Download Best Sellers Audiobooks in Classics, European Literature

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Title: The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Lawrence Cahoone

Format: Original Recording

Length: 18 hrs and 45 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 509 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

What is reality? Ask yourself whether you can actually know the answer, much less be sure that you can know it, and you've begun to grapple with the metaphysical and epistemological quandaries that have occupied, teased, and tormented modern philosophy's greatest intellects since the dawn of modern science and a century before the Enlightenment.

These 36 lectures are the perfect introduction to the basics of modern and contemporary Western approaches to the philosophies of both reality (metaphysics) and knowledge (epistemology), right through the end of the 20th century. Led by Professor Cahoone, you'll partake in an engaging intellectual journey that encompasses prominent figures from all the major traditions of Western philosophy.

You'll explore the ideas behind modern philosophy's most important movements, including dualism, rationalism, empiricism, idealism, existentialism, and postmodernism. You'll plunge into the thought of some of philosophy's most important thinkers, including Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Peirce, Nietzsche, James, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Rorty, and Derrida, learning how many of them were in fact considered radicals, their views appreciated far less in their own era than in later ones.

And you'll gain a clear sense of how each of these movements and thinkers fits into philosophy's broader progression, often pushing philosophy in dramatically new directions right up to the present day, as well as how philosophy is intimately related to a multitude of other disciplines.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

Exceptional

I majored in philosophy many years ago and have kept up with it on an enthuisiast's level since then. However, I truly learned more from this set of lectures than I have from any other source. I think I finally understand the morass that is 20th century philosophical thought. Professor Cahoone is an exceptional teacher - lucid, knowledgable without being verbose, thoughtful and serious. Without a doubt the best Great Course I've audited.

Learn to answer the big three questions

This is by far one of the best lectures I've ever heard. I'm not a philosopher. I avoided thinking most of my life. I made a mistake about a year ago and read Heidegger's "Being and Time". That completely hooked me. Now, I just have to understand our universe and our place in it.

What is the order within the universe, what is our purpose and why are we here ('the three big questions"). These (or some variation of these) are the three questions that drive me and makes me want to stay alive. As for my reason for being it is to learn as much about the world as I can and this lecture series does that for me better than almost any book or Great Course has.

The professor makes the point that he is only going to look at the Modern Philosophers who added to the field by adding on or subtracting from the other philosophers who came before them and thought differently from the others.

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Title: Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Alan Charles Kors, Professor Darren Staloff, Professor Dennis Dalton, Professor Douglas Kellner

Format: Original Recording

Length: 43 hrs and 43 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 430 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

For 3,000 years, mankind has grappled with fundamental questions about life. What is real? Who or what is God? When is it legitimate for one person to have power over others? What is justice? Beauty?

This 84-lecture, 12-professor tour of Western philosophical tradition covers more than 60 of history's greatest minds and brings you a comprehensive survey of the history of Western philosophy from its origins in classical Greece to the present.

It took 3,000 years for the debate chronicled in these lectures to reach maturity.

With this series of lectures, you can encompass it by the end of next month. You'll travel chronologically through the history of the Western world, charting the intriguing development of Western philosophy and drawing fascinating connections between thinkers separated by the gulf of time and space. You'll acquaint yourself with the Greek Pre-Socratics (the world's first scientific thinkers) and examine in detail the insights of three towering figures: Socrates, his student Plato, and Plato's student, Aristotle.

You'll examine the contributions to philosophy from biblical traditions and the great minds of the Christian age. Then, you'll mark the critical schism that developed between the claims of faith and those of science and participate in the breathless discovery found during the Enlightenment, which reveled in the new freedom of human potential and scientific expansion. You'll study the provocative philosophical responses (by the Existentialists and others) to the challenges raised by the new scientific consciousness. And you'll conclude with an overview of the work of Derrida and other late 20th-century philosophers and theorists.

The full list of lecturers includes Professors Alan Charles Kors, Darren Staloff, Dennis Dalton, Douglas Kellner, Jeremy Adams, Jeremy Shearmur, Kathleen M. Higgins, Louis Markos, Mark Risjord, Phillip Cary, Robert C. Solomon, and Robert H. Kane.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

A high-quality, college course without text or ref

What made the experience of listening to Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition the most enjoyable?

