Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry and Narrative

Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry and Narrative

Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry and Narrative

This course is an introduction to the major texts of Western culture, from antiquity onward. It stresses the uniqueness of literary language, the formal and generic conventions of writing, the position that literature occupies as a site for historical and ideological conflicts, and the continuing human significance of the great works of the past and present.

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How to Read and Understand Shakespeare

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Shakespeare enjoys near-universal agreement among scholars as well as the general public that his works are among the greatest of humanity's cultural expressions, and that we all should know and understand them. But, simply put, Shakespeare is difficult. His language and culture—those of Elizabethan England, 400 years ago—are greatly different from our own, and his poetry, thick with metaphorical imagery and double meanings, can be hard to penetrate. Now, in the 24 revealing lectures of How to Read and Understand Shakespeare by award-winning Professor Marc C. Conner of Washington and Lee University, you can learn a set of interpretive tools, drawn from the texts themselves, that give you direct insight into Shakespeare’s plays. These guiding principles allow you to follow the narratives of the plays as they unfold, with a clear understanding of how the plays function and fit together. The tools you learn are yours for years of enjoyment of these monumental treasures of our culture.

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Shakespeare's Tragedies

Shakespeare's Tragedies

Shakespeare’s contributions to stage and language are unequaled. In what Professor Clare Kinney calls the "power and audacity of his poetry and stagecraft," Shakespeare has left audiences breathless these past four centuries. But beyond his astonishing feats of language and dramatic impact, Shakespeare also left us a legacy, crafted from his experiences and explorations, of suffering and transgression in his six great mature tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. In Shakespeare's Tragedies, Professor Kinney's aim is to take you deep within each play while supplying you with a nuanced understanding of its meaning.

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