Few nations offer a literary legacy as impressive as that of Great Britain.
For more than 1,500 years, the literature of this tiny island has taught, nurtured, thrilled, outraged, and humbled readers both inside and outside its borders. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Swift, Conrad, Wilde—the roster of British writers who have made a lasting impact on literature is remarkable. More importantly, Britain's writers have long challenged readers with new ways of understanding an ever-changing world.
The 48 fascinating lectures in Classics of British Literature provide you with a rare opportunity to step beyond the surface of Britain's grand literary masterpieces and experience the times and conditions they came from and the diverse issues with which their writers grappled.
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Anglo-Saxon Roots—Pessimism and Comradeship Chaucer—Social Diversity Chaucer—A Man of Unusual Cultivation Spenser—The Faerie Queene Early Drama—Low Comedy and Religion Marlowe—Controversy and Danger Shakespeare the Man—The Road to the Globe Shakespeare—The Mature Years Shakespeare's Rivals—Jonson and Webster The King James Bible—English Most Elegant The Metaphysicals—Conceptual Daring Paradise Lost—A New Language for Poetry Turmoil Makes for Good Literature The Augustans—Order, Decorum, and Wit Swift—Anger and Satire Johnson—Bringing Order to the Language Defoe—Crusoe and the Rise of Capitalism Behn—Emancipation in the Restoration The Golden Age of Fiction Gibbon—Window into 18th-Century England Equiano—The Inhumanity of Slavery Women Poets—The Minor Voice Wollstonecraft—"First of a New Genus" Blake—Mythic Universes and Poetry Scott and Burns—The Voices of Scotland Lyrical Ballads—Collaborative Creation Mad, Bad Byron Keats—Literary Gold Frankenstein—A Gothic Masterpiece Miss Austen and Mrs. Radcliffe Pride and Prejudice—Moral Fiction Dickens—Writer with a Mission The 1840s—Growth of the Realistic Novel Wuthering Heights—Emily's Masterwork Jane Eyre and the Other Brontл Voices of Victorian Poetry Eliot—Fiction and Moral Reflection Hardy—Life at Its Worst The British Bestseller—An Overview Heart of Darkness—Heart of the Empire? Wilde—Celebrity Author Shaw and Pygmalion Joyce and Yeats—Giants of Irish Literature Great War, Great Poetry Bloomsbury and the Bloomsberries 20th-Century English Poetry—Two Traditions British Fiction from James to Rushdie New Theatre, New Literary Worlds