The breadth was quite strong until the later half of the eighteenth century. Up to that point, the impact of non-philosophical thought was given reasonable consideration: Copernicus and Newton for example. However, the impact and, to some degree, the writings of Darwin, Einstein, Heisenberg and Hubble, to name a few, were left out as the narrative focused more narrowly on work more explicitly labeled as modern philosophy.

What did you like best about this story?

The sense of continuity. It would have been unsurprising for a lengthy series of lectures by so many distinct academics to seem disjoint. This did not. Numerous references are made to previous lectures and far more to previous topics in a remarkably consistent fashion.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

One of the speakers gave the impression of being in a rush, needing to fit as much as possible in to the available time.

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Title: Myth in Human History

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Grant L. Voth

Format: Original Recording

Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 331 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Myths provide the keys to truly grasping the ways that principles, rituals, codes, and taboos are woven into the fabric of a particular society or civilization.

This entertaining and illuminating course plunges you into the world's greatest myths. Taking you from ancient Greece and Japan to North America and Africa to New Zealand and Great Britain, these 36 lectures reveal mythology's profound importance in shaping nearly every aspect of culture. You'll also discover the hidden connections between them - a comparative approach that emphasizes the universality of myths across cultures.

Along with the stories themselves, you'll encounter fascinating characters, including Herakles, the ancient Greek hero whose life illustrates the idea that all heroic stories have a similar structure; Loki, the shape-shifting trickster who introduces the concept of time into the Norse realm of Asgard; and King Arthur, the Celtic lord and founder of the Knights of the Round Table.

Myths, according to Professor Voth, are "gifts from the ancestors to be cherished." His enchanting lectures are the perfect way for you to celebrate these cherished gifts, inviting you to develop your own interpretations of these age-old tales, as well as to ponder the role that myths - both ancient and everyday - play in your own life.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

Five stars, with some caveats

This course is an excellent introduction and overview of world mythology. It covers a lot of ground, and does it well. While I would recommend it to anyone, I need to add the following caveats:

Because it covers so much ground, it moves as a very brisk speed, and in some cases I would have preferred to get more depth (for example, more detail on some of the hero myths, and more discussion of the psychological interpretation of myth, a la Rank, Jung and Campbell). Dr. Voth did a really good job of covering the material, but there's enough here for two or even three lecture series.

Second, I found my interest waning slightly in during the latter part of the course. This may have been because (while he never says so) Prof. Voth seems to be suggesting a kind of monomyth for trickster myths (similar to the monomyth of the hero). While I thought the argument and evidence presented for the hero monomyth was compelling, it seemed that the trickster myths were much more diverse (hard to see an parallel between the Norse Loki and the African Anansi as presented here, for example).

Still, the course material was very engaging, and I will definitely be broadening my study of mythology as a result.

Good introduction to world mythology

This is an eclectically organized analysis of myths from around the world, focusing on patterns which come up in all myths, regardless of location. Voth speaks about creation myths, tricksters, heroes and heroines, destruction myths, and how we can look at all these patterns to see some basic truths about ourselves as humans.

I learned a great deal from this series of lectures, though it left me feeling a bit frustrated. Voth, by focusing on the analytical side and on the patterns of myth, did not have time to tell the myths in their entirety.

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Title: The Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Alan Charles Kors

Format: Original Recording

Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 111 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Revolutions in thought (as opposed to those in politics or science) are in many ways the most far-reaching of all. They affect how we grant legitimacy to authority, define what is possible, create standards of right and wrong, and even view the potential of human life. Between 1600 and 1800, such a revolution of the intellect seized Europe, shaking the minds of the continent as few things before or since. What we now know as the Enlightenment challenged previously accepted ways of understanding reality, bringing about modern science, representative democracy, and a wave of wars, sparking what Professor Kors calls, "perhaps the most profound transformation of European, if not human, life."

