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ENG 512: Studies in Literature,
examines the way in which literary themes, techniques, and practices
develop through the ages. We will pursue this by reading one of the
oldest and most famous texts in the Western canon, Homer's Odyssey,
which permanently branded in the Western mind both the theme of the
quest and the character of Odysseus himself: the man of many trials,
the
brilliant tactician, the tormented wanderer, the braggart, the
raconteur, the trickster, the survivor, and perhaps the first great
hero of the practical intellect.
We will follow this by reading other works from the Renaissance to our
own day, all of which borrow and rework themes from Homer's great tale.
We pick up the thread with Shakespeare's uncharacteristically cynical
play Troilus and Cressida, in which the Homeric
heroes appear often as brainless thugs. Two poems, one from the
Middle Ages and one from the Victorian era, continue our exploration of
the character of Odysseus himself. Dante, in 1300, places the Greek wanderer
firmly in Hell in The Inferno,
while Tennyson in the 1800s exalts himself as a symbol of the
unconquerable human will.
The works of the second half of the course are all written in our (at
least, my) own lifetime. These include Derek Walcott's reworking of The
Odyssey for the stage, blending his Caribbean background with
the Greek myth; Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel, Cold
Mountain; Louise Glück's austere verse dissection of
a
dissolving marriage in Meadowlands; and, to
conclude our journey, Margaret Atwood's brilliant,
provocative feminist masterpiece, The Penelopiad,
told by Odysseus' long-suffering and disillusioned wife.
With each work, we will examine how the writers borrowed, adapted,
reworked, transmuted, and subverted Homer's epic. We will trace the
cultural underpinnings and assumptions structuring each work, as well
as the implict values each illumines. The goal will be not merely an
understanding of a central Western myth but a more sophisticated grasp
of how literary works send out their seeds to grow in new soils and
epochs.
A further goal of the course entails taking part in the scholarly
conversation of literary studies. We
will look at secondary sources - literary criticism and scholarship -
as well as the primary texts, to see how scholars develop their shared
knowledge of the field. This aspect of the course will culminate in
your own
contribution to the scholarly discussion: a final paper, over any of
the works discussed in class, in which you develop and present your own
critical insight in the light of other critics' works.
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