The videos below are just a few of the American literature videos available, see all FOD American Literature videos. These videos discuss authors and their works and may also include some readings.
The ideas and ideals of three American Transcendentalists—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller—initially given expression through The Dial continue to shape the discourse of literature, philosophy, and religion worldwide.
Edgar Allan Poe was truest to his heart a poet. He has blessed American literature with some of the most striking and moving imagery ever created. His phrasing and lyricism have forever changed the landscape of poetic verse. Includes “The Conqueror Worm,” “To My Mother,” “Israfel,” “Annabel Lee,” “The City in the Sea,” “Eldorado,” “To Helen,” “The Haunted Palace,” “Evening Star,” and “The Raven.”
Blending daguerreotypes, paintings, manuscripts, excerpts from Dickinson’s letters, and readings from nearly a dozen of her poems, this program presents the biography of one of America’s most unique and influential voices in poetry.
Filmed on location in and around Concord, Cambridge, and Cape Cod, this delightful program brings Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and "Civil Disobedience" to life through the captivating delivery of Thoreau impersonator Jeffrey Hyatt. Long passages, as expressed by Hyatt, capture the energy and intensity of Thoreau’s words, while presenter James H. Bride II and Thoreau specialists Lawrence Buell, Robert Richardson, and Joel Myerson provide commentary on the works, Thoreau’s life, and the times in which he lived.
A collage of photos, paintings, and manuscripts accompanies excerpts of letters from Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as readings from sections of Leaves of Grass, such as “Song of Myself,” “I Sing the Body Electric,” and “Native Moments.”