: In the Shadow of Kafka.
These radio programmes were written by Jeff Young. He offered unique explorations of the lives and works of key writers of the 19th and 20th centuries who transformed contemporary thought and cultural practices. The radio essays provided a particularly personal examination of the writers, which allowed audiences to reflect upon the writers’ artistic legacy and their on-going significance to contemporary thought.
- Submitting institution
-
Liverpool John Moores University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- YOUNG1
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- June
- Year
- 2018
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The five radio essays that formed the BBC series, Kaleidesope of Muses (focusing on the work of Terence Davis, Malcolm Lowry, Gregory Corso, WS Graham, Giovanni Segantini) and the stand-alone programme Kafka: Transformer were written by Jeff Young. They offered unique explorations of the lives and works of selected key writers of the 19th and 20th centuries who transformed contemporary thought and cultural practices. Each episode focused on the transformative impact of their work on the author, Young. This combination of biography and autobiography provided a particularly personal examination of the writers which allowed audiences to reflect upon the writers’ artistic legacy and their on-going significance to contemporary thought. Young’s creative approaches challenged the usual radio essay by introducing the personal in the form of a conversational narrative with each writer and reflections on his own creative development. In so doing, Young was able to take listeners beyond their expectations of documentary and historical research, relocating their ideas in contemporary Liverpool.
This approach significantly challenged notions of received knowledge as expected of traditional radio documentary. It removed the listener from the comfortable zone of biographical expectation, challenging them to reassess their knowledge of the writers. The primary research question to all the programmes, Young believes, is that influential writers travel with us as a kind of spirit guide, and also throwing up artistic challenges and offering a reassessment of their work despite the ever-widening distance of epochs.
Each programme encompasses detailed and rigorous research involving primary material, site inspections, identification and traversing of routes travelled by the artists and undertaken by Young, reflection of voice and identity, analysis of socio-political history and interviews with experts and aficionados. In conducting this research Young created a multifaceted portrait of each artist while reflecting upon and shaping a new modality for contemporary autobiography.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
