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British literature Appreciation Study and teaching British literature History 20th century British literature History 21st century British literature History and criticism Classical drama Television adaptations Drama 20th century Drama 21st century English literature History and criticism Irish literature History 20th century Irish literature History 21st centurySummary: Seamus Heaney, one of the finest poets writing in the English language, and the late Richard Ellmann, biographer of Joyce and Wilde, and critic of Yeats, in literary dialogue about these three brilliant Dublin writers. The literary dialogue between Heaney and Ellmann uses documentary material pertaining to Joyce, Yeats, and Wilde, and was filmed at such literary landmarks as the Hill of Howth,...
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Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: With the end of the Second World War, the cultural period W. H. Auden named the Age of Anxiety had begun-a time characterized by an intensifying fear of nuclear Armageddon as the Iron Curtain fell across Europe and the Cold War spread across the globe. This program examines the evolution of the British novel during the period 1945-69, spotlighting J. R. R. Tolkien, William Golding, Iris...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The years between the World Wars generated self-doubt and ideological crisis as Britain contemplated the devastation of World War I and the decline of empire that would transform the British novel. "The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins," wrote D. H. Lawrence in Lady Chatterley's Lover. This program examines the evolution of the British novel during the period 1919-39, spotlighting...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: The 1970s and '80s were a time of turmoil and dislocating change in Britain as customs and values were repeatedly challenged-a period in which, as Angela Carter put it, there was nothing sacred. This program examines the evolution of the British novel during the period 1970-90, spotlighting Fay Weldon, Angela Carter, Penelope Fitzgerald, John Berger, Malcolm Bradbury, Hanif Kureishi, Alasdair...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: For biographer Michael Holroyd, playwright George Bernard Shaw is practically an alter ego. Using archival footage and Holroyd's painstaking detective work, this intriguing program questions the extent to which Shaw's life and art fed upon each other, addressing issues including the effects of the triangle between his father, his mother, and Vandeleur Lee on his plays, as seen in Misalliance...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Lawrence's letters, essays, and autobiographical sketches provide the sound track of this biography of the man who is arguably the greatest and certainly the most controversial English novelist of our century, while the artifacts and scenes of his life provide the visuals. The ideas that permeate Lawrence's work are shown here as they develop through the dominant figures in his life-the father...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Anthony Burgess examines Orwell's achievement, starting with the accuracy of his predictions for the future. Burgess shows how the novel 1984 sprang from the main concerns of Orwell's earlier work and suggests that Orwell identified areas in which human freedom has always been, and continues to be, threatened.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: The most charming small mammals you'll ever meet team up with the world's most exasperating amphibian to pursue their merry adventures in this adaptation based on Kenneth Grahame's beloved children's classic The Wind in the Willows. This dramatization dispenses with animation and relies instead on the striking animal instincts of some very talented actors: Matt Lucas as gadget-crazed Mr. Toad;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Read by noted actors Michael Gough, Edward Fox, and Eileen Atkins, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land powerfully expresses the disillusionment and disgust of the post-World War I era in Europe. In this program, Professor Frank Kermode, of Cambridge University; Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd; and poets Sir Stephen Spender and Craig Raine examine the complex nature of Eliot's influential poem, analyze...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: A prolific virtuoso of poetic forms and techniques, W. H. Auden achieved literary fame on both sides of the Atlantic. This program traces his life's story and provides a sampling of his very best works, including "Musee des Beaux Arts," "In Memory of W. B. Yeats," "Epitaph on a Tyrant," "Leap Before You Look," and "The Shield of Achilles.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: William Golding's power to create contemporary myth is unparalleled in modern literature. In this program, Golding, his daughter, and others discuss his life as a child, father, and naval officer in World War II. They also summarize his views on human nature. Excerpts from several works-including The Inheritors and Pincher Martin-are used to illustrate those who inhabit Golding's fiction as...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In this program, Forster's biographer, friends, and literary critics paint a detailed portrait of this widely successful and accessible author. Forster's humanistic views promoting equality among races, classes, and nationalities are revealed in readings from his masterpiece, A Passage to India. Room with a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread-largely set in Italy-compare repressive middle-class...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: With his 1956 play Look Back in Anger, British dramatist John Osborne renewed the emotional and rhetorical intensity of English theater. Unfortunately, misunderstanding and controversy surrounded most of his career. This program reconstructs Osborne's life and artistic journey using rarely seen archival films and firsthand accounts from the author's inner circle. A veritable who's who of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: As a poet, T. S. Eliot did not just modernize, he revolutionized. As critic and publisher, he informed literary theory and promoted a generation of major young writers. This richly resourced program provides a concise biography of Eliot, tracing the key events of his life and highlighting his many contributions to English literature. The program features readings and excerpts from his major...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Stranded on an island by a plane crash that leaves all the adults dead, a group of schoolboys establish a primitive society in order to survive. However, their tribal community, begun on moral terms, decays into savagery and ends in a brutal murder. This allegorical novel, now a classic of 20th-century literature, probes the dark side of human nature that lurks beneath the thin veneer of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: No other poet in modern history matched the rhythmic drive and verbal flamboyance of the Welshman, Dylan Thomas, destroyed by alcoholism at age 39. In this program, poet Danne Abse, Thomas's wife Caitlin, and others speak frankly about his dissolute lifestyle and its influence on his writing. Readings from poems including "Return Journey," "Ceremony after a Fire Raid," "Old Garbo," and "Poem in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has been judged by Robert Lowell to be the most important Irish poet since Yeats. This classic program looks back over Heaney's career at the time his best-selling collection Seeing Things-a return to the rural childhood territory of his very first book-was published, offering a rare opportunity to hear the poet read and discuss his work. Through poems including...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. So spoke Virginia Woolf in 1929 as she discussed the problems of the writer and of women in general. Woolf's talk represents perhaps the most persuasive of all her writings on liberty, literature, and the role of women in her society. Woolf spoke not only about writing, but about writing as a woman-speaking in an age when...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This story of innocent imagination destroyed by greed is a school classic. With John Mills and Valerie Hobson.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Certainly one of the most colorful and controversial writers of the 20th century, D. H. Lawrence's humble beginnings as a fragile child in a Nottingham mining town hardly foreshadowed the fame he would acquire through his writing. In this program, Lawrence biographer John Worthen and others who knew the writer discuss the author's life, his many love affairs, and his turbulent marriage to his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: An author who defies classification, Doris Lessing has plowed both wide and deep, combining acute observation of everyday life with a concern for broad issues such as how society should be organized, the value of politics, the role of women, and the nature of individuality. In this vintage program, biographer and critic Claire Tomalin and science fiction author Brian Aldiss talk with Lessing...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Banned in 1920 yet subsequently lionized for its compelling characterization, breadth of humor, and use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, James Joyce's Ulysses expanded the literary possibilities of the novel. This program presents an extraordinary dramatization of Joyce's well-known rendering of the Odysseus epic. The late writer and critic Anthony Burgess and Professor Clive Hart, of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This poignant adaptation of Andrea Levy's award-winning novel Small Island explores the lives of two couples, one Jamaican and the other English, whose worlds intertwine in post-World War II Britain at a turning point in the long relationship between the two countries. It is a story of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This bold adaptation of Oliver Twist breathes new life into Charles Dickens' wonderfully sordid tale of the orphan Oliver (Sam Smith), sent to the workhouse where children are raised on a diet of hard work and thin gruel. But the story doesn't end there. As the shrewd Artful Dodger (Alex Crowley), menacing Fagin (Robert Lindsay), and vicious Bill Sikes (Andy Serkis) lead Oliver into a life of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007