T. S. Eliot, bowled over by Joyce's brilliant manipulation of a continuous parallel between ancient myth and modern life, called it "the most important expression which the present age has found ... [one] to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape."Ulysses depicts a world that is as fully conceived and vibrant as anything in Homer or Shakespeare. It has been delighting and puzzling readers since it was first published on Joyce's 40th birthday, February 2, 1922.It is, perhaps, a book whose pleasures you've always wanted to learn to savor but never quite worked yourself up to reading. And who can blame you? After all, Joyce himself famously boasted that "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant!"This is where Professor Heffernan's lectures help. Whether or not you have read this book, you'll find that his lectures, the fruit of decades of distinguished teaching, make an excellent guide to the many-layered pleasures of this modern epic.Illuminating the dramatic and artistic integrity behind the novel's most notoriously challenging passages, he explains why this frank, pathbreaking novel was praised as a landmark and damned as obscene—even banned—as soon as it first appeared.

    Duration: 18 hours 40 minsCourse Lecture TitlesArchaeologys Big BangOde on a Grecian UrnA Quest for the Trojan WarHow to DigFirst Find Your SiteTaking the Search Underwater Cracking the CodesTechniques for Successful DatingReconstructing Vanished EnvironmentsNot Artifacts but PeopleArchaeology by ExperimentReturn to VesuviusGourniaHarriet Boyd and the Mother GoddessTheraA Bronze Age Atlantis?OlympiaGames and GodsAthenss AgoraWhere Socrates WalkedDelphiQuestioning the OracleKyreniaLost Ship of the Hellenistic AgeRiaceWarriors from the SeaRomeFoundation Myths and ArchaeologyCaesarea MaritimaA Roman City in JudeaTeutoburgBattlefield ArchaeologyBathHealing Waters at Aquae SulisTorre de PalmaA Farm in the Far WestRoots of Classical CultureThe Texture of Everyday LifeTheir Daily BreadVoyaging on a Dark Sea of WineShows and CircusesRomes Virtual RealityEngineering and TechnologySlavesA Silent Majority?Women of Greece and RomeHadrianMark of the IndividualCrucible of New FaithsThe End of the WorldA Coroners ReportA Bridge across the Torrent

    Robinson Crusoe. Harry Potter. What do these memorable characters have in common? Why do we turn to certain stories again and again? And what impact have they made on world history? These 24 eye-opening lectures give fresh insight into some of the greatest heroes in world literature, from warriors such as Beowulf and Odysseus to unexpected heroes such as Uncle Tom and Sancho Panza.Professor Shippey gives you an inside glimpse into the writer's process. Learn how authors "write into the gap" to flesh out-or, in some cases, reimagine altogether-old stories, making them new for new readerships with different values. By examining what makes these heroes such compelling characters, you'll see how they provide a window to better understand ourselves.From the beginnings of world literature through today's bestsellers, look at what makes characters successful-and how they reflect our changing cultural mores. For instance, after the horrors of global war in the 20th century, the world was waiting for a hero like Frodo Baggins, J.R.R. Tolkien's meek hobbit hero, someone called to duty rather than born strong and fearless.You'll also examine ways that great heroes have changed the course of history, defining nations and redefining our sense of self and our relationships. From the mythical journey of Aeneas to Jane Austen's country dances, you'll survey a wealth of memorable stories and consider why such heroes were necessary-and how they continue to influence our lives today.

    Explore the mythologies of Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Learn what makes these stories so important, distinctive, and able to withstand the test of time. Discover how, despite geographical implausibilities, many myths from across the oceans share themes, morals, and archetypes.Listening Length: 31 hours and 35 minutes

    Homer's poems occupy, as Adam Nicolson writes "a third space" in the way we relate to the past: not as memory, which lasts no more than three generations, nor as the objective accounts of history, but as epic, invented after memory but before history, poetry which aims "to bind the wounds that time inflicts."The Homeric poems are among the oldest stories we have, drawing on deep roots in the Eurasian steppes beyond the Black Sea, but emerging at a time around 2000 B.C. when the people who would become the Greeks came south and both clashed and fused with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean.The poems, which ask the eternal questions about the individual and the community, honor and service, love and war, tell us how we became who we are.

