This series presents some of the finest teachers in America, lecturing on some of the greatest literature ever written.

Part I : Near Eastern and Mediterranean Foundations.Foundations -- The Epic of Gilgamesh -- Genesis and the documentary hypothesis -- The Deuteronomistic history -- Isaiah -- Job -- Homer: the Iliad -- Homer: the Odyssey -- Sappho and Pindar -- Aeschylus -- Sophocles -- Euripides. Part II : Literature of the Classical World. Herodotus -- Thucydides -- Aristophanes -- Plato -- Menander and hellenistic literature -- Catullus and Horace -- Virgil -- Ovid -- Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch -- Petronius and Apuleius -- The Gospels -- Augustine. Part III : Literature of the Middle Ages. Beowulf -- The Song of Roland -- El Cid -- Tristan and Isolt -- The Romance of the rose -- Dante Alighieri: Life and works -- Dante Alighieri: The Divine comedy -- Petrarch -- Giovanni Boccaccio -- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- Geoffrey Chaucer: Life and work -- Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury tales. Part IV : Literature of the Renaissance. Christine de Pizan -- Erasmus -- Thomas More -- Michel de Montaigne -- Franȯis Rabelais -- Christopher Marlowe -- William Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice -- William Shakespeare: Hamlet -- Lope de Vega -- Miguel de Cervantes -- John Milton -- Blaise Pascal. Part V : Neoclassic Literature and the 18th Century. Molir̈e -- Jean Racine -- Sister Juana Inš de la Cruz -- Daniel Defoe -- Alexander Pope -- Jonathan Swift -- Voltaire -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- Samuel Johnson -- Denis Diderot -- William Blake -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Part VI : Literature of the 19th Century. William Wordsworth -- Jane Austen -- Stendhal -- Herman Melville -- Walt Whitman -- Gustave Flaubert -- Charles Dickens -- Fyodor Dostoevsky -- Leo Tolstoy -- Mark Twain -- Thomas Hardy -- Oscar Wilde. Part VII : Modern Literature. Henry James -- Joseph Conrad -- William Butler Yeats -- Marcel Proust -- James Joyce -- Franz Kafka -- Virginia Woolf -- William Faulkner -- Bertolt Brecht -- Albert Camus -- Samuel Beckett -- Conclusion.