24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture
Taught by Willard Spiegelman

The verse of the English Romantic poets is as daunting in its scope and complexity as it is dazzling in its technique and beautiful in its language. Now, Professor Willard Spiegelman illuminates masterpieces of English literature by poets Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, as well as the women Romantic poets.
How to Read and Understand Poetry, his emphasis is on technique, on how a poem accomplishes its objectives, on "how it means." To this end, he meticulously dissects the poems, directing you to points of interest that deserve close observation.
What Is Romanticism?

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First published in 1957, this book explores what remained of Joyce’s background, not only in Ireland but in those cities abroad where his books were written. With the co-operation of those who knew the author, including his brother, much new material was brought together to shed new light on Joyce’s life, character and methods of writing. The author traces Joyce, and his writings, from his beginnings in Ireland, through Zürich, London and Paris, to his difficult final year at Vichy in 1940.

Alchemist in Literature: From Dante to the Present

Unlike most other studies of alchemy and literature, which focus on alchemical imagery in poetry of specific periods or writers, this book traces the figure of the alchemist in Western literature from its first appearance in the Eighth Circle of Dante’s Inferno down to the present. From the beginning alchemy has had two aspects: exoteric or operative (the transmutation of baser metals into gold) and esoteric or speculative (the spiritual transformation of the alchemist himself).

The Best of Writers and Company

Carol Shields Eleanor Wachtel is one of the English-speaking world's most respected interviewers. This book, celebrating her show's twenty-five-year anniversary, presents her best conversations from the show, including Jonathan Franzen, Alice Munro, J.M. Coetzee, Zadie Smith, W.G. Sebald, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, and nearly a dozen others who share their views on process and the writing life. Eleanor Wachtel has been host of CBC Radio's Writers & Company since its inception in 1990.

Before the Country: Native Renaissance, Canadian Mythology

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Canada witnessed an explosion in the production of literary works by Aboriginal writers, a development that some critics have called the Native Renaissance. In Before the Country, Stephanie McKenzie explores the extent to which this growing body of literature influenced non-Native Canadian writers and has been fundamental in shaping our search for a national mythology.