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Shakespeare is the leading playwright - and probably the leading writer - in Western civilization. His works are one of the greatest achievements of the human mind and spirit. And yet, for far too many of us, they remain a closed book. Why? Professor Saccio is well suited in these 16 lectures to bring you back into Shakespeare's world and tune you into what he calls "Shakespeare's wavelength." As you hear him effortlessly deliver heretofore impenetrable...
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Clearly, the Greeks are a source of much that we esteem in our own culture: democracy, philosophy, tragedy, epic and lyric poetry, history-writing, our aesthetic sensibilities, ideals of athletic competition, and more. But what is it about Hellenic culture that has made generations of influential scholars and writers view it as the essential starting point for understanding the art and reflection that define the West? This series of 24 lectures by...
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Shakespeare's plays - whether a comedy like A Midsummer Night's Dream , a history like Henry IV , or a tragedy like Hamlet - are treasure troves of insight into our very humanity. These 36 lectures introduce you to Shakespeare's major plays from each of these three genres and explain the achievement that makes him the leading playwright in Western civilization. As you'll see, the key to Shakespeare's massive achievement is his "abundance," according
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This series of 24 lectures examines a crucial period in the history of the ancient world, the age ushered in by the extraordinary conquests of Alexander the Great. In all the annals of the ancient world, few stories are more gripping than those from this era. In the opening lectures, you'll explore the enigma of Alexander, son of a brilliant father, yet always at odds with the man whom he succeeded. You'll trace his early campaigns against the Persians...
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The lectures in Part 6 bring the progress of philosophy into the present day, beginning with the work of Nietzsche and the American pragmatists William James and John Dewey. This section explains the work and consequence of modern linguistic and logical analysis in lectures on Ayer and Wittgenstein. Also discussed is the structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss and the attempts to develop rational foundations for values in the Frankfurt School. Finally,...
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The final section in the series, Part 7 details the skeptical and critical answers reached in the second half of the twentieth century to the questions posed in the previous fifty years. This section covers the work of late twentieth-century philosophers and theorists who focused on two critical features of modernity. One issue focused on modern political theory and practice. The other focused on the ideal of objective scientific rationality and progress....
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What can we still learn from C.S. Lewis? Find out in these 12 insightful lectures that cover the author's spiritual autobiography, novels, and his scholarly writings that reflect on pain and grief, love and friendship, prophecy and miracles, and education and mythology. This is your chance to explore a canon of literary work that speaks volumes about the imaginative, emotional, and spiritual power of literature. As you delve into the depths of enduring...
17) Neolithic Europe
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Professor Adams begins with definitions pertinent to European Neolithic prehistory and includes a discussion of conditions necessary for the invention and maintenance of agriculture and pastoralism and the Agricultural Revolution. The course concentrates on the first highly developed Neolithic culture of southern Britain, the Windmill Hill Culture at Avebury, and ends with a consideration of several aspects of the legacy of Neolithic culture, not...
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Johannes Brahms was a man of contrasts. His serious Teutonic music was balanced by joyful dance music. His miserliness with himself by exceeding generosity with family and associates. His kindness to working people with a biting, malicious wit reserved for those he encountered in artistic and aristocratic circles. He was not an easy man to know, destroying a good deal of his own work and almost all of his lifetime's correspondence, in later years...
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Dmitri Shostakovich is without a doubt one of the central composers of the 20th century. His symphonies and string quartets are mainstays of the repertoire. But Shostakovich is also a figure whose story raises challenging and exciting issues that go far beyond music: they touch on questions of conscience, the moral role of the artist, the plight of humanity in the face of total war and mass oppression, and the inner life of history's bloodiest century....