In this series of 24 insightful lectures, you'll explore the astonishing conceptual and cultural revolution of the Enlightenment. You'll witness in its tumultuous history the birth of modern thought in the dilemmas, debates, and extraordinary works of the 17th and 18th-century mind, as wielded by the likes of thinkers like Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, Newton, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau.

And you'll understand why educated Europeans came to believe that they had a new understanding - of thought and the human mind, of method, of nature, and of the uses of knowledge - with which they could come to know the world correctly for the first time in human history, and with which they could rewrite the possibilities of human life.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

Astonishingly engaging

Professor Kors has an uncanny ability to enter into the spirit and motivations of the creative minds of this period, and to convey the drama and implications of their discoveries and creations. I am a voracious reader of history, philosophy, and intellectual history, and I have learned so much, and now have so many tempting side trails to explore. This man loves his subject, and would be just my kind of conversation partner: a delight.

Fascinating Period, Brilliantly Explained

I purchased "The Birth of the Modern Mind" after being captivated by Professor Kors lectures on Voltaire. There is a little overlap with Voltaire of course, but even more helpful was the clear and fascinating description of what came before and what evolved in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Development of ideas, thought, science, big questions of religion and philosophy of the times are accessible through the professor's enthusiastic and knowledgeable presentation.

As in his Great Courses book on Voltaire, each half-hour lecture is dense with information, but easy to understand. Each lecture is an excellent companion to a walk on a nice day. And as I mentioned in my review of the Voltaire, Prof. Kors has a distinctive style of talking and accent, so much at first you might go, "oh, I'm not sure I can listen to this" - but that enthusiasm, passion, and humor makes him come alive as if you were sitting in a favorite professor's classroom.

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Title: Classics of Russian Literature

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Irwin Weil

Format: Original Recording

Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 206 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Russian literature famously probes the depths of the human soul, and in this series of 36 insightful lectures prepared by a frequently honored teacher legendary among educators in both the United States and Russia - you probe just as deeply into the extraordinary legacy that is Russian Literature itself.

Professor Weil introduces you to masterpieces such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Gogol's Dead Souls, Chekhov's The Seagull, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and many other great novels, stories, plays, and poems.

In all, you plunge into more than 40 works by a dozen writers, from Aleksandr Pushkin in the 19th century to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the 20th century. You also investigate the origin of Russian literature itself, which traces its lineage back to powerful epic poetry and beautiful renderings of the Bible into Slavic during the Middle Ages.

All of these works are treated in translation, but Professor Weil does something very unusual in the literature-in-translation arena. For almost every passage that he quotes in English, he reads an extract in the original Russian, with a fluent accent and an actor's sense of drama.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

Very Little Analysis - mostly retells the stories

Any additional comments?

Being a recent college grad, I think professors are getting used to the idea that their students aren't going to read the assigned literature. Instead of teaching the books at a deep level, connecting themes and ideas, the professor simply summarizes the stories. There is a bit of historical and cultural background, and that part is appreciated, but too little is provided.

Jump in The Troika for A Ride with Dr. Weil!

When I first read--and was deeply moved by--Brothers K four months ago, I very much wanted to learn Russian and read the book in its native Cyrillic. Ohio native Irwin Weil actually followed through on that exact feeling on his first read of Brothers K, making a 40+ year career out of the effort (a career that spanned the Red Scare of the '50s thorugh current day). What Dr. Weil packs into this course is as about as dense as it gets for an audiobook.

I read five major Russian titles before coming across this course--an excellent prerequisite. Without those under my belt, this course would have felt like a fire hose of book summaries. But note: this course is as much about Russian history as it is about the literature. Where did the Cyrillic alphabet come from? What does 'tsar' actually mean? Who exactly are the Cossacks? What types of cultural dissonance did the Soviet Union create amongst its people? These questions and more are answered in this course, allowing the student to develop a greater appreciation for the written works.

Certainly this review wouldn't be complete without a nod to the passion of Dr. Weil. Northwestern University has an absolute treasure in this man; I couldn't imagine a better person to record this Great Course for the English-speaking audience to appreciate for years to come.

