Classics of American Literature

by Arnold Weinstein

84 lectures | 31 minutes each 1 Introduction to Classics of American Literature 2 Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography 3 Washington Irving 4 Ralph Waldo Emerson Yesterday 5 Emerson Today 6 Emerson Tomorrow 7 Henry David Thoreau 8 Thoreau 9 Walden 10 Edgar Allan Poe 11 Poe 12 Poe's Legacy 13 Nathaniel Hawthorne 14 The Scarlet Letter 15 Hawthorne's “A 16 The Scarlet Letter 17 Hawthorne Our Contemporary 18 Herman Melville 19 Biggest Fish Story 20 Ahab and the White Whale 21 Moby-Dick 22 Melville's “Benito Cereno” 23 “Benito Cereno” 24 Walt Whitman 25 Whitman 26 Whitman 27 Whitman—Poet of Death 28 The Whitman Legacy 29 Uncle Tom's Cabin 30 Stowe's Representation of Slavery 31 Uncle Tom's Cabin 32 Emily Dickinson 33 Dickinson's Poetry 34 Dickinson 35 Dickinson 36 Dickinson's Legacy 37 Adventures of Tom Sawyer 38 Huckleberry Finn 39 Huckleberry Finn 40 Huckleberry Finn 41 Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson 42 Henry James 43 The Turn of the Screw 44 The Screw of Interpretation 45 Stephen Crane 46 Red Badge of Courage 47 Stephen Crane 48 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 49 “The Yellow Wallpaper” 50 Robert Frost 51 Robert Frost 52 Robert Frost 53 T.S. Eliot 54 T.S. Eliot 55 F. Scott Fitzgerald 56 The Great Gatsby 57 Fitzgerald's Triumph 58 Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises 59 Sun Also Rises 60 Ernest Hemingway 61 Hemingway's The Garden of Eden 62 The Garden of Eden 63 William Faulkner's Sound and Fury 64 Sound and the Fury 65 Sound and the Fury 66 Absalom, Absalom! 67 Absalom, Absalom! 68 Absalom, Absalom! 69 The Grapes of Wrath 70 John Steinbeck 71 The Grapes of Wrath 72 Invisible Man 73 Invisible Man 74 Invisible Man 75 Eugene O'Neill 76 Long Day's Journey Into Night—There's No Place Like Home 77 Tennessee Williams 78 A Streetcar Named Desire 79 Death of a Salesman—Death of an Ethos? 80 Death of a Salesman 81 Toni Morrison's Beloved 82 Beloved— “Thick Love” 83 Beloved—Morrison's Writing 84 Conclusion

Genres: Literature, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Classics, Books About Books, History, Literary Criticism

44 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Dr. Arnold Weinstein is the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor at Brown University, where he has been teaching for over 35 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in Romance Languages from Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Among his many academic honors, research grants, and fellowships is the Younger Humanist Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer Award as a visiting professor at Stockholm University, Brown University's award as best teacher in the humanities, Professeur InvitÈ in American Literature at the Ecole Normale SupÈrieure in Paris, and a Fellowship for University Professors from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Weinstein is the author of many books, including Fictions of the Self: 1550ñ1800 (1981); Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo (1993); and A Scream Goes Through The House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life (2003). Northern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art from Ibsen to Bergman (Princeton University Press, 2008), was named one of the 25 Best Books of 2009 by The Atlantic. Professor Weinstein chaired the Advisory Council on Comparative Literature at Princeton University, is the sponsor of Swedish Studies at Brown, and is actively involved in the American Comparative Literature Association.

Reviews

[Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incomparable AudiOverview of American Literature With Ivy League Professor of Literature

If you wish you had taken that American Lit course at university or that you'd paid attention when you did, or if you just love reading and learning more about the great pieces of lit you've been reading, this is an excellent opportunity to explore and learn in 48 lectures (over 43 hours) in a conversational look, with Ivy League (Brown) professor Arnold Weinstein, at American literature going back to Ben Franklin's Autobiography and up to Toni Morrison's "Beloved."

The course covers not only narratives (novels, novellas, short stories), but also poetry by Whitman, Frost, Eliot and Dickinson (12 lectures), plays by Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams (6 lectures) and essays/memoirs by, among others, Emerson and Thoreau (6 lectures).

