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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: The Life Cycle of a Fictional Character - An Alternative History of the Novel

The Essay: The Life Cycle of a Fictional Character - An Alternative History of the Novel: Episode 4: The Self

The Life Cycle of a Fictional Character - An Alternative History of the Novel

Episode 4

Episode 4: The Self

The Self

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, The Life Cycle of a Fictional Character - An Alternative History of the Novel, The SelfClose menu

James Wood explores the meaning of self in fiction.

Critic James Wood James Wood explores the meaning of self in fiction, focusing on Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Critic James Wood explores aspects of novelistic technique through a fictional character.

Is our fictional character a coherent self? Up till now, we have assumed so. But why? The thrust of twentieth-century philosophy and cultural theory, not to mention the latest findings of neuro-biology, all work to suggest, instead, the incoherence of the self, the self's relative lack of autonomy.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Critic James Wood explores aspects of novelistic technique through a fictional character

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The Life Cycle of a Fictional Character - An Alternative History of the Novel

Episode 4: The Self

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