"There is time to murder and create" T.S. Eliot
I have often wanted to take Literature in college but never got the guts to do it. So I ended up becoming an overworked underpaid health worker.
These days however, I am on a high time low census that I absolutely have a lot of time to myself. So I googled what things come for free. There are hundreds of websites that lists hundreds of free online courses. Skimming through them was not easy when I suddenly felt like I opened a huge chest full of treasures that I want to sample as much as I could in one munch. There were courses in business, arts, languages and the sciences.
I clicked furiously one after the other. Mostly the courses are just slides used in the course, like the one from UC and John Hopkins. The best one as I skimmed through them are the courses from Yale. Although limited in number compared to the others, the website not just offers the lectures slides, it offers the transcript of the lecture, the whole syllabi, the class activities and the video of the lecture. Its like a free audit of a class in an Icy League school. Didn't we all wished for that one time or the other?
The course which interested me was that of Prof Langdon Eng 301 Modern Poetry. I am presently half way through. Listening to the lectures every morning while I take a bath. I have heard the lecture on my most loved poet since I was grade 5, Robert Frost and actually learned insights I have never known before. Even Prof Langdon's discussion of "Birches" made my hairs stand on end for the sheer beauty of discernment and knowledge.
Yeats and Pound were poets I have not really appreciated before. But the lectures have made understand their art and now I am a Yeats fan.
Right now I am studying the lectures on T. S. Eliot. His "Pufrock" and "Wastelnad" poems are already breaking my heart. I realized that reading poetry alone though has its benefit, the scholar really sees more and you become more appreciative of the magic of these classic poems with these lectures.
Strongly recommended: www.oyc.yale.edu
No comments:
Post a Comment