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Title: Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition, 2nd Edition

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, Professor James A. W. Heffernan

Format: Original Recording

Length: 42 hrs and 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 136 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

From the anonymous author of the Epic of Gilgamesh in ancient Mesopotamia to William Faulkner writing about Mississippi 3,600 years later, many of Western culture's greatest figures have been writers. Their landmark themes, unique insights into human nature, dynamic characters, experimental storytelling techniques, and rich philosophical ideas helped create the vibrant storytelling methods we find reflected in today's authors.

These 84 brilliant lectures survey more than 70 literary geniuses and masterpieces of Western literature, offering you the chance to experience a veritable encyclopedia of great writers who have played critical roles in Western history, influencing everything from religion to politics - to say nothing of the myriad literary genres and movements, which illustrate how writers reacted to their cultural environments and demonstrate the crucial relationship between a writer and his or her time.

From Homer and Virgil to Cervantes and Milton to Dickens and Joyce, the featured texts and authors are so richly varied and cover so many different centuries, societies, literary movements, and genres, yet you'll discover a panorama of literary relationships between periods, authors, and the paths that brought us to where we are in literature today.

Amid all the discussions from five highly esteemed professors, you'll return again and again to the idea of literature as a powerful force in our lives. You'll come away with a well-rounded and well-informed understanding of both these literary icons and the larger role that literature has played in our cultural history.

The complete list of lecturers includes professors Elizabeth Vandiver, James A.W. Heffernan, Ronald B. Herzman, Susan Sage Heinzelman, and Thomas F.X. Noble.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

Epic Audio

There were more lectures in this long set of lectures (48) on the classic age than any other, twenty something rather than the ten for the other periods. I wasn't convinced that was necessary, obscure Greek and Roman poets get their own lecture while medieval and Renaissance literature are just scanned. There is exposure to French and Spanish authors that we rarely get in English Lit. Doing these works chronologically, you can see how one period builds on another, except for the classics. I can see the attention paid to the greats but I simply didn't enjoy the first part as much as the last.

Great Authors Without the Term Papers

This really is like sitting in on great professors' lectures, but without having all the term papers and finals that go with the classes. I was skeptical, at first, but these really do come across as well thought out lectures by knowledgeable professors. They also bring their unique methods and personalities to each part. I have sat in on enough lectures to be impressed by these. They do require your attention to get the most out of them. One side benefit is the introduction of authors that you may have heard of, but had never gotten around to.

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Title: Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Rufus J. Fears

Format: Original Recording

Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 740 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Tackle these questions and more in these 36 engaging lectures. Beginning with his definition of a Great Book as one that possesses a great theme of enduring importance, noble language that "elevates the soul and ennobles the mind," and a universality that enables it to "speak across the ages," Professor Fears examines a body of work that offers extraordinary wisdom to those willing to receive it.

You'll study dozens of works, from the Aeneid and the book of Job to Othello and 1984 - works that range in time from the 3rd millennium B.C. to the 20th century, and in locale from Mesopotamia and China to Europe and America. Professor Fears approaches each of these works from an entirely different direction, considering philosophical and moral perspectives that superbly complement a purely literary understanding.Grasping these philosophical and moral perspectives is crucial to the education of every thoughtful person. These works that have shaped the minds of great individuals, who, in turn, have shaped events of historic magnitude. You'll study the underlying ideas of each great work to see how these ideas can be put to use in a moral and ethical life."History is our sense of the past," Professor Fears says. "And these Great Books are our links to the great ideas of the past. They educate us to live our lives in a free and responsible way."

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

A course that will open you to new ideas.

This course is about exploring the greatest books ever written that changed the world.

It also explains why they are great and how they affected those around them. Professor Fears is a great lecturer and always keeps things interesting. Each lecture is around a half hour each so great to listen to on your commute or when you have a short time to devote to the lecture.

