Absorbing great American writing—the classics—is a unique way to understand the history of this country and to add to our own personal estate of literary wealth.

Classic stories and poems of American literature are found in the pages of Franklin, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Twain, Whitman, Faulkner, James, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Morrison, and many others.

As Professor Arnold Weinstein reminds us: "American classics are wonderfully rich fare. America is a mythic land, a place with a sense of its own destiny and promise, a place that has experienced bloody wars to achieve that destiny. The events of American history shine forth in our classics."

When was the last time you read them? Possibly not as recently as you'd like. Why? Not because you wouldn't love it. But perhaps the demands of your daily life or some other reason have prevented this pleasure. Now, here is the opportunity to gain an extraordinary familiarity with each of these authors within a manageable amount of time, as well as review the great works you may already know.

What Explains Greatness?

These works are both American and classics. The course has been crafted to explain why some works become classics while others do not, why some "immortal" works fade from our attention completely, and even why some contemporary works now being ignored or snubbed by critics may be considered immortal one day.

One memorable work at a time, you'll see how each of these masterpieces shares the uncompromising uniqueness that invariably marks the entire American literary canon.

From Sleepy Hollow to The Great Gatsby, Professor Weinstein contends that the literary canon lives, grows, and changes. What links these writers to each other—and to us readers today—is the awareness that the past lives and changes as generations of writers and readers step forward to interpret it anew.

The course was born from Professor Weinstein's conviction that American literature is our "great estate," and that claiming this rightful inheritance—the living past and the lessons we can take from it—should be nothing less than a unique and joyous learning experience.

Experience Two Centuries of America's Greatest Works

Professor Weinstein explains that America's classic works should be savored as part of our inner landscape: part of how we see both America and ourselves.

He leads you through more than two centuries of the best writers America has yet produced, bringing out the beauty of their language, the excitement of their stories, and the value in what they say about life, power, love, adventure, and what it means, in every sense, to be American.

Perhaps you recall:

Melville's prowling Ahab, on the search for Moby Dick, and the power of the "grand, ungodly, Godlike man"
The quiet diner in The Grapes of Wrath and the pain of one of John Steinbeck's "Okies" trying to purchase a dime's worth of bread
The parlor in Long Day's Journey Into Night and the lifetime of tension in a simple request to a father that he turn on the lights.
Rip Van Winkle falls asleep for 25 years for some mysterious reason—but what exactly was it? Why did Emerson believe in self-reliance, and why do we?

Twain, our first media celebrity, tells stories that have an inkling of Peter Pan: Tom Sawyer never does grow up. But Huck Finn must grow up to face the racism of the South and get past his own polluted conscience—can he do it? James brings American innocents to Europe for them to inherit the world—but do they?

Discover the Stories behind America's Immortal Writers

Consider that:

Emily Dickinson was virtually unheard of in her own time.
William Faulkner's books were out of print until the mid-1940s.
F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing he had been forgotten.
Readers of their times would be astounded if they knew the immortality these writers achieved, just as we are astounded that they once were overlooked.

Most of us don't know that when Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass—seemingly in answer to Ralph Waldo Emerson's memorable wish for the poet America deserved—he sent a copy to Emerson, America's most revered man of letters. When Emerson replied in extraordinarily flattering terms, Whitman published his letter, virtually forcing the new poet's acceptance by a literati that would might have preferred to flee from Whitman's startlingly new, often sexual, poetry.

Perhaps you share the common picture of Emily Dickinson: a passive, gentle, reclusive spinster content in her father's Amherst, Massachusetts, home. If so, allow Professor Weinstein to introduce you to her friend, clergyman and author Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who said of "gentle" Emily: "I never was with anyone who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her."

Through this course, you will learn to:

Explain the roles of self-reliance and the "self-made man" in the evolution of American literature
Identify the tenets of American Romanticism
Describe the evolution of the American ghost story, from Poe and Hawthorne to James and Morrison
Outline the epic strain in American literature, from Melville and Whitman to Faulkner and Ellison
Explain the importance of slavery as a critical subject for Stowe, Twain, Faulkner, and Morrison
Summarize perspectives on nature revealed in poets Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, and Eliot
Identify the tenets of Modernism in the work of Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner
Identify the contributions of O'Neill, Miller, and Williams to American theater
Summarize the threads of the complex relationship between America's great writers and the past.
Savor the Joy of Great Reading

Dr. Weinstein is the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor at Brown University, where he has been teaching literature to packed classrooms since 1968. Brown University student course evaluation summaries reported: "By far, students' greatest lament was that they only got to listen to Professor Weinstein once a week."

