Free Online Literature Courses

Get free Literature courses online from the world’s leading universities. You can download these audio & video courses straight to your computer or mp3 player. For more online courses, visit our complete collection, 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.

• American Literature I: Beginnings to Civil War – Free Online Video – Cyrus Patell, NYU
• American Passages: A Literary Survey – Free Online Video – Multiple profs, Annenberg Learner
• Approaching Shakespeare – Free iTunes Audio – Free Online Audio – Emma Smith, Oxford
• British and American Poetry: 1900 to the Present – Free Online Audio – Charles Altieri, UC Berkeley
• Chaucer – iTunes Audio – Princeton, John Fleming
• Cervantes’ Don Quixote – Free Online Video + Course Info – Roberto González Echevarría, Yale
• Contemporary Literature – Free Online Video – Free Video Download – Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan, IIT Madras
• Creative Reading – Free Online Audio – William S. Burroughs, Naropa University
• Creative Writing: A Master Class – Free iTunes Video – Alison Ersheid
• Cultural Studies – Free Online Video – Free Video Download – Liza Das, IIT Guwahati
• Dante’s Divine Comedy – Free Online Video – Teodolinda Barolini, Columbia University
• Dante in Translation – Free Online Course – Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale
• Darwin and Design – Free Online Video & Course Info – James Paradis, MIT
• D.H. Lawrence – Free Online Video & Audio – Catherine Brown, Oxford
• Dracula (by Bram Stoker) – Free iTunes Video/Audio – Free Online Video – Mythgard Academy
• Dune (Novel by Frank Herbert) – Free Online Video/Audio + Lecture Slides – iTunes Video – Corey Olson, Mythgard Academy
• Epics of Rome – Free iTunes Video – Rhiannon Evans, LaTrobe University-Australia
• Existentialism in Literature & Film – Free Online Audio – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
• Expansive Poetics – Free Online Audio – Allen Ginsberg, Naropa University
• Faeirie and Fantasy – Free Online Video & Audio – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• Fiction for Young Adults – Free iTunes Audio – David Beagley, La Trobe University – Austrialia
• From Gods and Back – Free Online Audio – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
• Genres in Children’s Literature – Free iTunes Audio – David Beagley, La Trobe University – Austrialia
• George Eliot – Free Online Audio – Catherine Brown, Oxford
• Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner – Free Online Video – Course Materials – Wai Chee Dimock, Yale
• History of Children’s Literature – Free iTunes Audio – David Beagley, La Trobe University – Australia
• Holocaust in Film and Literature – Free Online Video – Todd Presner, UCLA
• History of Poetry – Free Online Audio – Allen Ginsberg, Naropa
• How Stories Seduce Us – Free Online Video – Stanley Fish, NYU
• Introduction to Literature and the Environment – Free Online Video – Ken Hiltner, Princeton
• Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature and Culture – Free Online Audio – John Wallace, UC Berkeley
• Introduction to Poetry – Free iTunes Video – Lanette Cadle, Missouri State
• Introduction to Pre-Modern Japanese Literature and Culture – Free Online Audio – John Wallace, UC Berkeley
• Introduction to Theory of Literature – Free Online Course – Paul H. Fry, Yale
• Invitation to World Literature – Free Online Video – David Damrosch, Harvard
• Jack Kerouac – Free Online Audio Part 1 and Part 2 – Allen Ginsberg, Naropa University
• Latin American History through the Novel – Free Online Video – Lois Zamora, University of Houston
• La Préparation du roman, in French (1978-80) – Free Online Audio – Roland Barthes, Collège de France
• Literary History of the Beats – Free Online Audio – Naropa University, Allen Ginsberg
• Literature and Form – Free Online Video & Audio – Free iTunes Video – Free iTunes Audio – Catherine Brown, Oxford
• Literature and Psychoanalysis – Free Online Audio – John Fletcher, University of Warwick
• Milton – Free Online Video – Free iTunes Video – Course Materials – John Rogers, Yale
