Catalog Search Results
Language
English
Description
In this program, one of the most astute observers of contemporary African American life discusses the value and difficulty of maintaining an African American identity in a world dominated by whites, urging viewers "to celebrate voraciously that which is yours. The breadth of her vision-from rural South to urban ghetto to the black middle class-is revealed as she reads from The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, and Mama Day, in the last of these...
Language
English
Description
A distinguished senior member of the Generation of '98 and Rector of Salamanca University, Miguel de Unamuno considered himself an "ideoclast": someone who breaks in ideas like boots, making them his own by wearing and using them. This program combines documentary material and dramatizations to present the story of a multitalented Spanish philosopher, essayist, novelist, poet, and playwright against the backdrop of his turbulent times.
Language
English
Description
His life, like his work, was a long time taking root in a place and a culture. Drawing on his Ojibwa heritage, the bitter effects of his father's murder when he was himself still a baby, his intermittent formal education, and his need to reconcile the tribal past with the political present, Vizenor has, poem by poem, story by story, and novel by novel, constructed an impressive oeuvre that marks him as among the most prolific and most intellectually...
Language
English
Description
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 as a famous novelist and associated him with the Sturm...
Language
English
Description
In this program, novelist V. S. Naipaul, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature, explores the relationship between a writer and his work, offering insights into his life, his career, and his subtly incisive novel/memoir The Enigma of Arrival. In particular, he contrasts the inspiration of living in the English countryside with the Caribbean, Indian, and African influences that dominate his earlier writings. Excerpts from Miguel Street, A House...
Language
Español
Description
Sifting through questions surrounding oppression and terrorism, Spanish essayist and philosopher Fernando Savater has often analyzed religious dogma-studying those who promote it and those who oppose it. This program documents Savater's views on the social and intellectual wellsprings of terrorism and militant fundamentalism, as well as the eternal conflict between science and religion. The author of Ethics for Amador and The Task of the Hero examines...
Language
English
Description
This series, featuring archive interviews and dramatic re-enactment, reveals the price iconic women of the 20th century paid for their achievements. This documentary examines the career of English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright, Agatha Christie. Revered as "The Queen of Murder Mystery," Christie is responsible for The Mousetrap, the longest continuously running play in history, has had her stories made into movies and television...
Language
English
Description
The first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise and a close contender for a Nobel Prize, Marguerite Yourcenar remained characteristically indifferent to public life and professional honors. This program-shot on location at her hermitage on Mount Desert Island a year before her death in 1987-profiles the life and literature of a renowned novelist, poet, and essayist who viewed the world and even herself with a curious detachment. Best known...
Language
English
Description
As a playwright, George Bernard Shaw created many unforgettable characters, but the most intriguing was his own. Shaw claimed to be a philosopher, novelist, socialist, statesman, dramatist, theologian, vegetarian, fanatic, and fluent liar. This Perspectives documentary sets the facts straight.
Language
English
Description
The areas in which philosophy and literature overlap are examined in this program by world-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and Oxford novelist Iris Murdoch. Style and structure in philosophical writing are compared and contrasted with those in literature. The narrative abilities of Plato, Schopenhauer, and Kant are examined. Philosophy's predilection for accepting only literature that supports its theories is discussed as a source of antagonism...
14) Camilo Jose Cela
Language
Español
Description
For Camilo Jose Cela, the Spanish Civil War and his early acceptance and later rejection of Franco's dictatorial rule were the defining influences on his life, prompting him to pioneer a novelistic style of brutal realism known as tremendismo. Yet Cela's acute powers of observation and skill in colorful description are also apparent in his other works, including his travel books. In this program, the Nobel Laureate revisits some of the places in his...
15) Frankenstein
Language
English
Description
Frankenstein: the doctor who created life! Was the famed character invented in the mind of novelist Mary Shelley, or was Dr. Frankenstein based in reality, as some argue? This episode of Ancient Mysteries explores Shelley's possible influences. Had she learned of the 18th century German doctor who experimented on dead as well as live bodies; or was her inspiration the Britisher Andrew Crosse, who claimed to use electricity to create life?
Language
English
Description
Ridiculed by some, admired by others, and ignored by no one, Yukio Mishima has remained a paradox in both life and death. This program combines extensive archival footage of Mishima; interviews with colleagues, including his biographer, Henry Scott Stokes, and two of his translators; and readings by actor John Hurt to portray Japan's immensely popular novelist, playwright, actor, and patriot of the extreme right. Obsessed with the act of hara-kiri...
Language
English
Description
Author George Eliot achieved mass popularity and was acclaimed by her literary contemporaries. In contrast, Marian Evans flouted Victorian conventions by living with a man she was unable to marry and by ceasing to attend church. She was refused entry into Victorian society. This documentary tells the story of Evans, from her pious Midland childhood and through her development into an independent-minded academic before emerging as the novelist George...
Language
English
Description
With a novelist's attention to psychological detail, a diarist's love of personal history, and a moralist's penchant for spinning parables, the Roman writer Plutarch created an altogether new kind of biographical history with his Parallel Lives, a series of paired portraits of major figures from classical Greece and Rome. In this program, Plutarch himself is held up for scrutiny, and he gives an extraordinary accounting of himself. Philosopher, priest...
Language
English
Description
Isabel Allende, the most recent Latin American novelist to bestride the world literary stage-and the first Latin American woman-describes the emotions that inform her fiction and the events that set them in motion. Niece of the deposed (and presumably assassinated) Chilean Marxist president Salvador Allende, she fled Chile in terror and blossomed in exile to write of the love, hate, and revenge that shape the lives of people she knew, or dreamt about:...