REQUIRED TEXTS:

• The Literature of the Western World, Vol. 2, eds. Wilkie & Hurt (Prentice-Hall)
• Any hardcover collegiate dictionary
• A style/grammar handbook

This is the last segment of the three-part sequence of courses providing an overview of the Western tradition in literature from the beginnings (with the ancient Jews and Greeks) down to the present century. By "Western" is meant, roughly, European, along with those regions of the world colonized by Europeans, such as the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa. The period that we will be discussing, approximately the last three centuries, contains several highly complex cultural and historical movements. In the course of reading our literature selections, we will have to orient ourselves with respect to phenomena such as Rationalism and its Romantic counter-reaction; the growth of industrialism, capitalism, and colonialism; the birth of evolutionary theory, psychoanalysis, and modern physics; and the advent of radical political ideologies and, in the 20^th century, ideological wars. This is the historical background against which literary movements like Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism need to be examined. There are two broad goals to this course: first, to construct a historical understanding through literature of the Western culture that has shaped us, and second, to gain skill at reading diverse texts.

GRADING:

The main activities of this class will be reading, talking about reading, and writing about reading. The reading load itself is strenuous, sometimes 100 or more pages a week. In order to keep us on track, there will be frequent quizzes on the reading assignments, checking both for completeness and comprehension; these will not normally be announced. There will be a midterm exam testing you on recognition and understanding of passages from the assigned reading; the final exam will be the same, plus an essay. Finally, the time spent in class will be graded: all students are required to participate in the class discussions. Absences will count heavily against the participation grade, with six or more absences (after the first week) resulting in an F for participation. The course grade will be calculated as follows:
 

Quizzes........................	20%
Participation.................	20%
Midterm.......................	25%
Final............................	35%

 

Total......

100%

Typical Readings:

Moliere, Tartuffe
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Part IV
Voltaire, Candide
Pope, "An Essay on Man"
Rousseau, Confessions, Book 1
Goethe, Faust, Part I
Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Shelley, Frankenstein
Flaubert, "A Simple Heart"
Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch"
Ibsen, A Doll House
Baudelaire, poems
Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"
Kafka, "The Metamorphosis"
Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan
Wright, "Big Boy Leaves Home"
Camus, "The Adulterous Woman"
Borges, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and "The Circular Ruins"