In three lectures Mark Schenker discusses the relationship between literature and life for readers who see themselves as what Virginia Woolf called 'the common reader': the regular, literate reader who seeks more than pleasure or escapism from literature but who is not a professional critic or literary practitioner.

 

      The introductory lectures discusses the varied roles literature plays in our lives. The following two lectures, on Charles Dickens and James Joyce, respectively, focus on how the fictional world of each of these literary masters augments our experience of reality even as each reminds us that the end of literature is to return us, and our attention, to life.

 

March 17th - Introduction to Literature and Life

April 14th - Charles Dickens

April 28th - James Joyce