    Greece and the Western World 2. Minoan Crete 3. Schliemann and Mycenae 4. The Long Twilight 5. The Age of Heroes 6. From Sicily to SyriaThe Growth of Trade and Colonization 7. Delphi and Olympia 8. The Spartans 9. Revolution 10. Tyranny 11. The Origins of Democracy 12. Beyond GreeceThe Persian Empire 13. The Persian Wars 14. The Athenian Empire 15. The Art of Democracy 16. Sacrifice and Greek Religion 17. Theater and the Competition of Art 18. Sex and Gender 19. The Peloponnesian War, Part I 20. The Peloponnesian War, Part II 21. Socrates on Trial 22. Slavery and Freedom 23. Athens in Decline? 24. Philip, Alexander, and Greece in Transition

    to the 20th century, and in locale from Mesopotamia and China to Europe and America. He focuses on intellectual history and ethics, taking underlying ideas of each great work and revealing how these ideas can be put to use in a moral and ethical life.Course Lecture Titles36 Lectures 30 minutes / lectureBonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison Homer, Iliad Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Bhagavad Gita Book of Exodus Gospel of Mark Koran Gilgamesh Beowulf Book of Job Aeschylus, Oresteia Euripides, Bacchae Plato, Phaedo Dante, The Divine Comedy Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag ArchipelagoShakespeare, Julius Caesar George Orwell, 1984 Vergil, Aeneid Pericles, Oration; Lincoln, Gettysburg Address Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front Confucius, The Analects Machiavelli, The Prince Plato, Republic John Stuart Mill, On Liberty Sir Thomas Malory, Morte d'Arthur Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 2 Henry David Thoreau, WaldenGibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Lord Acton, The History of Freedom Cicero, On Moral Duties (De Officiis) Gandhi, An Autobiography Churchill, My Early Life; Painting as a Pastime; WWII Lessons from the Great Books

    The nature of myth and its importance to ancient Greece in terms of storytelling, music, poetry, religion, cults, rituals, theatre, and literature are viewed through works ranging from Homer's Illiad and Odyssey to the writings of Sophocles and Aeschylus. These lectures are an entertaining guide to Greek mythology and a fascinating look into the culture and time that produced these eternal tales.

    It poses one question after another that might well have been drawn from the headlines and debates of our nation's recent history: What sort of person should rule the state? Are all citizens equal before the law? Should everyone have equal access to health care? Plato's greater inquiry, however, was into the question of defining justice itself and the reasons why a person would choose a life aligned with that virtue.These 24 remarkable lectures lead you through the brilliant dialogue Plato crafted both to define and examine the issues with which political philosophy still grapples.Chapter by chapter, Professor Roochnik introduces you to Plato's literary recasting of his own great teacher, Socrates, and the dialogue through which Socrates and the Republic's other characters create the hypothetical ideal city. It is by dissecting life in this presumably just city - the "Republic" of Plato's title - that the nature of justice itself can be examined.Many of Plato's ideas will startle contemporary readers, who may recognize in them the foreshadowing of some of humankind's darkest moments. Indeed, some have called the Republic the "great-great-grandfather of all totalitarian experiments." You'll wrestle with Plato's controversial vision, and you'll be surprised just how contemporary these arguments sound.

    But to tell the story on only that level leaves many questions unanswered, not only about the Romans but about the barbarians, as well.Who were the Celts, Goths, Huns, Persians, and so many others met by the Romans as they marched to the north and east? And what made them barbarians in the eyes of Rome?What were the political, military, and social institutions that made Rome so stable, allowing its power to be wielded against these different cultures for almost three centuries?

    Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit today are different... What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpasses and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world."A perennial favorite in many different editions, Edith Hamilton's best-selling The Greek Way captures the spirit and achievements of Greece in the fifth century B.C. A retired headmistress when she began her writing career in the 1930s, Hamilton immediately demonstrated a remarkable ability to bring the world of ancient Greece to life, introducing that world to the twentieth century. The New York Times called The Greek Way a "book of both cultural and critical importance."

