Literary Criticism audiobooks

D. H. Lawrence in 90 Minutes

By: Paul Strathern

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 1 hour 53 minutes

Abridged: No

By the end of his life, Lawrence had despaired of Western civilization, which he felt had corrupted and weakened the human spirit. He believed that we had somehow lost touch with our instinctual being and no longer responded to the 'true voice' of our blood. We still possessed such truth deep within us, but it was smothered by a dead culture.His... Read more

Thalia Book Club: Jonathan Stroud's Heroes of the Valley

By: Jonathan Stroud

Narrated by: Matthew Cody

Length: 1 hour 2 minutes

Abridged: No

The author of The Bartimaeus Trilogy discusses his new novel with Matthew Cody (author of the upcoming book Powerless) that follows a young shepherd on a hero's quest. Along the way, he encounters highway robbers, terrifying monsters, and the truth about the legends he grew up listening to. Co-presented with Bank Street Bookstore. Read more

Odyssey of the West II

By: Timothy B. Shutt

Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt

Length: 8 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

This course is an interdisciplinary series of connected lectures delivered by eminent scholars from several colleges and universi- ties. Each professor addresses an area of personal expertise and focuses not only on the matter at hand, but on the larger story-on the links between the works and the figures dis- cussed. The lectures address a... Read more

Odyssey of the West I

By: Timothy B. Shutt

Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt

Length: 8 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

This course is an interdisciplinary series of connected lectures delivered by eminent scholars from several colleges and universities. Each professor addresses an area of personal expertise and focuses not only on the matter at hand, but on the larger story-on the links between the works and the figures discussed. The lectures address-in... Read more

Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature

By: Michael Drout

Narrated by: Henry Strozier

Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

The overwhelming success of the Lord of the Rings films and the Harry Potter series aptly demonstrates that the fantasy genre is alive and well in the new millennium. The names of authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Brooks evoke ripe tales of heroism and the clash of good versus evil in magical, faraway lands. The rich... Read more

Thalia Book Club: Louise Erdrich's The Red Convertible

By: Louise Erdrich

Narrated by: Louise Erdrich, Amy Goodman & Sonia Manzano

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Louis Erdrich sits down with Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) to discuss her short story collection, The Red Convertible. Sonia Manzano reads an excerpt from the book. Read more

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong

By: Pierre Bayard

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 4 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

Eliminate the impossible, Sherlock Holmes said, and whatever is left must be the solution. But, as Pierre Bayard finds in this dazzling reinvestigation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, sometimes the master missed his mark. Using the last thoughts of the murder victim as his key, Bayard unravels the case, leading the reader to the astonishing... Read more

The Bible and the Roots of Western Literature

By: Adam Potkay & Monica Brzezinski Potkay

Narrated by: Adam Potkay

Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

The Bible is renowned as a rich source of myth and parable, prose and poetry. Indeed, much of Western Literature owes an enormous debt to the unique and widely varied writings in this important religious text. Read more

The Ten-Cent Plague

By: David Hajdu

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 11 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between “high” and “low” art.David Hajdu... Read more

The Souls of Black Folk

By: W. E. B. Du Bois

Narrated by: Richard Allen

Length: 8 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

W. E. B. Du Bois was the foremost black intellectual of his time. The Souls of Black Folk, his most influential work, is a collection of fourteen beautifully written essays, by turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical. Here, Du Bois records the cruelties of racism, celebrates the strength and pride of black America, and explores the... Read more

Eternal Chalice

By: Monica Brzezinski Potkay

Narrated by: Monica Brzezinski Potkay

Length: 7 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

The goal of this course is to provide an overview of the many different ways writers of fiction and nonfiction have imagined, and reimagined, the object known as the Grail. We'll look at how the Grail was invented as a powerful literary symbol in the late 12th and early 13th centuries by a group of medieval romancers who celebrated the Grail as... Read more

Tolkien’s Ordinary Virtues

By: Mark Eddy Smith

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 2 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

“As I get older and learn more of what sort of person I am, and continue sojourning to the rich soil of the Shire and the high tower of Minas Tirith, I discover that many of my notions of what is good and right and noble in this world have their source in that one.”—from the authorThe Lord of the Rings offers us essential lessons in living. Here... Read more

Thalia Book Club: Cornelia Funke's Inkdeath

By: Cornelia Funke

Narrated by: Madeline Cohen

Length: 1 hour 3 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times best-selling author Cornelia Funke makes a rare appearance to talk about the stunning conclusion to the beloved Inkheart trilogy, a thrilling adventure series. Co-presented with Bank Street Bookstore, Thalia Kids' Book Club events are lively talks between children's book authors and their fans (ages 9-12) plus one event for teens.... Read more

Odyssey of the West V

By: Timothy B. Shutt

Narrated by: Donald Sutherland, Joel Richeimer, Fred Baumann...

