Category: Audio / Video

Audio and video resources, including recitations, dramatizations, music, video tours, and more, about or related to classic literature.

Major General’s Song — Gilbert and Sullivan

In “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” from The Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert and Sullivan’s character introduces himself by presenting an absurdly detailed résumé in the musical form of a “patter...

Hero's Journey - Esbjorn Jorsater

The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is a classic story structure in which someone — often an unlikely hero — is called to adventure. Through the help of a mentor, he/she crosses to a challenging and unfamiliar...

How to Make a Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype, an early photographic process, was invented by French artist and photographer Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. Introduced in 1830, it was the first publicly available photographic process but was superseded by less complicated processes in...

Hermitage Video Tour

Gary Bembridge offers a short video tour of the beautiful Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums in the world,...

Fitzgerald Audio Recordings

F. Scott Fitzgerald Audio Recordings Listen to these 1940s recordings of F. Scott Fitzgerald reading and reciting famous literature — he has a magnificent, magical voice that seems to give insight into his works...

Richard Austin recites Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry all over the world.

Richard Austin Recites Hopkins’ Poetry

Richard Austin Recites Hopkins’ Poetry Richard Austin grew up in the same corner of England as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Thus blessed with the correct native accent, he now recites Hopkins’ poetry all over the...

Dr. Mahfood Dante Videos Index

Dr. Sebastian Mahfood has kindly shared these Dante videos with us: he has made a short video reflection on each canto of Dante’s Inferno. We hope you find these helpful in your studies. If...

Statue of Julius Caeser in Rome, Italy

Julius Caesar Video Resources

Shakespeare was, of course, a master of the written word.It’s precisely because of this, though, that people forget that much of his work was originally meant to be performed, not merely read. Sometimes it...

The Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater

Heart of Darkness Opera

Heart of Darkness Opera Composer Tarik O’Regan has written a chamber opera based on Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness. Here is a video interview in which the composer discusses the process of creating...

White Heron

“A White Heron” Audio

Listen to “A White Heron” “A White Heron,” an 1886 short story by American author Sarah Orne Jewett, features Sylvia, a young girl who comes from a big city to live in the country...

Edgar Allen Poe

The Purloined Letter Dramatized

Although suspenseful music accompanies this 1952 dramatization, “The Purloined Letter” by American author Edgar Allan Poe lacks the element of horror found in most of Poe’s other short stories. Instead, this is one of...

Bust of Guy de Maupassant

“The Diamond Necklace” Audio

“The Diamond Necklace” (La Parure) is a short story by French author Guy de Maupassant, considered a master of the form.  A 19th-century Naturalist author, de Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and...

Madrigal music was popular in the Renaissance.

The Nightingale English Madrigal

The madrigal, a polyphonic musical composition usually sung a capella, was a type of secular Renaissance music that would have been familiar to writers such as Edmund Spenser. Madrigals usually feature the words of...