Literary Criticism audiobooks

Life in Culture

By: Lionel Trilling

Narrated by: Paul Heitsch

Length: 17 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

In the mid-twentieth century, Lionel Trilling was America's most respected literary critic. His powerful and subtle essays inspired readers to think about how literature shapes our politics, our culture, and our selves. His 1950 collection, The Liberal Imagination, sold more than 100,000 copies, epitomizing a time that has been called the age of... Read more

Cuba on the Verge

By: Leila Guerriero

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo & Lorenzo Irizarry

Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Spanning politics and art, music and baseball, Cuba on the Verge is a timely look at a society’s profound transformation—from inside and out.Change looms in Cuba.Just ninety miles from United States shores yet inaccessible to most Americans until recently, Cuba fascinates as much as it confounds. Images of the Buena Vista Social Club, wild... Read more

Bookends

By: Michael Chabon

Narrated by: Michael Chabon & George Newbern

Length: 4 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

A brilliant, idiosyncratic collection of introductions and afterwords (plus some liner notes) by New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon—“one of contemporary literature’s most gifted prose stylists” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times).In Bookends, Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon offers a... Read more

Macbeth

By: Harold Bloom

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 2 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

From the ambitious and mad titular character to his devilish wife Lady Macbeth to the moral and noble Banquo to the mysterious Three Witches, Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read, performed in innovative productions set in a vast array of times and locations, from Nazi... Read more

Iago

By: Harold Bloom

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 3 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

In all of literature, few antagonists have displayed the ruthless cunning and unscrupulous deceit of Iago, the antagonist to Othello. Often described as Machiavellian, Iago is a fascinating psychological specimen: at once a shrewd expert of the human mind and yet, himself a deeply troubled man.



One of Shakespeare's most provocative and culturally... Read more

Lear

By: Harold Bloom

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 3 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

King Lear is perhaps the most poignant character in literature. The aged, abused monarch is at once the consummate figure of authority and the classic example of the fall from majesty. He is widely agreed to be William Shakespeare's most moving, tragic hero.



Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Lear with wisdom,... Read more

Falstaff

By: Harold Bloom

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 3 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays: Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads, him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him—some innocent, some cruel. Falstaff can be lewd,... Read more

Cleopatra

By: Harold Bloom

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 3 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history—and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. She is the lover of Marc Antony, defender of Egypt, and, perhaps most enduringly, a champion of life. Cleopatra is supremely vexing, tragic, and complex. She has fascinated readers and audiences for centuries... Read more

The Gatsby Affair

By: Kendall Taylor

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

In The Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal That Shaped an American Classic, Kendall Taylor examines the dalliance between the southern belle and the French pilot from a fresh perspective. Drawing on conversations and correspondence with Jozan's daughter, as well as materials from the Jozan family archives, Taylor sheds new light on... Read more

Slim

By: Diego Enrique Osorno

Narrated by: Mauricio Pérez Castillo & Diego Enrique Osorno

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

¿Puede uno de los hombres más ricos del mundo ser una buena persona? «La biografía más completa de Carlos Slim hasta la fecha. Osorno narra también partes desconocidas de la historia familiar del magnate: el hambre de éxito del multimillonario no muestra signos de disminuir con la edad» The Guardian «Un recorrido analítico por distintas etapas... Read more

Goethe

By: Rüdiger Safranksi

Narrated by: James Anderson Foster

Length: 24 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

This sterling biography of Germany's greatest writer presents Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as if we are seeing him for the first time.