The books per Prof. Fears are:

1. Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

2. Homer 's Illyiad

3. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

4. Bhagavad Gita

5. Exodus by Moses

6. The book of Mark in the New Testament

7. Koran

8. Gilgamesh

9. Beowolf

10. Job

11. Oresteia by Aeschylus

12. The Bacchae by Euripides

13. Phaedo by Plato

14. The Divine Comedy by Dante

15. Othello by W Shakespeare

16. Prometheus Bound

17. Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn

18. Julius Caesar by W Shakespeare

19. 1984 by George Orwell

20. The Aeneid by Virgil

21. Gettysburg Address by A Lincoln

22. Pericles Funeral Speech

23. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

24. Confucius

25. The Prince by Machiavelli

26. Plato's Republic

27. On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

28. Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Mallory

29. Faust Parts One and Two by Goethe

30. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

31. Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons

32. Lord Acton's History of Liberty

33. On Duties by Cicero

34. Autobiography of Mohandas Gandhi

35. My Early Life, The Second World War series and Painting as a Pastime by Winston Churchill

The last lecture goes over the books quickly and talks about the lessons taught and that the best way to pursue knowledge is to open your minds and meditate on each book in order to let what the author is trying to tell you sink in.

I highly recommend this class.

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Title: The Skeptic's Guide to the Great Books

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Grant L. Voth

Format: Original Recording

Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 85 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Daunted by the "great big books" of the Western canon? Looking for the same pleasures, satisfactions, and insights from books that are shorter, more accessible, and less dependent on classical references and difficult language than tomes such as Moby-Dick and Ulysses?

The truth is that there are so many works that are just as engaging, just as enjoyable, and - most important - just as insightful about great human themes and ideas as anything you'd encounter on a college-level reading list. These 12 highly rewarding lectures offer you an introduction to 12 works that redefine what great literature is and how it can reveal startling truths about life-all without being such a chore to read. Here you'll discover alternatives to the traditional "great books" - Dead Souls as an alternative to War and Peace, and The Master and Margarita as an alternative to Faust. You'll also encounter books from genres that traditionally fall outside the purview of the Western canon. For example, you'll learn how John le Carré's The Spy Who Came In from the Cold transforms the spy novel into serious literature, and how Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons injects the comic-book format with a startling level of realism.

Professor Voth excels at both unpacking the significance of a literary work and instilling excitement for it, be it a novella, a collection of short stories, or a play. If you're new to these works, he will have you running to your nearest bookstore or library to discover what you've been missing. And if you've already encountered some of these books, you'll be eager to revisit them and explore what you may have missed on your first reading.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

Thoroughly enjoyable!

Professor Voth really loves literature of all descriptions. He's no snob for the classics. I have added several of the books mentioned (I should say analyzed in depth) here to my reading list; books I would never have normally sought out. For the books he included that I've already read, his critical insights have deepened my understanding of the works. I'm so grateful to have listened to this course!

Like "this not that" for serious readers

Want to be a serious reader, but don't have the time or energy to deal with all of the classics? This course gives a passionate and entertaining overview of alternatives to some of the hard-to-digest classics, and some great advice on getting more out of any reading.

Maintains the high standard of these courses

These are hugely enjoyable lectures that offer a different perspective of the canon and canon formation.

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Title: Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature

Author: The Great Courses

Narrator: Professor Arnold Weinstein

Format: Original Recording

Length: 18 hrs and 31 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-08-13

Publisher: The Great Courses

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 115 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

What if you could travel anywhere, whether Europe, South America, or the remote reaches of the African continent? And what if you could choose not only your destination, but your era, as well - so that you might choose from the sparkling court society of 18th-century France, a 19th-century whaling ship out of New Bedford, or the streets of Dublin in the early part of the 20th century? And what about the most remarkable journey of all: the voyage inside the mind of another human being, in which you plumb the thoughts and emotions that usually remain hidden deep within?What remarkable secrets would you learn about the puzzling, sometimes shocking thing we call human nature? The lives lived in distant lands and eras? And, most important, ourselves-the human race of which you are a part?

If you're a serious reader, you already know that these are the kinds of adventures that await you in the classic novels of great literature. And if you're not, the 36 spellbinding lectures of this series, delivered by a gifted and prize-winning teacher, might just convince you why you ought to be, as you take an epic journey through three centuries, sojourn in foreign lands, and enter remarkable realms of the imagination.