Length: 7 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

In weaving together the varied and interrelated strands of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discourse and events, this course focuses on the contributions to Western history that bear the most responsibility for shaping the world of today. Among these contributions are such vital, yet markedly different documents as the Federalist Papers and... Read more

What Fire Cannot Burn

By: John Ridley

Narrated by: Patricia R. Floyd

Length: 12 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

John Ridley is an acclaimed screenwriter and best-selling author. His first novel featuring LAPD mutant hunter Soledad O'Roark, Those Who Walk in Darkness, was an instant hit. Soledad's second adventure finds her hunting down a vigilante who is murdering metanormals indiscriminantly. She has no love for the mutants, but no one is above the law.... Read more

In Morocco

By: Edith Wharton

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

"To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to land in a country without a guidebook, is a sensation to rouse the hunger of the most replete sightseer. The sensation is attainable by any one who will take the trouble to row out into the harbor of Algeciras and scramble onto a little black boat headed across the... Read more

Odyssey of the West IV

By: Timothy B. Shutt

Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt

Length: 8 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

The Odyssey of the West series addresses in chronological sequence the works that have shaped the ongoing development of Western thought both in its own right and in cultural dialogue with other traditions. Part four provides a close look at the period from the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution and into the early Enlightenment. These... Read more

Odyssey of the West III

By: Timothy B. Shutt

Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt

Length: 8 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Odyssey of the West I and II explored timeless works from the ancient world that shaped, and continue to shape, the culture and philosophies of life today. In part three of this fascinating series, Professor Timothy B. Shutt of Kenyon College is joined by Professors Thomas F. Madden (Saint Louis University) and Monica Brzezinski Potkay (College... Read more

Giants of Russian Literature: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov

By: Liza Knapp

Narrated by: Jean-Marc Berne

Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

Russian literature of the 19th century is among the richest, most profound, and most human traditions in the world. This course explores this tradition by focusing on four giants: Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. Their works had an enormous impact on Russian understanding of the human condition. And, just as... Read more

Monsters, Gods, and Heroes

By: Timothy B. Shutt

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

Length: 7 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

From the very outset in the West-from the time of Homer himself in about 750 BCE-the epic has been the most highly regarded of literary genres. It is rivaled only by tragedy, which arose a bit more than two centuries later, as the most respected, the most influential, and, from a slightly different vantage point, the most prestigious mode of... Read more

The Giants of Irish Literature

By: George O'Brien

Narrated by: George O'Brien

Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett: These four masters of Irish literature created works of startling innovation and unparalleled literary merit. They defied popular expectations and confounded critics with unique masterpieces that one might think of as puzzles, the solution of which lies at the heart of the modern age.... Read more

Dante and His Divine Comedy

By: Timothy B. Shutt

Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt

Length: 8 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Dante's Divine Comedy stands very high among the greatest literary works ever written. The Commedia is about the afterlife, not just Hell, but Purgatory and Heaven, too. Dante's genius is the genius of the allegorical method. The Commedia is, in the first instance, an account of Dante's own salvation. In chronicling his own recovery, indeed his... Read more

From Here to Infinity

By: Michael Drout

Narrated by: Michael Drout

Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Science fiction literature and films have contributed indelible images to the popular imagination, from H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds to Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles to the fiction of "cyberpunks." In addition to enthralling readers with breathtaking narratives and dazzling the imagination with mind-bending glimpses of possible futures,... Read more

Doris Lessing

By: Carole Klein

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 10 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Both in her personal life and in her literature, Doris Lessing broke the rules. Born in Persia and raised in Rhodesia by a hypercritical mother and a father who was shell-shocked during the First World War, she was forever in search of her essential identity. Twice married and divorced before the age of thirty, she moved to Britain with one of... Read more