The Oddest Voices: The Great Literary Innovators | Richard Braithwaite

Bloom wrote that the first thing in a great writer is the oddness of the work. This course considers Melville, Dickens, Whitman, Dostoyevsky, Dickinson, and Ibsen/ Strindberg, examining selected passages from their works and comparing them with works by more conventional writers. The basic inquiry is simple: what is genius?

Richard Braithwaite is a novelist, lecturer, and teacher. His AB (Dartmouth) and his MFA (Florida) are in literature and fiction writing. He has led more than a dozen courses at The Learning Center.