Summer 2005
E s316K • Masterworks of Literature: World
| Unique | Days | Time | Location | Instructor |
| 83965 |
MTWThF |
8:30 AM-10:00 AM |
PAR 105 |
ROSSMAN |
Course Description
Our reading list is an eclectic, but not random, group of classics of world literature. They include two works from Europe and one each from modern Africa, North America, and India. The books have been chosen both because they represent periods of great literary flowering: ancient Greece, 19th-century Europe, and the modern period, and because each work occupies an important place in its national literature. Our reading covers three major literary genres: epic, poetry, and the novel.
Because each work marks a significant state of human consciousness or embodies values characteristic of a particular time and place, we will approach the books via their literary and historical contexts. Having adduced these contexts, we will then explore the books themselves. Most of our class time will be devoted to a close, detailed reading of our texts.
Some class time will consist of lectures by the instructor, but most of our class hours will be devoted to close reading of the assigned texts. You should therefore come to class well prepared in the assigned readings. Only then will you be able to follow the lectures with profit and to prepare for the pop quizzes that will partly determine your grade. Only then will you be able to ask informed questions and participate in discussions.
Grading Policy
Brief pop quizzes 30%--no make-ups of missed quizzes
Mid-term exam 30%
Final exam 40%
These figures may be adjusted to take into account a student's performance in daily classroom discussion. Exceptionally poor or weak daily performance can affect the course grade by a full letter. Attendance is presumed. Frequent absences will hurt your grade, and no one with more than five absences will be given a passing grade.
Texts
Homer, The Odyssey (Fitzgerald translatin)
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Lowell Blair translation)
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Selections from Wordsworth and Dante to be distributed in class