One customer writes: "Professor Weinstein is inspiring. Not only am I enjoying these lectures, but I am also rereading these wonderful classics and having a wonderful time."

The course will lead you to read or reread masterpieces that intrigue you most. And with the deeper understanding you gain from the lectures, you will likely experience such joy from great reading that you may wonder why you have spent so much time on contemporary books.

The 84 carefully crafted lectures in this course, each 30 minutes long, are your royal road to recapturing the American experience—and our intellectual and cultural heritage. Just review the lecture titles. All of this can be yours, and the journey will be as rewarding as the arrival.

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84 Lectures
30 minutes / lecture

Introduction to Classics of American Literature
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography—The First American Story
Washington Irving—The First American Storyteller
Ralph Waldo Emerson Yesterday—America's Coming of Age
Emerson Today—Architect of American Values
Emerson Tomorrow—Deconstructing Culture and Self
Henry David Thoreau—Countercultural Hero
Thoreau—Stylist and Humorist Extraordinaire
Walden—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Edgar Allan Poe
Poe—Ghost Writer
Poe's Legacy—The Self as "Haunted Palace"
Nathaniel Hawthorne and the American Past
The Scarlet Letter—Puritan Romance
Hawthorne's “A”—Interpretation and Semiosis
The Scarlet Letter—Political Tract or Psychological Study?
Hawthorne Our Contemporary
Herman Melville and the Making of Moby-Dick
The Biggest Fish Story of Them All
Ahab and the White Whale
Moby-Dick—Tragedy of Perspective
Melville's “Benito Cereno”—American (Mis)adventure at Sea
"Benito Cereno”—Theater of Power or Power of Theater?
Walt Whitman—The American Bard Appears
Whitman—Poet of the Body
Whitman—Poet of the City
Whitman—Poet of Death
The Whitman Legacy
Uncle Tom's Cabin—The Unread Classic
Stowe's Representation of Slavery
Freedom and Art in Uncle Tom's Cabin
Emily Dickinson—In and Out of Nature
Dickinson's Poetry—Language and Consciousness
Dickinson—Devotee of Death
Dickinson—"Amherst's Madame de Sade"
Dickinson's Legacy
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—American Paradise Regained
Huckleberry Finn—The Banned Classic
Huckleberry Finn—A Child's Voice, a Child's Vision
Huckleberry Finn, American Orphan
Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson—Black and White Charade
Henry James and the Novel of Perception
The Turn of the Screw—Do You Believe in Ghosts?
Turning the Screw of Interpretation
Stephen Crane and the Literature of War
The Red Badge of Courage—Brave New World
Stephen Crane—Scientist of Human Behavior
Charlotte Perkins Gilman—War Against Patriarchy
“The Yellow Wallpaper”—Descent into Hell or Free at Last?
Robert Frost and the Spirit of New England
Robert Frost—“At Home in the Metaphor”
Robert Frost and the Fruits of the Earth
T.S. Eliot—Unloved Modern Classic
T.S. Eliot—“The Waste Land” and Beyond
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby—American Romance
The Great Gatsby—A Story of Lost Illusions?
Fitzgerald's Triumph—Writing the American Dream
Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises—Novel of the Lost Generation
The Sun Also Rises—Spiritual Quest
Ernest Hemingway—Wordsmith
Hemingway's The Garden of Eden—Female Desire Unleashed
The Garden of Eden—Combat Zone
William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury—The Idiot's Tale
The Sound and the Fury—Failed Rites of Passage
The Sound and the Fury—Signifying Nothing?
Absalom, Absalom!—Civil War Epic
Absalom, Absalom!—The Language of Love
Absalom, Absalom!—The Overpass to Love
The Grapes of Wrath—American Saga
John Steinbeck—Poet of the Little Man
The Grapes of Wrath—Reconceiving Self and Family
Invisible Man—Black Bildungsroman
Invisible Man—Reconceiving History and Race
Invisible Man—“What Did I Do, to Be So Black and Blue?”
Eugene O'Neill—Great God of American Theater
Long Day's Journey Into Night—There's No Place Like Home
Tennessee Williams—Managing Libido
A Streetcar Named Desire—The Death of Romance
Death of a Salesman—Death of an Ethos?
Death of a Salesman—Tragedy of the American Dream
Toni Morrison's Beloved—Dismembering and Remembering
Beloved—A Story of “Thick Love”
Beloved—Morrison's Writing of the Body
Conclusion to Classics of American Literature