The major texts of Western culture are a gateway to wisdom that can widen your views on self and society in enduring ways. The extraordinary body of literature given us by writers from antiquity to the present day, as Professor Weinstein notes, “is potent stuff, serving not only as transcription of history but also as a verbal Pandora's box, capable of shedding light on those transactions which remain in the dark for many of us: love, death, fear, desire. We are talking about more than artful language; we are talking about the life of the past and the life of the world.” It is truly a monumental legacy. And now you can examine its most important works - whether drama, poetry, or narrative - in this series of 64 penetrating lectures that reveal astonishing common ground. You'll see how this award-winning teacher uses several different analytical perspectives, including Feminism, Marxism, Freudianism, Deconstruction, Postmodernism, and New Historicism, to give us fresh insight into persisting human themes like rites of passage; the “fit” or “misfit” between self and society; the creation of an identity; and the play, weight, and presence of the past in understanding our present. You learn how drama makes visible the conflicts and wars of culture in ways other forms cannot manage. How poetry can go to the heart of human existence with a purity and power akin to surgery, bidding us to challenge and change the way we usually do business. And how narrative can tell life stories in ways that enable a possession of that life that is hardly imaginable any other way.
Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry, Narrative
01: Why Literature—Civilization and Its Discontents
This introductory lecture explains how literature offers us a unique record of culture and crisis.
02: “Oedipus the King” and the Nature of Greek Tragedy
What are the religious, philosophical, and theatrical elements of Greek tragedy?
03: Fate and Free Will—Reading the Signs in Oedipus
Did Oedipus really have a choice? Do the Greek oracles still exist in other forms?
04: Self-making vs. Self-discovery in Oedipus
How much power did Oedipus really have in his decisions/actions? What kind of knowledge is achieved?
05: The Interpretive Afterlife of Oedipus
Whose analysis is correct? From Nietzschean to Freudian, is there one particular criticism that stands alone? Does the play illuminate us today?
06: Shakespeare's Othello—Tragedy of Marriage and State
“Othello” is usually seen as a domestic tragedy; the focus is on marital rather than state interests. Is there a problem with this view?
07: Poison in the Ear, or the Dismantling of Othello
What events led to the collapse of the character of “Othello”? What role did Iago play?
08: Rethinking Othello—Race, Gender and Subjectivity
Was Shakespeare making a conscious statement about race and gender in “Othello,” or are contemporary audiences merely reading into the play?
09: French Theater and Moliere's Comedy of Vices
Why is Molière considered the “French Shakespeare”?
10: Tartuffe and Varieties of Imposture
Does “Tartuffe” follow the traditional comic principle?
11: Religious Hypocrisy—Beyond Comedy
What happens when the sacred is used as a cover for the profane?
12: Georg Büchner—Physician, Revolutionary, Playwright
What effect did Buchner's medical background have on his writing?
13: Woyzeck the Proletarian Murderer— “Unaccommodated Man”
Is society the creator of murder and violence?
14: Woyzeck and Visionary Theater
Does Buchner's “epic theater” do away with classical structures?
15: Strindberg's Father—Patriarchy in Trouble
“The Father” is presented as an Oedipal meditation about identity. Why does Strindberg feel the patriarchy is in jeopardy?
16: Marriage—Theatrical Agon or Darwinian Struggle?
What happens to married people? We'll take a look at Strindberg's ideas.
17: The Father—From Theater of Power to Power of Theater
How are illusion and role-playing central to “The Father”?
18: Beckett's Godot—Chaplinesque or Post-nuclear?
What do vaudeville and the search for God have in common?
19: Beckett and the Comedy of Undoing
What exactly makes Beckett's work amusing? Are you laughing?
20: Godot Absent—Didi and Gogo Present
Two clowns on an empty stage: humanist or absurd?
21: Study of Literature—Approaches, Encounters, Departures
This introductory lecture offers an analysis of the methods used to study literature, as well as a discussion of what constitutes poetry.
22: Shakespeare's Sonnets—The Glory of Poetry
Dr. Weinstein discusses the theme of poetry as bestower of immortality.
23: The Shape of Love and Death in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Was Shakespeare considered a Christian poet? Can love survive time?
24: Innocence and Experience in William Blake
Do you think it is possible to read and write innocently?
25: Blakean Fables of Desire
Is Blake the first counter-cultural poet?
26: Blake—Visionary Poet
What happens when a visionary looks at our ordinary world?
27: Whitman and the Making of an American Bard
What is explosively new and American about Whitman?
28: Myself as Whitman's Nineteenth-Century American Hero
Is there a special American view of self?
29: Form and Flux, Openness and Anxiety in Whitman's Poetry
How does Whitman reconcile his positive program with the insistent reality of doubt and death?
