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Authors Authorship British literature English literature 19th century History and criticism English prose literature 20th century History and criticism Irish literature 20th century History and criticism Irish literature Appreciation Philosophy, Modern 19th century Philosophy, Modern, in literature World politics in literatureFilter By Series
Famous authorsSummary: This program from the Famous Authors series introduces the audience to the high society and cultural advancements of Paris in which Proust lived from childhood on. The film walks through Proust's life while highlighting significant influences, connections to his major novel, The Remembrance of Things Past, and possible models for his characters. This masterpiece draws heavily on the author's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program from the Famous Authors series provides an overview of the life and writings of Victor Hugo, author of the novels The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables. The video contextualizes Hugo's childhood as the son of an officer in Napoleon's army during the French Revolution. As a schoolboy, Hugo began cultivating his talents as a journalist and poet, and his older brother...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program from the Famous Authors series takes a close look at the life and literature of Franz Kafka. Contextualizing Kafka's upbringing in turn-of the-century Prague, the video illuminates how the politics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and coming from a Jewish family shaped his life. Young friends Hugo Bergmann and Oskar Pollak were important influences and the first readers for the young...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this introduction to George Orwell's life and work from the Famous Authors series, viewers follow Orwell through his privileged education, during which he nurtured his writing talents from an early age. He joined the Burmese military police but grew disillusioned with his role as an oppressor, returned to depression-era England, and committed himself to writing, notwithstanding stints in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program from the Famous Authors series offers an overview of the biography and works of Thomas Hardy. The film introduces the writer’s hometown of Dorchester, which was a strong part of his identity and the model for the fictional land of Wessex where most of his stories were set. Insights into his lower class upbringing, waning religious conviction, and the major relationships in his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This overview of the biography and writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald from the Famous Authors series traces Fitzgerald’s life and influences from his birth in St. Paul, Minnesota, to his university days at Princeton and literary celebrity and frivolity in New York, to his status as social purveyor of modernists in Paris, and his tumultuous marriage to the talented but troubled Zelda Sayre...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This overview of Henry James' life and literature from the Famous Authors series begins with James' comfortable boyhood in New York, during which his father moved James and his brother around and back and forth from Europe frequently for the sake of education. He eventually went to Harvard to study law and began writing, but felt uncomfortable with American culture and left for England, where...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program from the Famous Authors series begins by contextualizing W.B. Yeats' early life in 19th century Ireland and introducing the Yeats' artistic family and the Irish legends that were so influential in his life and work. Yeats eventually became a ring leader of a group of artists in London called the Tragic Generation. Yeats became known as a political and literary voice of Ireland and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This overview of George Bernard Shaw's life and work from the Famous Authors series starts in Dublin, introducing Shaw's family and his mother's voice teacher and influential family friend, George Vandeleur Lee. The film discusses Shaw's experience as a Protestant in Ireland. Eventually Shaw moved to England, where his mother had started giving singing lessons, and set off writing. There he...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: This overview of Henrik Ibsen's life and writing from the Famous Authors series contextualizes Ibsen's upbringing in tight-knit, strictly religious communities in isolated Norway. As a young man, he left his family home in a desire to break away from the staid and religious environment, and worked toward university and made friends that supported his talents. While he failed to pass...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program from the Famous Authors series offers an overview of Robert Burns’ life and major works, including occasional poems, reflective poems, dramatic poems, and lyrics. Beginning with a reading of “To a Mouse,” the video introduces Burns parents, William and Agnes Burns, who, though poor farmers, supported the writer’s education and surrounded him with Scottish folk songs. As he grew...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program from the Famous Authors series, the audience is offered an overview of the life and work of Emile Zola, starting with an introduction to the writer's parents and his important boyhood friendship with Paul Cezanne. The film discusses Zola's attachment to themes of nature and liberty. Eventually he was hired by the French publisher Hachette and began gaining social and literary...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this introduction to Eugene O'Neill's life and work from the Famous Authors series, viewers are given a close look at O'Neill's theatrical family and mother who developed a morphine addiction. He struggled with this and his renouncement of Catholicism, a blow to his Irish parents, and escaped into reading voraciously. He went to Princeton, but was unfocused and left for a life of drinking...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program from the Famous Authors series traces James Joyce's life from his childhood and university days in Ireland, during which he was strongly religious, through his time in Paris where he denounced Catholicism, studied medicine, and began writing poetry, articles, and book reviews. The film introduces viewers to the city of Dublin, the background of Ulysses, Dubliners, and his other...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This overview of the biography and writing of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe from the Famous Authors series depicts Goethe as an avid student of arts and literature but less passionate about his formal studies of law. Love affairs caught him passionately and often triggered heartbreak and literary productivity, particularly his first great success The Sorrows of Young Werther, which established him...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006