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New York Public Library
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Free Seminars (5)
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An Introduction to Hebrew Manuscripts
From:
The New York Public Library
In this seminar, four experts introduce the physical and cultural characteristics of the Hebrew manuscript books of the Middle Ages and reflect on the kind of information that they reveal. Throughout the seminar, the scholars show how Hebrew manuscripts reflect regional variations in materials, culture and religious sensibility, and they consider how scribal practices and literary tastes evolved over the centuries as manuscripts were produced. They discuss many of the most notable and distinctive of these works, preserved in libraries and private collections around the world.
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Charles Dickens: The Life of the Author
From:
The New York Public Library
In this seminar, The New York Public Library's Kenneth Benson surveys the life and works of the most beloved author of the Victorian era. Readers will follow Dickens through his childhood, exploring how his writings were both influenced by and reflected his family history and the wider currents of Victorian society. Overcoming the hardships of his youth, he launched his literary career in the 1830s, and his rise was meteoric. This seminar traces the course of Dickens's ever-increasing fame, from the humorous hijinks of the early Pickwick Papers to the artistic mastery of the great novels of the 1850s and 60s.
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Heading West: Mapping the Territory 1540-1900
From:
The New York Public Library
In the mythology of the American frontier, it is usually the frontiersmen and heroic adventurers who get the glory. But the history of the American West is also the story of settlers, Native Americans, performers, fortune hunters, military men, bureaucrats and cartographers. This seminar looks at one of these groups--the mapmakers--who chronicled the country's relentless march westward and captured the lay of the land on paper.
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The Life and Works of Vladimir Nabokov
From:
The New York Public Library
Writing in three languages (French, Russian and English) and on three continents, Vladimir Nabokov enjoyed a career spanning more than fifty years. In this seminar, the director of The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Rodney Phillips, and writer Sarah Funke explore Nabokov's public life and career through his surviving manuscripts, notes, lectures and photographs. Based on selections from The New York Public Library's extensive Vladimir Nabokov Archive, this seminar examines Nabokov's early writings and influences; his experiences with book, magazines and journal publishing in both Europe and America; and his "other" careers as a teacher and a lepidopterist.
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When Is a Book Not a Book? Oliver Twist in Context
From:
The New York Public Library
One of the best-known novels of the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist" is still widely read by adults and schoolchildren alike, but few know its true origins. In this seminar, Robert L. Patten, professor of English at Rice University, describes the novel's genesis as a serial in the periodical "Bentley's Miscellany" and examines how serialization influenced its composition. Finally, Patten illuminates the position of "Oliver Twist" in Dickens's literary career and in "Bentley's Miscellany" itself, showing how the crusading narrative derived part of its meaning and shock value from its juxtaposition with the other, mostly light, humorous and resolutely nonpolitical articles published in the "Miscellany" at the time.
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