Course Description and Objectives
This course is a study of selected movements and traditions (exclusive of United States and British literature) by major world writers. The readings include selections from some of the most important literary works written between Greek antiquity and the modern era, and may include works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Hebrew Bible, Homer's Iliad or Odyssey , Vergil's Aeneid, the New Testament, Augustine's Confessions, Dante's Divine Comedy, Petrarch's Canzoniere, Boccaccio's Decameron, the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, Cervantes's Don Quixote, Voltaire's Candide, and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. In addition to reading these works as guides for understanding what it means to be human, we will also use them to gain insight into some of the main historical periods and intellectual movements in Western European culture: classical antiquity, the rise of Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the birth of the modern age. We will also spend some time looking at selected works from cultures outside the Western tradition, such as the Bhagavad Gita and the poetry of Li Po.
This course satisfies General Education Goal 3: "An understanding of our cultural heritage as revealed in literature, its movements and traditions, through reading, understanding, analyzing, and writing about the major works that have shaped our thinking and provide a record of human experience." Upon completion of this course, students will : (1) Understand major movements, themes, and values in one or more cultures as revealed in literature, (2) Analyze literary texts as reflections of cultural movements, themes, and values, and (3) Develop and defend interpretations of literary texts through written discourse.