• Lord of the Rings I: The Road Goes Ever On – Free iTunes Video & Audio – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• Lord of the Rings II: The Two Towers – Free Tunes Video & Audio – Free Online Video & Audio – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• Lord of the Rings III: Return of the King – Free iTunes Video & Audio – Free Online Video & Audio – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• Modern & Contemporary American Poetry – Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) – University of Pennsylvania
• Modern Poetry – Free Online Video – Course Materials – Langdon Hammer, Yale
• Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre – Free iTunes Audio – Free Online Audio – Multiple profs, Oxford
• Old English in Context – Free Online Audio – Stuart Lee, Oxford University
• Oscar Wilde – Free Online Audio – Sos Eltis, Oxford
• Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction – Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) – University of Virginia
• Post Colonial Literature for Children – Free iTunes Audio – David Beagley, La Trobe University – Australia
• Restoration and 18th Century Poetry: From Dryden to Wordsworth – Free Online Audio – William Flesch, Brandeis
• Rhetoric – Free Online Video – Stanley Fish, Cardozo School of Law
• Romanticism – Free iTunes Audio – Timothy Morton, UC Davis
• Science Fiction and Politics – Free iTunes Audio – Courtney Brown, Emory University
• Shakespeare – Free Online Audio – Charles Altieri, UC Berkeley
• Shakespeare After All: The Later Plays – Free Online Video – Marjorie Garber, Harvard
• Shakespeare’s Principal Plays – Free iTunes Audio – Free Online Audio – Ralph Williams, University of Michigan
• Spenser and Milton – Free Online Audio – William Flesch, Brandeis
• Survey of Shakespeare’s Plays – Free Online Audio – William Flesch, Brandeis
• The American Novel Since 1945 – Free Online Course – Amy Hungerford, Yale
• The Bible and English Literature – Free Online Video (+ More Background) – Northrop Frye, U. of Toronto
• The Heroic Quest – Free Online Video – Free iTunes Video – Joseph Hughes, Missouri State
• The Hobbit – Free iTunes Video – Free Online Audio – More – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• The Literature of Crisis – Free  iTunes Audio – Marsh McCall & Martin Evans, Stanford
• The Lost Road (Tolkien) – Free Online Video – Mythgard Institute
• The Princess Bride – Free iTunes Audio + Video – Free Online Audio & Video – Free Online Video – Mythgard Institute
• The Shaping of Middle Earth – Free iTunes Audio & Video – Free Online Video – Mythgard Institute
• The Silmarillion Seminar – Free Online Video & Audio – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• The Tempest – Free Online Audio – Allen Ginsberg, Naropa University
• The Western Canon: From Homer to Milton – Free Online Audio – William Flesch, Brandeis
• This Craft of Verse: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures – Free Online Audio – Jorge Luis Borges, Harvard
• Tolkien – Free iTunes Audio – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• Tolkien’s The Book of Lost Tales: Part 1 – Free Online Video/Audio + Course Slides – Free iTunes Video – Corey Olsen, Mythgard Academy
• Tolkien’s The Book of Lost Tales: Part 2 – Free Online Video/Audio + Course Slides – Free iTunes Video – Corey Olsen, Mythgard Academy
• Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth – Free Online Video/Audio + Lecture Slides – Free iTunes Video – Corey Olsen, Mythgard Academy
• Undergraduate Tolkien Survey – Free Online Video & Audio – Corey Olsen, Washington College
• Virgil’s Aeneid: Anatomy of a Classic – Free iTunes Audio – Susanna Braund, Stanford
• Voices & Visions: The Lives & Works of 13 American Poets – Free Online Video – Annenberg Media
• Watership Down – Free Online Video/Audio + Lecture Slides – Free iTunes Video – Corey Olsen, Mythgard Academy
• Writing Sources – Free Online Audio – William S. Burroughs, Naropa University

Bookmark our collection of free online courses in Literature.

For a complete list of online courses, please visit our complete collection, 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.

For a list of online certificate programs, visit 200 Online Certificate & Microcredential Programs from Leading Universities & Companies, which features programs from our partners Coursera, Udacity, FutureLearn and edX.

And if you’re interested in Online Mini-Masters and Master’s Degrees programs from universities, see our collection: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Masters, Mini Masters, Bachelors & Mini Bachelors from Top Universities.