{"id":35072,"date":"2026-04-01T10:21:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T15:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=35072"},"modified":"2026-04-01T10:25:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T15:25:51","slug":"on-great-authors-of-the-western-literary-tradition-part-iv-with-professor-ronald-g-herzman-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/01\/on-great-authors-of-the-western-literary-tradition-part-iv-with-professor-ronald-g-herzman-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"On <i>Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition Part IV<\/i> with Professor Ronald G. Herzman (2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/greatauthorsofthewesternliterarytraditionpartiv.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">This particular set, six discs in a single binder and with a single professor, from the much larger series that I bought <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2024\/04\/28\/good-book-hunting-april-27-2024-friends-of-the-springfield-greene-county-library-book-sale\/\" target=\"_new\">in 2024<\/a>.  I am writing the reports on this particular course as I go because the whole series is 7 binders, 42 CDs, and 84 lectures in total&#8211;it might take me eight months or more to get through them.<\/p>\n<p>This set is taught by Professor Ronald Herzman and is subtitled &#8220;Literature of the Renaissance&#8221;.  Of course, those of us in the know will tell you that the dates of &#8220;the Renaissance&#8221; differ based on geography; the Italian Renaissance, for example, was far earlier than the English Renaissance.  So this set of lectures would cover a broad swath indeed<\/p>\n<p>Individual lectures include:<\/p>\n<ol start=\"37\">\n<li>Christine de Pizan<\/li>\n<li>Erasmus<\/li>\n<li>Thomas More<\/li>\n<li>Michel de Montaigne<\/li>\n<li>Fran\u00e7ois Rabelais<\/li>\n<li>Christopher Marlowe<\/li>\n<li>William Shakespeare &#8212; <em>The Merchant of Venice<\/em><\/li>\n<li>William Shakespeare &#8212; <em>Hamlet<\/em><\/em><\/li>\n<li>Lope de Vega<\/li>\n<li>Miguel de Cervantes<\/li>\n<li>John Milton<\/li>\n<li>Blaise Pascal<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>It started out with a lecture on an obscure author, a woman who wrote a book about women who is unknown today unless you&#8217;re in the academy&#8211;and by &#8220;today,&#8221; I guess I mean the end of the 20th century.  Hell&#8217;s bells, but the youth of today might not know any of them except maybe Shakespeare.  And maybe I was a little deeper into books than most, even amongst my cohorts at the university.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, I&#8217;ve got many of these authors in Classics Club editions, including the Montaigne I started reading <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/03\/this-montaigne-is-aging-nicely\/\" target=\"_new\">in 2017<\/a> (and have since re-shelved).  As you might know, gentle reader, I am working through the complete works of Shakespeare in a multi-decade (probably) project (most recently <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/27\/35050\/\" target=\"_new\">A Midsummer Night&#8217;s Dream<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>So: It made me want to delve into the works I&#8217;m not currently reading, so it&#8217;s got that going for it.  Unfortunately, they will wash over me during the remaining lectures so that the feeling will pass.  Hopefully, I won&#8217;t rush out to buy anything which will hold down my chair side table for years (I bought <em>Pamela<\/em> after hearing <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/22\/on-the-english-novel-by-timothy-spurgin-2006\/\" target=\"_new\">The English Novel<\/a><\/em> in 2020, and I probably started it not long after&#8211;which makes me glad I did not run out and buy <em>Tom Jones<\/em>, too).<\/p>\n<p>So I am on the downhill slide on these lectures; only three more binders, 36 lectures to go.  And, looking ahead (or at least to the next set, &#8220;Neoclassic Literature of the 17th Century&#8221;), I have to think that the further into the more recent past we go, the less I&#8217;ll be inspired to read the authors.  If the book makes it into the 20th century, that&#8217;s likely true.  But I will still get something out of it, even if I don&#8217;t remember it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This particular set, six discs in a single binder and with a single professor, from the much larger series that I bought in 2024. I am writing the reports on this particular course as I go because the whole series is 7 binders, 42 CDs, and 84 lectures in total&#8211;it might take me eight months [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-courses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35072"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35074,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35072\/revisions\/35074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}