    Introduction 2. The Sources 3. Pre-Roman Italy and the Etruscans 4. The Foundation of Rome 5. The Kings of Rome 6. Regal Society 7. The Beginnings of the Republic 8. The Struggle of the Orders 9. Roman Expansion in Italy 10. The Roman Confederation in Italy 11. The International Scene on the Eve of Roman Expansion 12. Carthage and the First Punic War 13. The Second Punic (or Hannibalic) War 14. Rome in the Eastern Mediterranean 15. Explaining the Rise of the Roman Empire 16. "The Captured Conqueror"-Rome and Hellenism 17. Governing the Roman Republic, Part I-Senate and Magistrates 18. Governing the Roman Republic, Part II-Popular Assemblies and Provincial Administration 19. The Pressures of Empire 20. The Gracchi Brothers 21. Marius and Sulla 22. "The Royal Rule of Sulla" 23. Sulla's Reforms Undone 24. Pompey and Crassus 25. The First Triumvirate 26. Pompey and Caesar 27. "The Domination of Caesar" 28. Social and Cultural Life in the Late Republic 29. Antony and Octavian 30. The Second Triumvirate 31. Octavian Emerges Supreme 32. The New Order of Augustus 33. The Imperial Succession 34. The Julio-Claudian Dynasty 35. The Emperor in the Roman World 36. The Third-Century Crisis 37. The Shape of Roman Society 38. Roman Slavery 39. The Family 40. Women in Roman Society 41. An Empire of Cities 42. Public Entertainment, Part I-The Roman Baths and Chariot Racing 43. Public Entertainment, Part II-Gladiatorial Games 44. Roman Paganism 45. The Rise of Christianity 46. The Restoration of Order 47. Constantine and the Late Empire 48. Thoughts on the "Fall" of the Roman Empire

    The story’s focus is not on drama but on a bitter truth: both armies want nothing more than to stop fighting and go home. Achilles—the electrifying hero who is Homer’s brilliant creation—quarrels with his commander, Agamemnon, but eventually returns to the field to avenge a comrade’s death. Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer’s Achilles.Homer’s Iliad addresses the central questions defining the war experience of every age. Is a warrior ever justified in challenging his commander? Must he sacrifice his life for someone else’s cause? Giving his life for his country, does a man betray his family? Can death ever be compensated by glory? How is a catastrophic war ever allowed to start—and why, if all parties wish it over, can it not be ended?As she did in The Endurance and The Bounty, Caroline Alexander has taken apart a story we think we know and put it back together in a way that reveals what Homer really meant us to glean from his masterpiece. Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of our civilization.

    Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance. In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation.This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.--Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning new modern-verse translation.

    For over 1,500 years, the Arthurian narrative has enthralled writers, artists, and a limitless audience spanning the Western world and beyond - and its appeal continues unabated in our time. No other heroic figure in literature compares with King Arthur in terms of global popularity and longevity; now, each year sees literally thousands of new versions of the story appear across diverse media, from fiction writing and visual arts to film and popular culture. Delve into the historical mystery behind the figure of Arthur, and discover the magnificent breadth of these epic tales.These 24 spellbinding lectures reveal the full scope of the Arthurian tradition, from its beginnings in post-Roman Britain to its extraordinary trajectory across the centuries and its latest incarnations in modern times. Your pathfinder in this world of mythic adventure and romance, Professor Armstrong, is one of the world's leading Arthurian scholars and the current editor-in-chief of the academic journal Arthuriana. Demonstrating both encyclopedic knowledge and an infectious passion for the subject, she leads you in tracing how the myth developed across time, clarifying many misunderstood aspects of the narrative, such as the origins of the Round Table and the figure of Merlin, the illicit love between Lancelot and Guenevere, and the varied manifestations of the magical Holy Grail. You'll discover how the legend was appropriated and assimilated by differing cultures, and how each writer and artist in the tradition reflected and commented, through the Arthurian narrative, on the concerns of their own time and place. The result is an illuminating look at one of the most engaging, entertaining, and influential legendary traditions the world has ever known.Listening Length: 11 hours and 59 minutes