Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature by Arnold Weinstein
Another Great Courses lecture. This one delves into novels that I am (mostly) to terrified to even think of picking up. Here's the line up:
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The Metamorphosis and The Trial by Franz Kafka
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
Ulysses by James Joyce
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Most of these cover two, sometimes three, lectures. I've only managed to get through 5 of these: Dangerous Liaisons (loved!), Wuthering Heights (yawn), Bleak House (yeah, ok), Madame Bovary (good), and To the Lighthouse (please, dear God, no!). The main point of choosing this lecture was War And Peace. I've started that dang book twice and I just can't get through it. I even tried to take notes the last time, but it's no good. I think that one is my white whale. Professor Weinstein is quite insightful about all these novels, and I found myself tempted (however briefly) to pick a couple up. If you're like me and you want to know what you're missing without actually having to crack one of these intimidating tomes, this will fill you in. Unfortunately that's not the aim of the lecture, but it's what I took away from it.
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The Metamorphosis and The Trial by Franz Kafka
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
Ulysses by James Joyce
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Most of these cover two, sometimes three, lectures. I've only managed to get through 5 of these: Dangerous Liaisons (loved!), Wuthering Heights (yawn), Bleak House (yeah, ok), Madame Bovary (good), and To the Lighthouse (please, dear God, no!). The main point of choosing this lecture was War And Peace. I've started that dang book twice and I just can't get through it. I even tried to take notes the last time, but it's no good. I think that one is my white whale. Professor Weinstein is quite insightful about all these novels, and I found myself tempted (however briefly) to pick a couple up. If you're like me and you want to know what you're missing without actually having to crack one of these intimidating tomes, this will fill you in. Unfortunately that's not the aim of the lecture, but it's what I took away from it.
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