The English Novel

 The English Novel
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)

Taught by Timothy Spurgin
Lawrence University
Ph.D., University of Virginia

Who can imagine life without novels?

They have served not merely as diversions but as companions for so much of our lives, offering hours of pleasure and, at their best, insights few of us can ever quantify. And if the speed at which they pile up by our bedside often exceeds our ability to read them, there's a security in looking ahead to the next enticing volume.

But the simple joy of reading novels sometimes obscures our awareness of the deeper roles they play in our lives: honing our intellect, quenching our emotional thirsts, and shaping our sense of ourselves and of the world we live in.

Many of our most basic assumptions, as Professor Timothy Spurgin notes, have been shaped by novels. To the extent that we see society as complex and interconnected, or view human personality as the product of early childhood experience, we are—whether we realize it or not—under the influence of novelists like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

The impact and significance of the novel form may be especially obvious in the case of the English novel. Through the period that gave rise to the novel, England experienced a convulsive social transformation—one that produced the world's first modern, capitalist economy. Along the way, traditional social values often appeared to be outdated, and so did traditional narrative forms.

It is no surprise, then, that the great English novelists were eager to create something new and different. Breaking from traditions in which stories were usually centered on aristocrats and nobles, they focused on the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people, taking pains to capture the rhythms of everyday life. At the same time, they also reacted to a number of larger developments: industrialization and urbanization, democratization and globalization.

What insights and attitudes do we owe to these writers? How do their lives and works fit into the larger history of the novel form—and what is the meaning of that history for us today?

Professor Spurgin answers these questions and many others, tracing the novel from its beginnings in the 18th century, when Samuel Richardson penned Pamela, to its culmination in the work of the 20th century Modernists, including Lawrence, Joyce, and Woolf.l

Mp3 + guidebook

History of Science: Antiquity to 1700
(36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Taught by Lawrence M. Principe
Johns Hopkins University
Ph.D., Organic Chemistry, Indiana University at Bloomington;
Ph.D., History of Science, Johns Hopkins University

"All human beings, by nature, desire to know."
—Aristotle, The Metaphysics

For well over 2,000 years, much of our fundamental "desire to know" has focused on the area we now call science. In fact, our commitment to science and technology has been so profound that these now stand as probably the most powerful of all influences on human culture. To truly understand our Western heritage, our contemporary society, and ourselves as individuals, we need to know what science is and how it developed.
Who, in fact, were the scientists of the past? What was the true motivation for their work? Is science characterized by lone geniuses, or is it tied to culture and the needs of a particular society? Does science really operate in a linear progression, from discovery to discovery? What does history reveal about the nature of religion and science?
A Complex Evolution Made Clear
In this course, an award-winning professor leads you on an exploration of these issues as he traces this complex evolution of thought and discovery from ancient times to the Scientific Revolution.
Professor Lawrence M. Principe gives living order to science's story by considering it in terms of several penetrating questions, two of which are especially important. Who pursued science—and why? What happened—and why?
As he notes, "Science is a dynamic, evolving entity, tightly connected to the needs and commitments of those who pursue it. The real context of even familiar scientific developments will frequently come as a surprise and can suggest alternative ways for present-day thinking and science to develop."
You will see how many scientific discoveries originated from ideas that might be considered ridiculous or humorous from today's perspective of "cutting-edge technology," as science's earliest thinkers worked under the limitations imposed by the knowledge and culture of their times. But you'll also see that many of these early principles are still relevant and embraced today.
Follow the Transition from "Natural Philosophy" to "Science"
Our notions of "science" and "scientists" date only to the 19th century. Before then, "science" simply meant knowledge; the label of "scientist" did not exist. Instead, the study of the natural world was known as "natural philosophy." And even the great philosophers Plato and Aristotle are considered two of the most influential figures in the history of science.
Dr. Principe examines scientific thought and activity over nearly four millennia, beginning in the time of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians. He restores the vitally important context he believes has been lost from this discussion in recent times...

Medieval Heroines in History and Legend
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)

Taught by Bonnie Wheeler
Southern Methodist University
Ph.D., Brown University

This course presents the lives, based on the latest scholarly interpretations, of four medieval women who still shimmer in the modern imagination: Heloise, the abbess and mistress of Abelard; the prophet Hildegard of Bingen; the legendary Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine; and the woman-warrior and saint, Joan of Arc.
In Medieval Heroines in History and Legend, Professor Bonnie Wheeler discusses these four remarkable women in the light of the present "golden age" of medieval scholarship. Almost daily, researchers are recovering lost information that corrects our picture of what had been a misunderstood era. As a result, we know more than ever about the roles women played in medieval life.
What did it mean to be a heroine in the medieval world? As the four subjects of this course make clear, it meant shaping and changing that world. In the monasteries and churches where people prayed, the universities where they wrote and thought, and even on the political map of Europe itself, these women made differences perceived not only in our time, but in theirs.

After the New Testament:
The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture + a coursebook)
Taught by Bart D. Ehrman
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill mirror links added
M.Div., Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary
The writings that make up the New Testament stand at the very foundation of Christianity. In these 27 books that represent the earliest surviving literary works of the young church, we have what eventually came to be regarded as sacred scripture, the canon of what was to become the most powerful and influential religion in the history of Western civilization.
But while Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the other books of the New Testament are known to almost everyone, the writings that Christians produced in the decades that followed these earliest compositions remain shrouded in virtual anonymity—even though they are crucial to understanding the development of a religion that was shaped largely outside the pages of the New Testament itself.
As Professor Bart D. Ehrman points out, numerous doctrines that are familiar to Christians today, such as that of the Trinity, are not explicitly found in the New Testament. Neither are the church structures around which various Christian faiths, from Roman Catholic to Southern Baptist, are organized. And the ethical positions that form such a central part of Christian life today, such as those involving premarital sex or abortion, are likewise lacking in specific scriptural reference.
Who exactly were the Apostolic Fathers? Why were they given that name? What windows into the shaping of Christianity's canon, church hierarchy, and creed are opened for us with an understanding of works that include the letters of 1 Clement or Ignatius, the Didache of the Apostles, or the Letter to Diognetus?
Dr. Ehrman shows how the allegorical mode of interpretation used in the sermon enabled the preacher of the sermon to make the words of the original text applicable to the present-day situation affecting his own congregation, even though the subject matter was dramatically different. This kind of "presentist" interpretation was not unusual then and persists to this day in the interpretations of so-called "prophecy experts." This practice of allegorical reading eventually came under fire, as church leaders came to realize that if the meaningof a text can be taken in non-literal ways, such readings can be used to support "false" teachings as well as true ones. An understanding of how those teachings evolved—and how Christians put them into practice—is one of the great benefits these lectures provide. After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers is an extremely useful addition to the shelves of anyone interested in the history of ancient Christianity and its evolution into the dominant religion it became.