Ancient, Classical & Medieval Literature

The story of Troy speaks to all of us - the kidnapping of Helen, a queen celebrated for her beauty, sees the Greeks launch a thousand ships against the city of Troy, to which they will lay siege for 10 whole and very bloody years.... 

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature....

In this book, for the first time, Philip Freeman brings together the best stories of Celtic mythology....

Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men"....

When you join Professor Vandiver for this lecture series on the Iliad, you'll come to understand what has enthralled and gripped so many people....

These lectures make classical mythology fresh, absorbing, and often surprising....

Acclaimed translator Dick Davis breathes new life into the timeless works of three masters of 14th-century Persian literature....

When the mysterious Green Knight arrives unbidden at the Round Table one Christmas, only Gawain is brave enough to take up his challenge....

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!). These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance....

Explore a series of exciting archaeological sites that provides you with a detailed idea of what Classical archaeology entails....

In a 20-year journey, fabulous fantasy mixes with extraordinary reality as Odysseus encounters enchantresses, nymphs, monsters, prophets, and ghosts....

The tale of the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk (in what is modern-day Iraq), who reigned for 126 years, according to the ancient Sumerian list of kings....

These lectures are an invaluable resource and a helpful introduction to the grandest adventure story in Western literature....

The great legacy of The Iliad is itsshattering revelation of what it means to be human in the face of life's uncertainty and fleeting mortality....

You'll become engrossed in "the romance of the intellect," as Professor Sugrue opens a path for you into the inner structure of these timeless dialogues....

Dante Alighieri’s poetic masterpiece is a visionary journey that takes listeners through the torment of Hell. This first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy is a lot of things: a moving human drama, a magnificent protest against the ways in which men have thwarted the divine plan....

Learn how authors "write into the gap" to flesh out-or, in some cases, reimagine altogether-old stories, making them new for new readerships with different values....

Myths provide the keys to truly grasping the ways that principles, rituals, codes, and taboos are woven into the fabric of a particular society or civilization....

The Iliad. Join Achilles at the Gates of Troy as he slays Hector to Avenge the death of Patroclus. Here is a story of love and war, hope and...

Renowned Shakespearean actors John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson lead a full-cast performance of this beloved Shakespeare play....

This anonymous fourteenth-century text is the glory of English mysticism, and one of the most practical and useful guides to finding union with God ever written....

Odysseus has been away from Ithaca, the Greek city-state under his rule, for ten years while fighting in the Trojan War. After the fall of...

Throughout these lectures, you'll meet the poet in many guises; the divine, the alchemical, the common, the playful and the prisoner....

Dante Alighieri’s poetic masterpiece is a visionary journey that takes listeners through the torment of Hell until the Paradise....

While there is much debate about Omar Khayyam’s philosophical outlook (is his message Sufi-oriented or existentially hedonistic?), there is no doubting its beauty and its profundity of thought....

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce....

Witness the "works and wonders" of the ancient world through the eyes of its first great historian in this sparkling series of 24 lectures....