In this episode, I speak with my colleague, Lars Engle, on the poetry and person of John Donne.  There is no poet more attuned to the connections between the sacred and the profane than Donne, and it was a pleasure to hear Donne’s poetic voice through Engle’s readings.  I hope you enjoy our conversation!

Lars Engle specializes in English Renaissance drama and more generally in Early Modern and medieval British literature. Now Chapman Professor of English, he has taught at the University of Tulsa since 1988, serving at various points as Honors Program Director and Department Chair. He’s the author of “Shakespearean Pragmatism,” the co-author of “Studying Shakespeare’s Contemporaries,” and an editor of “English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology” and of “Shakespeare and Montaigne.” He has also taught regularly at the Bread Loaf School of English since 1999.

Jennifer A. Frey is the inaugural dean of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa, with a secondary appointment as professor of philosophy in the department of philosophy and religion. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where she was also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland faculty fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to her tenure at Carolina, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and a junior fellow of the Society for the Liberal Arts.

She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and her B.A. in philosophy and Medieval Studies (with a Classics minor) at Indiana University-Bloomington. In 2015, she was awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation, titled “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life,” She has published widely on virtue and moral psychology, and she has edited three academic volumes on virtue and human action. Her writing has been featured in First Things, Image, Law and Liberty, The Point, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal.  She lives with her husband and six children in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is on X @jennfrey.