In the area of narratives, Professor Weinstein quite thoroughly examines in over 24 lectures, in addition to Ben Franklin and Morrison, the works of Washington Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Henry James, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Ellison and a few others.
If you haven't read a lot of these materials, don't be dissuaded from taking the plunge into this fabulous exploration of the U.S. through literature. I hadn't read many of the works, particularly the shorter ones, yet Professor Weinstein inspired me to read most. His teaching method doesn't require you to have read them to enjoy and learn. Significantly too, the Professor doesn't stick solely to the works typically associated with a particular author. For example, he spent some time studying lesser known works by Melville ("Benito Cereno"), Hemingway ("Garden of Eden") and Twain ("Pudd'nhead Wilson").

Perhaps the best thing about this audio course is that, if you aren't interested in an author/poet/playwright/essayist, you can skip that lecture with obvious impunity, compared to when you sat for a university course.

I cannot recommend this course highly enough to anyone who loves lit, but never had a chance or took the time to study it. For me, this course was more than worth it.

[Lily P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Audible)
Nearly 44 Hours of lectures by Professor Arnold Weinstein, Brown University. I have 2+ hours commute each day and I have a degree in English, so yes, this is how I spent my summer.

First a shout out to the Great Lecture series. I appreciate the 30-45 minute lectures provided in a clear format. This was perfect for my commute and gave me time to think and absorb before moving to a new text. The recordings were clear and in a lecture format, no sound effects, but yes some vocal acting as the professor reads portions of texts as examples. He does the southern accents best….oh yeah, he’s from the South.

The texts selected by Weinstein are a traditional signature cannon of American Literature and Weinstein shows how each was innovative for its time and how it influenced other writers. These texts helped shape and define the American cultural identity. We need to be familiar with them, understand them in context, yet also make room for more diversity in American voices.
I was taught many of these texts in high school and college. In fact, there’s only one new author that I hadn’t been exposed to: Charlotte Perkins Gilman who wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. Interesting how it was a female author that was missing from my education.

I have always been a reader and gravitated to my English classes. Even in the 1970’s, though, I realized that these are all male writers, white male writers, that are being taught. The voice and stories felt foreign and unsatisfying to me. How do these writers speak to the human condition and culture? It was creepy only reading stories concocted from a white male perspective. I was an aspiring writer and in my formative years the message was loud and clear that THIS was literature and I felt that I needed to write similarly or it wasn’t “real” literature. Thank god for my British Literature courses where I met the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen. There were other voices out there. And while I enjoyed their writing much more than Heart of Darkness, Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Flies—they were still foreign voices.

Isn’t that the joy of reading, though? You can live inside the head of someone and experience their thoughts, their observation of life, through their eyes.

The joy of writing is being able to speak your own voice. Let us all celebrate the diversity of voices!

But back to the lectures.

Published in 1998, Weinstein’s lectures make the point 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.

AUTHORS and TEXTS covered in these lectures. (Some authors and/or texts had multiple lectures dedicated to them.)
1. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography
2. Washington Irving—Rip Van Winkle
3. Ralph Waldo Emerson—Nature, Self-Reliance
4. Henry David Thoreau--Walden
5. Edgar Allen Poe—Ghost Writer
6. Nathanial Hawthorne—Scarlett Letter
7. Herman Melville—Moby Dick, Benito Cereno
8. Walt Whitman—assorted poems
9. Harriet Beecher Stowe—Uncle Tom’s Cabin
10. Emily Dickenson—assorted poems
11. Mark Twain—Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn
12. Henry James—Turn of the Screw
13. Stephen Crane—Red Badge of Courage
14. Charlotte Perkins Gilman—The Yellow Wallpaper
15. Robert Frost—assorted poems
16. T.S. Eliot—The Waste Land
17. F. Scott Fitzgerald—The Great Gatsby
18. Ernest Hemmingway—The Sun also Rises, The Garden of Eden
19. William Faulkner—The Sound and the Fury—the Idiot’s Tale; Absolom, Absolom!
20. John Steinbeck—The Grapes of Wrath
21. Ralph Ellison--The Invisible Man
22. Eugene O’Neill—Long Day’s Journey into Night
23. Tennessee Williams—Streetcar Names Desire
24. Arthur Miller—Death of a Salesman
25. Toni Morrison--Beloved

Yes, it was a powerful trip down my old syllabus reading lists. I much appreciated ending with Toni Morrison. It was wise of the professor to include her here.

Why do so many male writers utilize incest as a theme? And on that note, let’s talk about the homoerotic themes…men are really obsessed with their dicks, you know?

