LibGuides: Renaissance World Literature: Media

Featured Authors & Their Works

Try these videos to get started. Must access on campus or login with your COM account for off campus access.

Want more on finding media? Try Articles & Media.

BBC Don Quixote: Legacy of a Classic This program weaves art, music, and literature with Western culture to explore the enormous impact of Cervantes’ classic on our world today. (58 minutes)
BBC Simon Schama's John Donne (57:56) For Columbia University’s Simon Schama, John Donne is the poet who transformed English verse through a raw emotional honesty coupled with a virtuosic skill with language. Drawing upon the observations of John Carey, literary critic and author of John Donne: Life, Mind, and Art, and insightful readings by actress Fiona Shaw, Schama undertakes a passionate appraisal of Donne’s work. Simon Schama’s John Donne vividly brings to life the brilliant and ambitious poet, his ardent writings, and his turbulent times. “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” “The Canonization,” “The Good-Morrow,” and “Holy Sonnet XIV” are given particular attention. A BBC Production. (58 minutes) A BBC Production.
BBC The Circles of Light: The Divine Comedy - Full Video (48:54) The most celebrated work of Dante Alighieri is certainly the Divina Commedia—a vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven that provides a strangely surrealistic view of medieval attitudes on religious dogma and the price of disobedience. In this program, dramatizations of scenes depicting courtly love, sexual love, love of God, and love of the Virgin Mary are featured.
Jonathan Swift and Gulliver’s Travels (01:31:11) With politics, religion, invention and the monarchy numbering amongst his targets, Jonathan Swift created a masterpiece that is a scathing satire on human nature. Visiting strange nations such as Lilliput and Brobdingnag, the program presents a fascinating study of the man, his life and works and the enduring effect he still has today as one of the world's foremost giants of literature.
Milton by Himself (27:08) This program examines the life and times of John Milton through his major and autobiographical writings. The visuals—period art and location photography of the London and Cambridge sites associated with Milton—combined with the music of the time and Milton’s own words, together trace the rise and fall of a tragic figure caught between the worlds of ancient glory and contemporary politics—a Renaissance man in the maelstrom of the Baroque.
Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince This program, made up of 26 one-to-five-minute segments, combines audio narration and simple animations to provide an easy-to-understand introduction to every chapter of Machiavelli’s controversial masterwork. (90 minutes)
PBS In Search of Shakespeare, with Michael Wood Series (4 part series) The details of William Shakespeare's life are often shrouded in obscurity. In this four-part series, Michael Wood takes the viewer on an adventurous journey through Elizabethan England as he uncovers the life story of the most iconic figure in literary history. Through a mixture of travel sequences, scholarly interviews, and re-created adventure, we see the Bard's life, set against the backdrop of his turbulent era of militarism, domestic surveillance, and foreign wars.

Featured Performances & Readings

Try these videos to get started. Must access on campus or login with your COM account for off campus access.

Want more on finding media? Try Articles & Media.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Young Actors in Training In the tyrannical court of Athens, the pitiless dictator Theseus plans his wedding to Hippolyta, a prisoner of war, and young Hermia is sentenced to death by her own father. Meanwhile, in the rickety township on the hillside, amateur theatre group the Mechanicals rehearse, with all their comic rivalries. And beyond Athens, in the wild wood, dark forces are stirring… Celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare, Russell T Davies’ full-blooded adaptation has more attitude and invention than anything that’s gone before. This is a production for everyone, brought to life by an award-winning cast of established stars and exciting newcomers. It’s a dream that will never be forgotten.
BBC Hamlet Starring David Tennant (03:02:26) Called “the greatest Hamlet of his generation” by Guardian reviewer Robert McCrum, Scottish actor David Tennant headlines this edgy film version of the acclaimed 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company stage production. Tennant is supported by a host of gifted players—including the impeccable Patrick Stewart as Claudius and Oliver Ford Davies in an astonishing performance as a doddering yet strangely leonine Polonius. Modern costumes, shrewd textual abridgements, and a recurring motif of high-tech video surveillance all connect the play to 21st-century anxieties, but these attributes in no way eclipse Tennant’s forceful mixture of rage, sorrow, and manic humor.
Doctor Faustus (5:15:32) his classic play is aimed at the student, teacher, lecturer and theater lover alike. Staged using professional actors and directors at London's award-winning Greenwich Theatre, “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus” was first published in 1604 by Christopher Marlowe. Having decided he has accumulated all he can of conventional knowledge, Doctor Faustus turns to magic in a quest for greater truths. Before long, he ends up selling his soul to the devil: the famous "Faustian pact" that's entered the language. Dr Faustus gradually realizes his terrible mistake.
The Jew of Malta (1:46:14) Masterfully filmed using detailed period costumes and professional performers, this pitch-black comedy from the satirical pen of Christopher Marlowe—the only film adaptation of Marlowe’s brilliant drama—depicts hypocritical Christians, bloodthirsty Muslims, and one murderous Jew at his stereotypical worst. How popular and influential was The Jew of Malta in its time? Shakespeare himself drew upon the play’s characters to create Shylock and Jessica for The Merchant of Venice and borrowed liberally from a balcony scene to write his own for Romeo and Juliet.
The Pilgrim's Progress (01:09:07) John Bunyan’s 1678 novel is one of the most famous Christian allegories even written. It describes one man’s journey from “The City of Destruction” to “Celestial City,” and the many adventures he has along the way. This 1979 adaptation stars Liam Neeson in his first major role.

More Media

In addition to streaming media, we have DVDs, images, audio and more media.

Hamlet Prince of Denmark, Hamlet, returns home to find his father murdered and his mother remarrying the murderer. Meanwhile, war is brewing.
Macbeth A thrilling interpretation of one of Shakespeare's most famous and compelling characters, Macbeth is a dramatic re-imagining of the realities of war-torn times and a tale of all-consuming passion and ambition.
Othello n this dramatization of William Shakespeare's tragedy a great man's vanity is manipulated by a jealous aide to bring about his downfall. Betrayal, deception and murder end the friendship between Othello and Iago and culminate in the tragic death of Desdemona.