Classics of American Literature

De: Arnold Weinstein, The Great Courses

Narrado por: Arnold Weinstein

To truly understand the United States of America, you must explore its literary tradition. Now, in this grand collection of 84 fascinating lectures, you'll get the chance to finally become familiar with America's true literary masterpieces (some you may already be familiar with, others you have yet to discover).

Professor Weinstein has crafted these lectures to explain why some works become classics while others do not, why some "immortal" works fade from our attention completely, and even why some contemporary works now being ignored or snubbed by critics may be considered immortal one day. One memorable work at a time, you'll see how each of these masterpieces shares the uncompromising uniqueness that invariably marks the entire American literary canon.

From Sleepy Hollow to The Great Gatsby and beyond, you'll journey through more than two centuries of the best writers America has yet produced, bringing out the beauty of their language, the excitement of their stories, and the value in what they say about life, power, love, adventure, and what it means, in every sense, to be American. You'll explore the roles of self-reliance and the "self-made man" in the evolution of American literature; the evolution of the American ghost story, from Poe and Hawthorne to James and Morrison; the epic strain in American literature, from Melville and Whitman to Faulkner and Ellison; the perspectives on nature revealed in poets Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, and Eliot; the tenets of Modernism in the work of Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner; the contributions of O'Neill, Miller, and Williams to American theater; and much more.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©1998 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)1998 The Great Courses

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The lecturer seems to frequently lose his train of thought. I thought the material to be very opinion based, where I was looking for factual information . Also the professor is obsessed with sex or thinks every writer is.

FAKE!! this book isn't REALLY available

Would you try another book from The Great Courses and/or Professor Arnold Weinstein?

Not from this con

What was most disappointing about The Great Courses’s story?

You can't download it and the first part is one big ad

Classics of American Literatures

This is a series of 84 classroom lectures on American Classic Books. I did not always agreed with the teacher but it did teach me more about the American mindset and why those books were written.

fascinating

Great Professor and interesting lectures. I got a real sense of the scope and themes in this survey of American Literature. My BA in English Literature more focused on history of Literature from England.

Exceptional scholarship

I had “read” several of the featured novels in the lectures. Professor Weinstein’s lectures kindly demonstrated that I was merely “acquainted” with these novels. His insights and the connection and context he provided brilliantly illuminated the contributions of these works to telling the story of the American ethos.

One of the best.

This is a series for people who don't know the America Classics and want to listen to a great overview and explanation from an amazing professor who could be a professional narrator.

Freud Would Have Been Proud

This lecturer had some very odd pronunciations of common words which distracted me from his message. He seemed to find sexual innuendo in every piece of literature to the point that after a while I just lost interest.

Incomparable AudiOverview of American Literature

If you love reading or wish you'd taken that American Lit course in college or paid attention when you did, this is a great opportunity to explore and learn in over 43 hours of a conversational look by Ivy League (Brown) professor Arnold Weinstein at American literature going back to Ben Franklin's Autobiography and up to Toni Morrison's "Beloved." The course covers not only narratives (novels novellas and short stories), but also poetry by Whitman, Frost, Eliot and Dickinson (over 11 hours), plays by Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams (about 4 1/2 hours) and essays/memoirs by Emerson and Thoreau (about 4 1/2 hours). In the area of narratives, Professor Weinstein quite thoroughly examines in over 23 hours of courses, in addition to Ben Franklin and Morrison, the works of Washington Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Henry James, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Ellison and a few others.

If you haven't read a lot of these materials, don't be dissuaded from taking the plunge into this fabulous exploration of America through literature. I hadn't read many of the works, particularly the shorter ones, yet Professor Weinstein inspired me to read a lot of them. His teaching method doesn't require you to have read them to enjoy and learn from the course. Significantly too, the Professor doesn't stick solely to the works typically associated with a particular author. For example, he spent some time studying lesser known works by Melville ("Benito Cereno"), Hemingway ("Garden of Eden") and Twain ("Pudd'nhead Wilson"). And, perhaps the best thing about this audio course is that, if you aren't interested in an author/poet/playwright/essayist, you can skip that lecture *with impunity*.

I cannot recommend this course highly enough to anyone who loves lit, but never had a chance or took the time to study it. For me, this course was worth several credits and more.

A literary journal

With an eloquent expert as your guide, take a literary journey through the landscape of American fiction and gain a newfound appreciation for the genius of the many authors covered in the course and how their seminal works reflected the times in which they lived. As such this is not only a literary journey but a historical one too.

a college course in literature.

Take your time to digest each lecture. Read the novels to fully understand the discussions.