I feel like women writers (perhaps just those that I enjoy reading, so not necessarily a universal truth) have a different focus. Yes we like sex We love sex. Sex is awesome. But there’s also emotional intelligence, drama and comedy come from relationships, as well as power dynamics in relationships and culture.

These lectures made me think. They helped me revisit classic texts from a more mature point in my life and appreciate more in the works than what I had observed in the first reading.

RECOMMEND—HIGHLY RECOMMEND if you want to bone up on the classics for intelligent cocktail party discussions.

[Siv30 · Rating 3 out of 5]

לסקירה מפורטת בעברית ואנגלית קישור לבלוג שלי -

https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/clas...

[booklady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable and educating listen. Was introduced to some new authors (well new for me anyway) and minor works by well-known authors as well as convinced to retry others, such as William Faulkner, who have stumped me up 'til now. This series is well-worth the considerable investment of time it takes to complete. Although some of Professor Weinstein's insights seemed far-fetched, much in recent literature and indeed the perspective/style of modern writers on the whole often seem excessive to me.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, now. 84 lectures, 42 hours. I've probably read two thirds of the books discussed. Listening to this course reminded me of a Shakespeare edition that glossed every possible double entendre and sexual innuendo. Weinstein is quick to highlight all the sexual parts, explaining in detail in case we were slow to catch on.

Since the academy is suspicious of T.S. Eliot, I moved him up on my TBR list.

Mostly, I'm relieved to be finished.

[Brady · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good. Well, not all of it interested me, but most of it.

[Jon Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

My biggest taped lecture undertaking yet, this series consists of 84 lectures covering authors from Benjamin Franklin to Toni Morrison. Arnold Weinstein is thorough, intelligent, fatherly and prone to Freudian interpretations which work. Although I valued covering the standard figures which everyone knows, and many of which I have read, I most enjoyed Weinstein’s detours into lesser known works, or at least lesser known to me:

A short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, entitled Wakefield, tells of a man who abandoned his life and marriage only to spy on his own absence from an apartment a few blocks away. The story is haunting and weird, because it illustrates the dilemma of trying to see oneself objectively.

The novella Benito Cereno, by Herman Melville, tells of a ship manned by slaves, which, as it turns out, really is run by the slaves, who control the masters like puppets. The novel portrays human beings who free themselves from slavery by acting their parts.

The early feminist short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells of a woman trying to be sane, while subjugated to the care of her “enlightened” doctor husband. I think I have that yellow wallpaper in my bathroom.

The posthumous novel, The Garden of Eden, by Ernest Hemingway, portrays a man and a woman longing to trade places. Since I always thought of Hemingway as writing like an exclusive men’s club, it’s nice to see his androgynous side.

Finally Weinstein educated me to see the playwrights Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, to whom I had only passing exposure, as forming a sort of modern triumvirate, analogous in their way to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. I will be going back for more.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to listening to Classics of American Literature yet I find myself rather disappointed. The content is interesting but I feel that the lecturer spent too many lectures on individual authors and texts. For example, I love Poe but I did not really feel having three lectures over him and his works was needed. The same goes for Hemingway and Steinbeck who earned five and six lectures respectively. I enjoy these authors but feel there were many authors and works left out of the course as a result of spending so much time with the same individuals. Overall, the content was interesting but I would have liked more variety.

[William Adam Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

At 84 lectures, this ties the longest course I have listened to yet from the Great Courses. I don't think the Great Courses makes courses like this anymore, so it will remain tied with the History of the United States, the Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, and Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition as the longest course in their catalog. Arnold Weinstein is a Princeton and Harvard educated professor who taught for over thirty years at Brown University. His speaking voice is generally clear and easy to hear, he does have a tendency to swallow words at the end of the sentence. I only mention this because I had to rewind a section and listen again more times than usual.

Professor Weinstein kept my interest throughout this course, for the most part. He chooses 25 authors from American history and does a deep dive on the authors he chooses. Some authors get as many as six lectures, such as Melville and Faulkner. Many authors get five lectures, such as Whitman, Twain, and Dickinson. I would have preferred less lectures on these individual authors and the inclusion of more authors. It would have been great to have maybe two lectures on Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, James Fenimore Cooper, or James Baldwin. I'm less interested in poetry than novels, so most of the poets could have been covered in one lecture, in my opinion. One thing I did like is that Professor Weinstein would sometimes discuss a work of a major author that often is overlooked. For instance he discusses Hemingway's "The Garden of Eden" along with "The Sun Also Rises". After discussing "Huckleberry Finn", he gives a lecture to Twain's "Puddn'head Wilson", which is rarely considered.