The work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has reverberated through two and a half centuries, altering the course of literature in ways both grand and intimate. No other writer so completely captivated the intellectual... Read more

Shakespeare and the Afterlife

By: John S. Garrison

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

Length: 6 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

The question of what happens after death was a vital one in Shakespeare's time, as it is today. And, like today, the answers were by no means universally agreed upon. Early moderns held surprisingly diverse beliefs about the afterlife and about how earthly life affected one's fate after death. Was death akin to a sleep where one did not wake... Read more

The Great American Read: The Book of Books

By: PBS

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 10 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

A blockbuster illustrated book that captures what Americans love to read, The Great American Read: The Book of Books is the gorgeously-produced companion book to PBS's ambitious summer 2018 series.
What are America's best-loved novels? PBS will launch The Great American Read series with a 2-hour special in May 2018 revealing America's 100... Read more

The Poetic Edda

By: Jackson Crawford

Narrated by: Jackson Crawford

Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

“The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a Modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!) and well worth the wait. These amazing texts from a thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance, containing the lion’s share of... Read more

The Saga of the Volsungs

By: Jackson Crawford

Narrated by: Jackson Crawford

Length: 4 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

From the translator of the bestselling Poetic Edda comes a gripping new rendering of two of the greatest sagas of Old Norse literature. Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members—including, among others, the dragon slayer... Read more

L.E.L.

By: Lucasta Miller

Narrated by: Elizabeth Jasicki

Length: 14 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

A lost nineteenth-century literary life, brilliantly rediscovered--Letitia Elizabeth Landon, hailed as the female Byron; she changed English poetry; her novels, short stories, and criticism, like Byron though in a woman's voice, explored the dark side of sexuality--by the acclaimed author of The Brontë Myth ("wonderfully entertaining . . .... Read more

Gift of Dane - Volume One

By: David C. Baxter

Narrated by: Jeffrey James Fulton

Length: 2 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Dane and his friends use to live on a quiet, suburban street until a storm rolled in, and they learned their neighbor was a mad scientist. The portal in his lab has chosen them. Now an insane, rogue commander and otherworldly creatures are after them and what is on the other side of the portal. Read more

Comparative Literature

By: Ben Hutchinson

Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell

Length: 4 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

From colonial empire-building in the nineteenth century to the postcolonial culture wars of the twenty-first century, attempts at "comparison" have defined the international agenda of literature. But what is comparative literature? Ambitious readers looking to stretch themselves are usually intrigued by the concept, but uncertain of its... Read more

The Reading Life

By: C. S. Lewis

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 2 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

The revered teacher and bestselling author reflects on the power, importance, and joy of a life dedicated to reading books in this delightful collection drawn from his wide body of writings.More than fifty years after his death, revered intellectual and teacher C. S. Lewis continues to speak to readers, thanks not only to his intellectual... Read more

The Landscapes of Anne of Green Gables

By: Catherine Reid

Narrated by: Xe Sands

Length: 2 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

The Landscapes of Anne of Green Gables explores L. M. Montgomery's deep connection to the landscapes of Prince Edward Island that inspired her to write the beloved Anne of Green Gables series. From the Lake of Shining Waters and the Haunted Wood to Lover's Lane, you'll be immersed in the real places immortalized in the novels. Using Montgomery's... Read more

If

By: Christopher Benfey

Narrated by: Joshua Kane

Length: 7 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

A New York Times Notable Book of 2019

A unique exploration of the life and work of Rudyard Kipling in Gilded Age America, from a celebrated scholar of American literature

At the turn of the twentieth century, Rudyard Kipling towered over not just English literature but the entire literary world. At the height of his fame in 1907, he was awarded... Read more

On Reading Well

By: Karen Swallow Prior

Narrated by: Lisa Larsen

Length: 8 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue. Great literature increases knowledge of and desire for the good life by showing readers what virtue looks like and where vice leads. It is not just what one reads but how one reads that cultivates virtue. Reading good literature well requires one to practice numerous virtues, such... Read more

The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh

By: Kathryn Aalto

Narrated by: Corrie James

Length: 4 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Loved Goodbye Christopher Robin? Learn more about the real place that inspired the beloved stories.



Delve into the home of the world's most beloved bear! The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh explores the magical landscapes where Pooh, Christopher Robin, and their friends live and play. The Hundred Acre Wood—the setting for Winnie-the-Pooh's... Read more

Semicolon

By: Cecelia Watson

Narrated by: Pam Ward

Length: 3 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

A page-turning, existential romp through the life and times of the world’s most polarizing punctuation mark

The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson... Read more