Eight Great Plays as Literature and as Philosophy
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
- 9 lectures, 18 hours
- Recorded in 1993
In this course, Dr. Leonard Peikoff selects eight great plays from Western literature to analyze. He examines the literary and philosophic qualities of each play and indicates how the drama concretizes certain ideas from a variety of philosophies. Peikoff masterfully situates each play in its historical period, both from the world events and philosophic context, as he discusses them. Peikoff builds the whole course around a demonstration of how to arrive at objective esthetic judgments about art.
Download the entire course (741 MB) to listen in the audio player of your choice—or listen online starting with Lecture One below. If listening to the course from this website, be sure to make a note of the current lecture and timestamp before leaving so that you can easily resume where you left off.
Lecture Guide
Summaries of the lecture content are provided below for your reference and convenience.
| Lecture 1 | This lecture is a discussion of Antigone by Sophocles. |
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| Lecture 2 | This lecture is a discussion of Othello by William Shakespeare. |
| Lecture 3 | This lecture is a discussion of Le Cid by Pierre Corneille. |
| Lecture 4 | This lecture is a discussion of Don Carlos by Friedrich Schiller. |
| Lecture 5 | This lecture is a discussion of An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen. |
| Lecture 6 | This lecture is a discussion of Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw. |
| Lecture 7 | This lecture is a discussion of Monna Vanna by Maurice Maeterlinck. |
| Lecture 8 | This lecture reviews the insights and lessons from the analysis of the first seven plays. Dr. Peikoff compares and contrasts the literary and philosophic quality of the plays and ranks them. |
| Lecture 9 | This lecture is a discussion of Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. |