Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the range, depth and style of Browne (1605-82) , a medical doctor whose curious mind drew him to explore and confess his own religious views, challenge myths and errors in science and consider how humans respond to the transience of life. His Religio Medici became famous throughout Europe and his openness about his religion, in that work, was noted as rare when others either kept quiet or professed orthodox views. His Pseudodoxia Epidemica challenged popular ideas, whether about the existence of mermaids or if Adam had a navel, and his Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial was a meditation on what matters to humans when handling the dead. In 1923, Virginia Woolf wrote, "Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those that do are the salt of the earth." He also contributed more words to the English language than almost anyone, such as electricity, indigenous, medical, ferocious, carnivorous ambidextrous and migrant.
With
Claire Preston Professor of Renaissance Literature at Queen Mary University of London
Jessica Wolfe Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
And
Kevin Killeen Professor of English at the University of York
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Transcript
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| 0:04.9 | Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. |
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| 0:14.8 | I hope you enjoyed the programs. |
| 0:17.0 | Hello, Sir Thomas Brown, 1605-1682 was a position and one of the most influential authors |
| 0:23.2 | in English, if not widely known. |
| 0:25.4 | According to Virginia Woolf, those who love his writing are the salt of the earth. |
| 0:29.9 | He was celebrating his day for his range of interests and the intelligence of his prose |
| 0:34.2 | and was attacked for pricing whittever faith and in a tumultuous time with polarized views |
| 0:39.2 | on the church and politics he had the confidence to reveal his uncertainty. |
| 0:43.8 | Export his ideas and works on religious belief as a doctor, on the transience of memorials |
| 0:48.4 | and on popular misconceptions and sions, coining new words which have lasted his early fame |
| 0:53.2 | among them, electricity, coma, medical, ferocious, carnivorous and migrant. |
| 0:58.4 | When we discuss the works in life of Sir Thomas Brown, our Jessica Woolf, professor of |
| 1:02.5 | English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, |
| 1:06.7 | Kevin Kielene, professor of English at the University of York and clap-pressant, professor |
| 1:11.3 | of Ernesto's literature at Queen Mary University of London, clap-pressant, what was his background? |
| 1:17.0 | Thomas Brown was born in the city of London to a silkmeyer, a merchant and silk. |
| 1:22.4 | So a relatively well-off family, he was sent to Winchester College and did the usual very |
| 1:30.1 | rhetorically elaborate, grammatically sophisticated training of the humanist English grammar school. |
| 1:37.4 | He later went to Oxford to what is now Pembroke College and there he read the usual BA and |
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