What are “The Great Books”? Professor Rufus J. Fears took up this question in “Life Lessons from The Great Books” and came up with this list. How many have you read? Are there any books you would add? See the whole list on The Great Courses Daily! […]
Professor David Schmid examines Film Noir in a new light, suggesting that we need to accentuate the ways in which noir can critique the dominant discourses of nationhood, especially the premium such discourses place on belonging, hierarchy, and the status quo. […]
Theseus—a hero who is especially associated with Athens—shows up in a great deal of classic Greek literature. Why is this? […]
Unlike many heroes who are associated with only one city, Hercules was a pan-Hellenic hero, claimed by all of Greece. […]
Historian Edward Gibbon’s life’s mission was to chronicle the centuries-long collapse of the Roman Empire. The result of this grand endeavor became one of the […]
In the course, Books That Matter: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Professor Leo Damrosch examines this great work from multiple perspectives; as a vast historical chronicle, as a compelling masterpiece of literature, as a sharp commentary on cultural mores, and as a cautionary tale to Enlightenment Europe. […]
By Irwin Weil, Ph.D., Northwestern University In 1825, a group of aristocrats attempted an uprising on a St. Petersburg square. Naïvely, given that they had […]
By Grant L. Voth, Ph.D., Monterey Peninsula College A pillar of the world literary canon, The Tale of Genji is considered to be the world’s […]
Odysseus was a legendary king of ancient Ithaca, an island in the Ionian Sea. Look at Odysseus as the awed Greek hero celebrated in Homer’s Odyssey and other poems related to the Trojan War. We’ll pay particular attention to the ways in which Odysseus’s scheming and lies lead to heroic triumphs—and nearly kill him. […]
By James A. W. Heffernan, Dartmouth College Born in Rouen, in the French province of Normandy, Gustave Flaubert was the second surviving son of a […]
© The Teaching Company, LLC. All rights reserved.