
English Literature: Understanding Shakespeare
Get to Grips with the Language, Themes and Influence of One of Literature's Greatest Writers
Joyce, Faulkner, Conrad, Woolf, Kafka, Lawrence. Their works are some of the most challenging—yet rewarding—you'll ever encounter. But their novels are not what you might expect. The style is unfamiliar, the narrative is fragmented, and there isn't a clear plot. It's like nothing you've ever read before. Now you can explore this remarkable literary movement and gain insights into the secrets behind Modernism with Masterworks of Early 20th-Century Literature. See how Modernist authors created new techniques to reflect and help us cope with an increasingly complex post-Victorian world, and understand why they are great.
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Get to Grips with the Language, Themes and Influence of One of Literature's Greatest Writers
Join two exceptional literature professors for in-depth looks at the enduring power of fiction and one of its most popular genres. Stories. In Rise of the Novel: Exploring History’s Greatest Early Works, dive into some of the world’s most notable early novels and learn what this literary form can tell us about human nature and our unquenchable thirst for great stories. And in The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction, examine the many different varieties of the genre, including classic whodunits, courtroom dramas, espionage fiction, and true-crime narratives.
In the 24 lectures of Rise of the Novel, you will take a journey from the birth of the novel to the height of the form in the mid-19th century—and better understand what this literary form can tell us about human nature and our unquenchable thirst for great stories. With Professor Emeritus Leo Damrosch of Harvard University as your guide, you will dive into some of the most notable works that helped create and shape the novel over the course of more than three centuries.
Join Professor Jeffrey Perl on an intriguing reconsideration of some of the most controversial authors of the 20th century: the Literary Modernists. Just who were these authors? How did writers such as Ezra Pound and James Joyce differ from others like Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams? What social and political forces made them write the way they did? Literary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History does not shrink from the challenges imposed by these questions. But it does provide you with illuminating answers that can enhance your appreciation of the literature, philosophy, politics, and morality of this seminal moment in literary history.
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