Classic Literature
A new book envisions an encounter of minds between the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, the physicist Werner Heisenberg, and the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Six authors, six monumental legacies, and a unique thread connecting them: a solitary novel that shines brightly.
The author of Frankenstein had an obsession with the cemetery and saw love and death as connected.
Voyage into the lawless world of experimental literature.
These initially sympathetic characters take readers down a dark path.
Great writing can unveil the criminal psyche better than any other artistic medium.
Aiming to unlock the secrets of his unconscious mind, Jung experimented with intensive daydreaming.
Ignoring the legacy of William Shakespeare is difficult for any writer, let alone one as quintessentially English as “Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien.
When done right, dark humor can help us face inconvenient truths and question stifling social conventions.
Dante’s epic journey through hell and heaven reveal how the poet felt about his own country.
You become the main protagonist in these novels.
The crisis of the Anthropocene challenges our traditional narratives and myths about humanity’s place in the world. Citizen science can help.
Take a closer look before judging a book by its title.
An insect? A vermin? An unwanted animal? What in the world is Franz Kafka talking about?
Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.
Bram Stoker’s mother survived a terrible cholera outbreak and recounted the ghastly scenes to her son years later.
For the clarity of a “beginner’s mind” and a path to true and lasting wisdom, one must fully embrace “not-knowing.”
From forgotten Hollywood movies to Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” science fiction illustrates some of our deepest fears about technology.
Soviet censorship was thorough yet fallible.
500 sheep were slaughtered to produce the 2,060 pages of the “Codex Amiatinus,” a Latin translation of the Bible.
You can learn a lot about life through literature’s most unrespectable and heinous characters.
Forgetting and misremembering are the building blocks of creativity and imagination.
Reading classic books can inform you as much about the present as the past.
Not every classic enjoyed rave reviews from the start.
Some authors never saw their books score widespread acclaim—or even get published at all.
Though Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” is a classic military treatise, its advice applies to all manner of conflict.
Try writing a novel without using the letter “e.”
Monsters have always represented societal fears, but narrative art also casts doubt on whether we fully understand our monsters — and their slayers.
Some classic books, like Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” remain controversial to this day.