A few other reviewers have mentioned that Professor Weinstein likes to give analysis of the literature based on sexual themes. I wasn't often convinced by these insights. I really enjoy discussing literature and learning about the great works of our country that I have read or am going to be getting to in the future, so this lecture series was enjoyable the majority of the time for me.

[Carl Palmateer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This should properly be titled "Classic Authors, Poets and Playwrights of American Literature" since that is the focus. The Professor points out that many of the writings he examines are little known or unknown works that he picked to help highlight the people. Even when he sets a lecture on a specific work it is usually viewed through the lens of what it shows about the writer. The irony is that when he does actually deal with a text there is good stuff but its more like 4-8 hours not 43 hours.

Production/performance is very uneven. First of all Great Courses, I know who you are, I know what the course is. I don't need to be told about you every 10 lectures nor do I need the introduction to the course to be repeated with it.

This is recorded with an audience which I can live with, some people do better with one but I have to listen to every dropped object, rustled paper, stirring soul because the Prof has a habit of dropping his voice to a whisper at odd intervals (or turning away from the mics, I'm not sure) so the volume has to be turned way up, and you still aren't able to make out what he says. Is this a classroom device to bring the students to the front?

The speaking is uneven. Lecture after lecture will go fine then he's suddenly using a bunch of fill words (uh, um, etc) and repeating syllables (it it it, th th th, etc) its not a stammer but more like he's lost the train of thought and is searching for words. Its jarring since its either completely absent or all in. Other times I want to get him a glass of water for the coughing or dryness of throat. Was this an early course and Great Courses hadn't learned about being able to retake, pause, edit and so on?

From a personal quirk the many mispronunciations are endearing. Having grown up doing far more reading than talking I too often mispronounce words. You don't often realize the commonness of the problem since those who have this problem are rarely caught speaking.

[Don Heiman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1998 The Teaching Company released a 7 part “Classics of American Literature” lecture series by Brown University Distinguished Professor Arnold Weinstein. His Part 3 and 4 lectures I purchased from a used book store. These audio lectures covered 7 authors. Three of these authors (Henry James, Emily Dickinson, and Charolette Perkins Gilman) hold a special interest for me. Professor Weinstein’s commentary helped me in a very profound way understand these authors’ writing styles, theme development, and their life values. The Lecture Transcript and Course Guidebook (part 3) was also helpful. After listening to the lectures, I purchased Weinstein’s book “Vision and Response in Modern Fiction” released by Cornell University Press in 1974. I am looking forward to reading his analysis of the “alienating visions” of Proust and the “feeling visions” of Bernanos and Faulkner. (P)

[J. Daniels · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the Great Courses audio books. I've listened to plenty of them; some great, some just okay. This particular course was great. 84 lectures most were multiple lectures for the author to be covered starting with Washington Irving to Toni Morrison with a very, very good narrator/professor. I think the thing that pushed this from good to great was that the professor covered more than just the marquee works. For instance, for the coverage of Herman Melville the professor didn't just tackle Bartlebye the Scrivener, Billy Budd, and Moby Dick. He covered Benito Cereno, a short story I wasn't familiar with. It was rather cool and I really got a great deal out of it.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Downloaded from Audible. Weinstein is a good writer and lecturer, and aside from being a bit down on feminists his insights were illuminating, and his choices for this course were solid. I listened on outdoor walks, and his voice sometimes sank below the level of the ambient traffic noise--otherwise, a good experience.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best series of lectures I've listened to with The Great Courses. If you're like me, you've walked through modern art exhibits and snickered at the high-minded, fanciful explanations for what appears to be straightforward. He does that, but with literature, and in such a straightforward way I found myself nodding along and finally getting it. Fantastic series. Highly recommend.

[Ryan Morrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I had a fairly robust English and literature education in high school, but this great courses series blows it out of the water. A vast and yet poignant exploration on American literature.
The profesor did justice to the writers and works in this course in a way I would have certainly missed if I went in “blind” and without a guide to the classics.

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I skimmed through these CD's, picking some authors I was more interested in like Hawthorne and Emily Dickenson. I was interested to hear Dr. Weinstein either miss or just not discuss some elements of some authors that I had read.

