George Orwell: A Sage for All Seasons

Overview

Course No. 2454
George Orwell’s official biographer walks you through the author’s life and times, and reveals the powerful lessons of Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and other enduring masterpieces.

George Orwell was more than just a writer. He was a political and social sage who valued, above all else, individual freedom. His works aren’t just entertainment—they’re cautionary tales and red flags of warning. And if we ever hope to understand threats to freedom and how to stop them, we must learn from them.

In these 24 lectures, learn how the man born as Eric Blair forged himself into a writer of international importance and renown. Mixing historical inquiry, literary analysis, and cultural biography, Professor Shelden gets at the truth of British life in the opening decades of the 20th century.

Video Lectures

1. The Real George Orwell (29 min)
   Begin with Orwell’s defining moment in May 1937 when he was almost killed by a bullet wound to the throat.
2. George Orwell, Child of the British Empire (26 min)
   Examine Orwell’s early life as the son of a man working in the empire’s Opium Department.
3. Orwell’s Edwardian Idyll (24 min)
   Discover how Orwell’s boyhood at Henley-on-Thames shaped his vision of what to preserve.
4. Orwell’s Unsentimental Education (27 min)
   Focus on Orwell’s essay about his years at St. Cyprian’s boarding school.
5. Orwell, Eton, and Privilege (25 min)
   Explore Orwell’s years as a King’s Scholar at Eton and his intellectual awakening.
6. Orwell the Policeman (24 min)
   Learn about Orwell’s colonial career with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma.
7. Orwell and the Imperial Burden (25 min)
   Discover how Orwell developed his insight about imperialism enslaving both subjects and masters.
8. Orwell’s Lost Generation (24 min)
   Follow Orwell to Paris and his immersion in the avant-garde literary world.
9. Orwell, Poet of Poverty (24 min)
   Examine how Down and Out in Paris and London transformed Orwell into a champion of the oppressed.
10. Orwell and the Battle of Fact and Fiction (25 min)
    Uncover Orwell’s struggle to find his voice in novels like Burmese Days.
11. Orwell and England in the 1930s (26 min)
    Explore two works shaped by Orwell’s experiences in 1930s England.
12. Orwell and the Left (26 min)
    Discover Orwell’s struggle to reconcile the demands of the Left with his hopes for freedom.
13. Orwell and the Spanish Crucible (26 min)
    Follow Orwell as he becomes a fighter against Franco’s forces in Spain.
14. Totalitarianism and Lessons of Barcelona (25 min)
    Learn how Orwell’s experience in Spain became a painful lesson in ideological purges.
15. Orwell and the Last Days of Peace (26 min)
    Focus on Homage to Catalonia, Orwell’s first real masterpiece.
16. Orwell at the Outbreak of World War (27 min)
    Examine Coming Up for Air, Orwell’s farewell to his pre-war innocence.
17. Orwell and the Art of Propaganda (26 min)
    Analyze The Lion and the Unicorn and Orwell’s BBC career.
18. Orwell and the Cultural Underground (26 min)
    Unpack Orwell’s essays and reviews from the war years.
19. Orwell and the Fight for Animal Farm (27 min)
    Place Animal Farm in the context of Orwell’s beliefs and fears.
20. Orwell’s Wife and the Life of Writing (26 min)
    Consider Eileen’s influence on Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
21. Politics and the English Language (28 min)
    Study Orwell’s important postwar essays on language corruption.
22. Orwell’s Island Escape (26 min)
    Explore how Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four on the remote island of Jura.
23. 1984: Big Brother and the Thought Police (28 min)
    Immerse yourself in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
24. Orwell’s Long Farewell (26 min)
    Conclude with Orwell’s last years, marriage, and death from tuberculosis.