The lectures take you beyond what is often offered in literary courses-plots, anecdotes, facts about where and when a novel was written. Instead, you'll gain something far more profound: an opportunity to experience the startling brilliance that makes each of these works-from geniuses like Dickens, Joyce, Tolstoy, Balzac, Proust, and many others-a classic.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

Members Reviews:

No Course Credit; Just Ivy League Lit Appreciation

You love books and majored in business or medicine or dropped out of school to become a multi-millionaire salesmen?

Now, you just wish you had paid more attention and that you would have taken that American or British Lit course instead of taking the easier route?

If so, or if you just love lit and don't care if you'd taken it in college or not, this is a perfect chance to listen to hours and hours of a mild-mannered but lively Ivy League (Brown) professor Arnold Weinstein searching the meaning and imparting his knowledge of many of the Classic Novels.

If you haven't read a lot of these novels, don't worry. For a few I hadn't read, Professor Weinstein inspired me to read these books and his teaching method doesn't require you to have read these to enjoy the course.

I'd definitely recommend the Professor Weinstein lit courses. I've bought all of them and I'd say that just an hour or so out of the course's many is worth what you'll spend to make the purchase.

Excellent summary.

What did you like about this audiobook?

Getting an expert's summary on these books was enlightening for me. I was looking for which ones to read or re-read so this is also a great way to decide which classic might fit my next few choices in audio books. There is also something about these old school professors which can't be replicated. I ran this at 2 and 3 times speed and kept up with it so the listener can go through the 36 lectures quickly.

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Title: The Inferno of Dante: Translated by Robert Pinsky

Author: Robert Pinsky (translator), Dante Aligheri

Narrator: George Guidall

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-04-13

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 93 votes

Genres: Classics, European Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Dramatic, intense, and gripping, The Inferno of Dante is an astonishing masterpiece that no listener can afford to miss. Robert Pinsky, the distinguished American poet, preserves the burning clarity and universal relevance of this 13th-century literary masterpiece in a triumphant new translation for our times. Line by line, canto by canto, Robert Pinksy affirms The Inferno as a powerful living classic for todays listeners.

Members Reviews:

Just the Inferno, Raw and Powerful

George Guidall does a wonderful job, I give it three stars because I own another reading of the Pinsky translation that I think is better from a poet's perspective. He is a master narrator, and I do not want to belittle him. I would prefer the original 4 poet reading, but this narration is probably better for most readers.

I love this translation. I prefer the original reading by 4 poets but it is not available and a bit strange for many readers. If you only want to read the Inferno, this is, in my opinion, the best translation for understanding and feeling what Dante wanted one to hear. It does not try and clean up vulgar jokes or tone down anything, something I find lacking in the translations I first read.

You find what your looking for. well narrated

Really appreciated the narration. fluent transitions into slightly.. more dramatic as called for by the text but never near over the top or under sold. Story is brilliant if you can percieve that what his tour of hell is. Is that of who and what he relates to on earth. Leaving room to understand that another person's journey may have been of a differed account. Might help to free the mind to listen rather than contemplate points of argument.

Listen and Read and Do it Over Again

Any additional comments?

I am teaching Dante's Inferno this trimester to 10th graders, and have listened to this audio version of Pinsky's translation multiple times. This performance is excellent. I highly recommend listening to this audio, and reading a different translation (and the critical notes) to give a fuller representation of what the original Italian suggests. I never tire of Dante, and my students love him too!

Hard to visualize

I did my very best to try and visualize some of the scenes that Dante described. However I did have some issues trying to visualize the areas in the circle so I could not delineate them as well as I'm sure others can.

I had no problem whatsoever in visualizing some of the hard things that were happening to the sinners.

I found the ending kind of abrupt. You get to the center then boom he's out of there.

B$

Disturbing/ inquietante!!!!

Wow and this was written in the 14th century?! Creepy and real.even if you don't believe in an after life this will still mess you up. Like a horror story. The book was greatly translated. I am italian and know it pretty well. But my translation would bring a reader within dante's underworld journey. The performance was great. His voice was creepy and perfect to listen to for the full affect. You can listen again and get even more disturbed than the prior listen. Bellissimo!!!!!grazie.molto bene!!!!