[Michelle Halliwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weinstein has extensive knowledge of so many books. He does a great job of explaining what they are about and why they are important. I have read many of the books in this lecture and I have found his lectures to make my reading much more enjoyable.

[Dayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great course

[Brenden Gallagher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The professor’s conservatism, anti-Marxism, and Freudianism can’t diminish his intellect and generosity. Great American lit survey.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent synopsis of some of the greatest books ever written. Well worth the read, it will definitely add to your to be read list

[Mary Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Man, this thing is 84 lectures and something over 40 hours. But I'm nearly a quarter of the way through, and so far I feel I can make some comments about it. (I may or may not be done with the book by June. Who can tell?)

I am exceptionally fond of The Great Courses. I started listening to them using the audiobooks available at my library, and now I get most of them through Audible. (Alas, the library doesn't have that many of them, and there's no way I'd be done with this lecture in two weeks anyway.) I also greatly love literature and learning more about it. Most of the works in this lecture I have not read, though my interest is certainly piqued. I don't think I can speak to Weinstein's selection of material; I'm no expert for sure. I do notice that people comment on how Weinstein spends a great deal of time on some people instead of others. (Five lectures about Whitman, for example.) And there isn't necessarily a lot of context given. In point of fact, Weinstein himself points out that he doesn't want to turn this into a boring history class, and I can kind of appreciate that.

I have to say that I'm really impressed by Weinstein's presentation style. He's engaging and quite nice to listen to. It helps that he seems to have at least a handful of people in an audience. He's certainly working off of an outline (when not directly quoting a specific text) but he seems interested in his material and conversational overall.

***

Now that I've completed the series, I've reflected on my earlier review and find that not much needs to be added to it. I wasn't super pleased by the end of the series; six lectures on William Faulkner cured me of ever wanting to read anything by that author, and Weinstein kept bringing him up. I did learn a lot of curious things about John Steinbeck, Ralph Ellison, and Herman Melville (which interests me quite a bit in picking up these works). If you are already inclined toward the series, I don't think you'll be disappointed. It was worth the time, but I won't need a refresher.

[Dennis Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classics of American Literature by Professor Arnold Weinstein of Brown University started out quite strong, but became overly repetitive as it moved on. He expressed regret when addressing those who are considered classics of modern literature, like Faulkner and Fitzgerald. He is a purveyor of disillusion, the erotic experience, and desires to curate how we are to understand and utilize art. In his concluding lecture he had remarked about freedom as a key theme, but the freedom he describes is characterized as a fraud that American literature cannot continue to believe in. He's too much of an interested party in what he teaches, and I had not expected him to actually appeal to the critique of the phallogocentric paradigm. He judges authenticity by what he considers realism, which makes the later half of this course a celebration of disillusion made considerably more palatable when elevated by the material he is examining.

It is still largely good, but the enterprise is handicapped by its principle architect.

80/100

[Larry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm 80% done with Classics of American : This is a series of lectures on American literature. For me, it is slow going. I had not realized how boring and inappropriate some authors are. The lecturer has sort of a windy or raspy voice which makes it hard to hear sometimes. If there is the least bit of a hint that the author is including some sort of sexual connotation, he is sure to report that. — 7 minutes ago — update status

[Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so enjoying this lecture series. Mr Weinstein is very interesting and has a great way of describing how the authors of these classics have developed over the 200 years plus of our nation.
It has given me a greater desire to go back and read the authors that I was forced to read while in school.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, Professor Weinstein, for 84 amazing lectures. I listened to these during my commute and was captivated by them. It takes an incredible lecturer to do that, and he did. If you love literature, you'll love it even more when you finish this course.

[Eric C Abrahamsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only does Processor Weinstein give good analysis of American literature but ties it into a theme on why these books are so critical to your life. These are more than good stories, they also remind us that life is a prison and gives advice on how to escape from the prison.

[Gebo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very long series; however, if you're interested in or need to quickly learn about American Literature, it's well worth the time. The lecturer goes into extensive detail about all of the important American authors, even a few playwrights.

[Kevin Beary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I`m only thru part 3 out of i think 7 which all have appx 6-7 cd`s per -
Intense car course

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

lectures about some of my favorite books: The Sun Also Rises, The Yellow Wallpaper (short story) and The Great Gatsby, also Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald. Heaven!

[Michael P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific introduction.