Tag Archives: Literature
The Heroic Couplet; Children’s Literature (originally aired as Kids and Couplets)
Paul Hunter [NHC Fellow 1985-86, 1995-96] describes the heroic couplet–“its rhyme, its reason, its artistic and ideological functions in English literature.” [Wayne Pond] Ulrich Knoepflmacher [NHC Fellow 1995-96] “talks about children’s literature and ‘cross-writing’ — a device by which authors … Continue reading
Posted in Episodes, Hunter, J. Paul, Knoepflmacher, Ulrich
Tagged English literature, Heroic couplet, Literature, Ninteenth century, Poetry, Victorian
Comments Off on The Heroic Couplet; Children’s Literature (originally aired as Kids and Couplets)
Classrooms and Correctness
David Denby discusses his book Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World. Stanley Fish discusses his new book, Professional Correctness, which is an account of literary studies and political change. 852 … Continue reading
Posted in Denby, David, Episodes, Fish, Stanley
Tagged Literary Criticism, Literature, Western Culture
Comments Off on Classrooms and Correctness
Asking for Love
The critics agree — Roxana Robinson‘s fiction is masterful (Alice Munro), elegant and tender (Mary Gordon), a striking blend of nuance, empathy, and wit (Publishers Weekly). She writes about old-moneyed families of Manhattan, Connecticut, Long Island, and Maine, the inhabitants … Continue reading
Writing God’s Life
Jack Miles provides an overview of his new book, God: A Biography, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for biography. In it, he contemplates the life of the Divinity as expressed through a variety of epic roles, from creator to … Continue reading
Posted in Episodes, Miles, Jack
Tagged Art, Literature, New York Times, Pulitzer Prize, Religion
Comments Off on Writing God’s Life
Legal Lit
Read a book or go to jail. That choice is key to an innovative alternative sentencing program called Changing Lives through Literature. One of its inventors, literary scholar Robert Waxler, describes it for Soundings. Also Robert Ferguson offers the opinion … Continue reading
License to Speak
Moving from John Milton in the 17th-century to present-day controversies, two of the country’s leading literary and legal experts provide a lively overview of the modern interpretations of freedom of speech. 828 – License to Speak
Death in a Delphi Seminar
Norman Holland reads from and talks about his new novel, Death in a Delphi Seminar, which he calls a post-modern mystery. The setting is an English department where the complexities of literary theory turn grim and lead to murder in … Continue reading
The Information
British literary bad boy Martin Amis reads from and talks about his latest novel, The Information, a searing and satiric send-up of envy and angst in British publishing and pop culture. The New York Times calls Amis’s new book wonderfully … Continue reading
Hard Boiled Lit
“Dashiell Hammett gave legions of readers memorable characters such as the Continental Op, the Thin Man, and Sam Spade. His most recent editor, literary scholar Steven Marcus [NHC Fellow 1980-82], of Columbia University, talks […] about Hammett’s life, times, and … Continue reading
Home Is Somewhere Else
“Lilian Furst [NHC Fellow 1988-89], a distinguished scholar of comparative literature, calls herself ‘an Anne Frank who survived.’ Her new book recounts her family’s escape from the Holocaust and presents an ‘autobiography in two voices’ — the counterpoint of her … Continue reading