Timothy Spurgin

Face it. We are here on Goodreads because we love to read. Given that I spend much of my free time (as well as much of my not so free time) reading or listening to books, I selected this lecture series from The Teaching Company hoping to pick up some tips on how to better understand stories. This course amazed me. In 24 lectures, Professor Timothy Spurgin presents different tools on how to read more deeply and analyze stories. From setting, characters, plot, chapter organization, conclusions show more and more, this book provides insight on how books are written and can be better analyzed and appreciated. Although, this might sound a bit dry, Professor Spurgin is energetic and inserts humor and excitement into his lectures. He provides many different examples of short stories and novel excerpts and discusses them with such enthusiasm that I felt like reading all of them. If he ever tires of being an inspiring teacher, he should consider a job in a book store - he could sell any title. I found that the few examples he selected that I really disliked (Coetzee's novel Disgrace is one) were described in such a compelling manner that I want to reread them, using my newly discovered tool set and see if my opinion changes. If you love to read, or want to read more deeply, or even want to write, you will learn something from this course. Highly recommended!! show less

I decided to listen to this to recapture, if possible, my more academic or systematic appraisal of my reading, and it doesn't disappoint. Spurgin is a professor who knows how to make his instruction and criteria clear without a lot of academic jargon, and I plan to listen again as I apply the precise observations to my future reading.

Funny - the series header above dates the item as 2198 - not quite the future I had in mind

Very interesting, although many things were kind of obvious for me as an English/lit major.
Made me want to read more Virginia Woolf. And D.H. Lawrence and definitely Tristam Shandy. I had to skip the Austen bits for fear of spoilers but I'll definitely get back to it when I read the rest of her work. It made me reconsider Joyce as a someone I might someday read (I *think* I once read part of the Dublineers and was bored stiff EDITED: Have read most of Dublineers, WAS SO BORED that I couldn't show more make myself go through the 3 stories I had left), especially Portrait of The Artist as a young man, which, to be honest, I was eying anyway because it has the best title ever, but not just that.

I was also very interested in the concept of the comedic plot.

From minute 18, lecture 16: Comedic world: a logical place where good is rewarded, bad punish. Nature is balanced. A tragic world leaves us in doubt. Also, in a comedic world everybody will get married at the end. The status quo will be maintained. And how at one point English novelists realised that it was hindering progress, that they weren't telling the stories of all the people that were not happy with how things were (women, working class, etc). Tragic plots, on the other hand, end with injustice, with a world that is not evil in intent but, even worse, indifferent, whatever we do has no effect in our future. A terrifying concept even nowadays for people who keep trying to create something out of chaos, give life some structure, give ourselves some measure of control.

I liked that it ended up with modern living writers, there's some people there I really want to check out, as well. show less

Another amazing lecture series from the Teaching Company. In this series, Professor Timothy Spurgin presents an overview of English literature from the 1600s to modern day. The course is divided into a series of 30 minute lectures with each lecture focusing on one or 2 authors. What I really enjoyed about this course is the context he provides for each author, describing not only their lives, but the events and concerns of the time. He makes very esoteric works much easier to understand and show more much less intimidating. There are a few authors that I had decided I probably would pass by, like D.H. Lawrence or James Joyce, but after hearing his enthusiasm about their novels, I'm ready to give them a shot. In face, after finishing this lecture series, I started reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and I'm really enjoying it - thanks to this course! One of the quotes that he mentions from Rushdie's Midnight's Children really sums up his philosophy on reading any piece of fiction - "To understand one life, you have to swallow the world." And to really understand any book, you have to know about the author's life and the world at that time. Professor Spurgin does a great job of giving you a taste for a wide selection of English classics. Great course! show less