San Francisco Public Library

Great authors of the Western literary tradition

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Great authors of the Western literary tradition

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Great Courses Audio ;

From the anonymous author of the Epic of Gilgamesh in ancient Mesopotamia to William Faulkner writing about Mississippi 3,600 years later, many of Western culture's greatest figures have been writers. Their landmark themes, unique insights into human nature, dynamic characters, experimental storytelling techniques, and rich philosophical ideas helped create the vibrant storytelling methods we find reflected in today's authors. These 84 brilliant lectures survey more than 70 literary geniuses and masterpieces of Western literature, offering you the chance to experience a veritable encyclopedia of great writers who have played critical roles in Western history, influencing everything from religion to politics - to say nothing of the myriad literary genres and movements, which illustrate how writers reacted to their cultural environments and demonstrate the crucial relationship between a writer and his or her time. From Homer and Virgil to Cervantes and Milton to Dickens and Joyce, the featured texts and authors are so richly varied and cover so many different centuries, societies, literary movements, and genres, yet you'll discover a panorama of literary relationships between periods, authors, and the paths that brought us to where we are in literature today. Amid all the discussions from five highly esteemed professors, you'll return again and again to the idea of literature as a powerful force in our lives. You'll come away with a well-rounded and well-informed understanding of both these literary icons and the larger role that literature has played in our cultural history. The complete list of lecturers includes professors Elizabeth Vandiver, James A.W. Heffernan, Ronald B. Herzman, Susan Sage Heinzelman, and Thomas F.X. Noble. All Lectures: 1. Foundations 2. The Epic of Gilgamesh 3. Genesis and the Documentary Hypothesis 4. The Deuteronomistic History 5. Isaiah 6. Job 7. Homer - The Iliad 8. Homer - The Odyssey 9. Sappho and Pindar 10. Aeschylus 11. Sophocles 12. Euripides 13. Herodotus 14. Thucydides 15. Aristophanes 16. Plato 17. Menander and Hellenistic Literature 18. Catullus and Horace 19. Virgil 20. Ovid 21. Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch 22. Petronius and Apuleius 23. The Gospels 24. Augustine 25. Beowulf 26. The Song of Roland 27. El Cid 28. Tristan and Isolt 29. The Romance of the Rose 30. Dante Alighieri - Life and Works 31. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy 32. Petrarch 33. Giovanni Boccaccio 34. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 35. Geoffrey Chaucer - Life and Works 36. Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales 37. Christine de Pizan 38. Erasmus 39. Thomas More 40. Michel de Montaigne 41. François Rabelais 42. Christopher Marlowe 43. William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice 44. William Shakespeare - Hamlet 45. Lope de Vega 46. Miguel de Cervantes 47. John Milton 48. Blaise Pascal 49. Molière 50. Jean Racine 51. Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz 52. Daniel Defoe 53. Alexander Pope 54. Jonathan Swift 55. Voltaire 56. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 57. Samuel Johnson 58. Denis Diderot 59. William Blake 60. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 61. William Wordsworth 62. Jane Austen 63. Stendhal 64. Herman Melville 65. Walt Whitman 66. Gustave Flaubert 67. Charles Dickens 68. Fyodor Dostoevsky 69. Leo Tolstoy 70. Mark Twain 71. Thomas Hardy 72. Oscar Wilde 73. Henry James 74. Joseph Conrad 75. William Butler Yeats 76. Marcel Proust 77. James Joyce 78. Franz Kafka 79. Virginia Woolf 80. William Faulkner 81. Bertolt Brecht 82. Albert Camus 83. Samuel Beckett 84. Conclusion

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