30: Emily Dickinson—The Prophetic Voice from the Margins
Dickinson's poetry is exceptionally powerful. She herself was a recluse. Is there a connection?
31: Dickinson and the Poetry of Consciousness
What did consciousness mean for Emily Dickinson's portrayal of nature?
32: Dickinson—Death and Beyond
How could you write from the vantage point of death?
33: Baudelaire—The Setting of the Romantic Sun
Is the voyage of life the greatest theme in Baudelaire?
34: Baudelaire's Poetry of Modernism and Metropolis
What kind of poetry emerges from the experience of the city?
35: Robert Frost—The Wisdom of the People
Is Frost too glib for his own good?
36: Frost—The Darker View
Is Robert Frost less sweet than we think?
37: Wallace Stevens and the Modernist Movement
Why is Wallace Stevens dubbed the “priest of the imagination”?
38: Stevens and the Post-Romantic Imagination
What does Stevens think about metaphor and nature?
39: Adrienne Rich and the Poetry of Protest
Can you make poetry out of social protest?
40: Rich's Project—Diving into the Wreck of Western Culture
How does Rich make us rethink the nature of Western culture?
41: The Lives of the Word—Reading Today
Is reading a form of mind travel?
42: Chretien de Troyes' Yvain—Growing Up in the Middle Ages
What was the status of knighthood in the 12th century? What does a good knight do?
43: Yvain's Theme—Ignorant Armies Clash By Night
Why is blindness a central condition of “Yvain”?
44: The Picaresque Novel—Satire, Filth and Hustling
Why narrate from the margins? Can beauty be found in filth?
45: Francisco Quevedo's Swindler—The Word on the Street
What kind of rivalry is there between words and matter?
46: Daniel Defoe's Plain Style and the New World Order
Is there a relation between Defoe's style and the “Protestant work ethic”?
47: Moll Flanders and the Self-made Woman
What is the significance of a woman hustler?
48: Matter and Spirit in Defoe
Do you find anything spiritual in this story of a courtesan thief?
49: Dickens—The Novel as Moral Institution
What could the novel teach in the 19th century? What today?
50: Pip's Progress—From Blacksmith to Snob and Back
What are the lectures of Pip's life?
51: Riddles of Identity in Great Expectations
Is there something nasty under the surface in Dickens?
52: Charlotte Brontë and the Bildungsroman
What is the “Bildungsroman”? Can it tell the story of girls as well as boys?
53: Jane Eyre—Victorian Bad Girl Makes Good
What was the Victorian establishment's response to “Jane Eyre”?
54: The Madwoman in the Attic—19th Century Bills Coming Due
Is patriarchy responsible for the madwoman?
55: Melville's “Bartleby” and the Genesis of Character
Who is the “real” Bartleby? Are characters real?
56: “Bartleby"—Christ on Wall Street?
What is Melville trying to say about society and its notions of “business as usual”?
57: Franz Kafka's “Metamorphosis"—Sacrifice or Power Game?
What is the bug symbolic of? Is the story a sacrificial parable?
58: Kafka's “In the Penal Colony"—The Writing Machine
Is Kafka's machine designed to open the self? Is that bad or good?
59: Faulkner's “The Bear"—Stories of White and Black
Is Faulkner able to narrate white and black relations equally well?
60: The Bear—American Myth or American History?
What does the reality of death and time have to do with Faulkner's writing?
61: Tracking the Bear, or Learning to Read
What parallels are there between bear tracking and reading?
62: Alice Walker's Celie—The Untold Story
How is Walker different from Faulkner? What changes here in the depiction of sexism and racism?
63: Ideology as Vision in The Color Purple
What are the different ways we can see God? Are we free agents here?
64: Reconceiving Center and Margin
How does “The Color Purple” challenge or invert much of what we've read in this course?
Overview Course No. 210
About
Dr. Arnold Weinstein is the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor at Brown University, where he has been teaching for over 35 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in Romance Languages from Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Among his many academic honors, research grants, and fellowships is the Younger Humanist Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer Award as a visiting professor at Stockholm University, Brown University's award as best teacher in the humanities, Professeur InvitÈ in American Literature at the Ecole Normale SupÈrieure in Paris, and a Fellowship for University Professors from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Weinstein is the author of many books, including Fictions of the Self: 1550-1800 (1981); Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo (1993); and A Scream Goes Through The House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life (2003). Northern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art from Ibsen to Bergman (Princeton University Press, 2008), was named one of the 25 Best Books of 2009 by The Atlantic. Professor Weinstein chaired the Advisory Council on Comparative Literature at Princeton University, is the sponsor of Swedish Studies at Brown, and is actively involved in the American Comparative Literature Association.
