The Great Gatsby

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2021

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss F Scott Fitzgerald’s finest novel, published in 1925, one of the great American novels of the twentieth century. It is told by Nick Carraway, neighbour and friend of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby. In the age of jazz and prohibition, Gatsby hosts lavish parties at his opulent home across the bay from Daisy Buchanan, in the hope she’ll attend one of them and they can be reunited. They were lovers as teenagers but she had given him up for a richer man who she soon married, and Gatsby is obsessed with winning her back.

The image above is of Robert Redford as Gatsby in a scene from the film 'The Great Gatsby', 1974.

With

Sarah Churchwell Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London

Philip McGowan Professor of American Literature at Queen’s University, Belfast

And

William Blazek Associate Professor and Reader in American Literature at Liverpool Hope University

Produced by Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson

Transcript

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0:44.0	our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time I hope you enjoy the
0:48.8	programs hello the great Gatsby is now seen as F Scott Fitzgerald's finest novel and one of the greatest of American novels.
0:56.0	There we find J. Gatsby, newly wealthy, obsessed with winning the love of Daisy Buchanan for a second time.
1:02.0	She had once given him up for a richer man
1:05.3	and married him. In an age of jazz and prohibition, Gatsby hosts lavish parties at his opulent
1:10.8	home across the bay from hers in the hope she'll attend one and will pick up
1:14.7	where they left off when they were teenagers. That would be his fairy tale ending, but this is no fairy tale.
1:20.3	We'll need to discuss the great Gatsbyby are Philip McGowan, professor of American literature at Queens University, Belfast.
1:27.0	William Blasheck, associate professor and reader in American literature at Liverpool Hope University and Sarah Churchwell, Professor of American Literature
1:35.6	and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London.
1:39.9	Sarah Churchill, there echoes of Fitzgerald's own life in the great
	...

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