Close study of a limited group of writers. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Willa Cather. Topic for Spring: Oscar Wilde and the 90s. From Course Home Page: This seminar provides intensive study of texts by two American authors (Herman Melville, 1819-1891, and Toni Morrison, 1931-) who, using lyrical, radically innovative prose, explore in different ways epic notions of American identity. Focusing on Melville's Typee (1846), Moby-Dick (1851), and The Confidence-Man (1857) and Morrison's Sula (1973), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), and Paradise (1998), the class will address their common concerns with issues of gender, race, language, and nationhood. Be prepared to read deeply (i.e. a small number of texts with considerable care), to draw on a variety of sources in different media, and to employ them in creative research, writing, and multimedia projects.

Close study of a limited group of writers. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Willa Cather. Topic for Spring: Oscar Wilde and the 90s. At this distance Oscar Wilde seems not only to be on the threshold between centuries and between cultural-systems: in many ways he seems to be the threshold. His aesthetics look backwards to the aestheticism of Pater and the moral sensibility of Ruskin, and they look forward to Modernism. His antecedents are 18th century playwrights, and he opened a path of irony and structural self-reflexivity that leads to Beckett and Tom Stoppard. He was Irish but achieved his great successes in England. Arguably, his greatest success was his greatest public failure: in his scandalous trials he shaped 20th century attitudes toward homosexuality and toward theatricality and toward performativity. His greatest performance was the role of "Oscar Wilde": in that sense he taught the 20th century how to be itself.

Subject studies important examples of the literary form that, between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century, became an indispensable instrument for representing modern life, in the hands of such writers as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Austen, Scott, Dickens, the Bront%s, Eliot, Hardy, and Conrad. The class alternates between eighteenth and nineteenth century topics, and may be repeated for credit with instructor's permission.

This subject traces the history of the European novel by studying texts that have been influential in connection with two interrelated ideas. 1) When serious fiction deals with matters of great consequence, it should not deal with the actions of persons of consequence--kings, princes, high elected officials and the like--but rather with the lives of apparently ordinary people and the everyday details of their social ambitions and desires. To use a phrase of Balzac's, serious fiction deals with "what happens everywhere". 2) This idea sometimes goes with another: that the most significant representations of the human condition are those dealing with persons who try to compel society to accept them as its destined agent, despite their absence of high birth or inheritance.

Intensive close study and analysis of historically significant media "texts" that have been considered landmarks or have sustained extensive critical and scholarly discussion. Such texts may include oral epic, story cycles, plays, novels, films, opera, television drama and digital works. Emphasizes close reading from a variety of contextual and aesthetic perspectives. Syllabus varies each year, and may be organized around works that have launched new modes and genres, works that reflect upon their own media practices, or on stories that migrate from one medium to another. At least one of the assigned texts are collaboratively taught, and visiting lectures and discussions are a regular feature of the subject.

Emphasis on the analytical reading of lyric poetry in England and the United States. Syllabus usually includes Shakespeare's sonnets, Donne, Keats, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, Marianne Moore, Lowell, Rich, and Bishop. This subject is an introduction to poetry as a genre; most of our texts are originally written in English. We read poems from the Renaissance through the 17th and 18th centuries, Romanticism, and Modernism. Focus will be on analytic reading, on literary history, and on the development of the genre and its forms; in writing we attend to techniques of persuasion and of honest evidenced sequential argumentation. Poets to be read will include William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, William Wordsworth, John Keats, T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and some contemporary writers.

Close study of a limited group of writers. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Willa Cather. Topic for Spring: Oscar Wilde and the 90s.

Examines cultural developments within European literature from different societies at different time-periods throughout the Middle Ages (500-1500). Considers--from a variety of political, historical, and anthropological perspectives--the growth of institutions (civic, religious, educational, and economic) which shaped the personal experiences of individuals in ways that remain quite distinct from those of modern Western societies. Texts mostly taught in translation. Topics vary and include: Courtly Literature of the High and Late Middle Ages, Medieval Women Writers, Chaucer and the 14th Century, and the Crusades.

Examines cultural developments within European literature from different societies at different time-periods throughout the Middle Ages (500-1500). Considers--from a variety of political, historical, and anthropological perspectives--the growth of institutions (civic, religious, educational, and economic) which shaped the personal experiences of individuals in ways that remain quite distinct from those of modern Western societies. Texts mostly taught in translation. Topics vary and include: Courtly Literature of the High and Late Middle Ages, Medieval Women Writers, Chaucer and the 14th Century, and the Crusades.

This Ted-Ed video, which can be used as a part of a writing lesson in the literature classroom, addresses the idea of finding "deeper meaning" in a literary work. It is an engaging instructional video that takes the perspective of a student who is a beginner in literary analysis writing and needs help understanding how to read with insight and acknowledge complex ideas in their work. Using two example texts (Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Morrison's ), the narrator helps students understand how to think about literature analytically prior to writing about it.

Consideration of some substantial twentieth-century poetic voices. Authors vary, but may include Moore, Frost, Eliot, Stevens, and Pound. This course considers some of the substantial early twentieth-century poetic voices in America. Authors vary, but may include Moore, Frost, Eliot, Stevens, and Pound. We'll read the major poems by the most important poets in English in the 20th century, emphazinig especially the period between post-WWI disillusionment and early WW II internationalism (ca. 1918-1940). Our special focus this term will be how the concept of "the Image" evolved during this period. The War had undercut beliefs in master-narratives of nationalism and empire, and the language-systems that supported them (religious transcendence, rationalism and formalism). Retrieving energies from the Symbolist movements of the preceding century, early 20th century poets began to rethink how images carry information, and in what ways the visual, visionary, and verbal image can take the place of transcendent beliefs. New theories of linguistics and anthropology helped to advance this interest in the artistic/religious image. So did Freud. So did Charlie Chaplin films. We'll read poems that pay attention both to this disillusionment and to the compensatory joyous attention to the image: to ideas of the poet-as-language-priest, aesthetic-experience-as-displaced-religious impulse, to poetry as faith, ritual, and form.

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught in Spring Semester 2010.

We are surrounded by materials from and references to ancient mythology: we talk about the Oedipus-complex, name spaceships Apollo and powerful detergents Ajax, have songs about Cupid drawing back his bow and associate Oedipus with Freud rather than Sophocles, Ulysses with James Joyce rather than Homer. Literature, in particular, uses ancient mythology as a rich source to describe powerful emotions, cunning politics or psychological drama.

This module will explore how selected German literary texts use motifs from Ancient mythology and how the individual authors combine the ‘old’ stories with their ‘new’ content and message. We will focus on Medea, the powerful and horrific wife of Jason who kills the sons she loves to hurt Jason whom she hates and scare Greek society that alienated her. Using Euripides ancient version as a starting point (in translation, of course,) we will look closely at how the myth is used, changed and reinvented in German texts written between 1926 and 1998.

Theoretical writings on mythology and its reception will provide us with relevant background knowledge and we will add an interdisciplinary angle to the topic by looking at the reception of the Medea myth in paintings, film, theatre and music.

Suitable for study at undergraduate level 4.

Dr Heike Bartel, School of Modern Languages and Culture.

Dr Bartel's current research focus is mythology and myth reception from 18th to 20th century with particular focus on the myth of Medea. Recent activities and publications in this field include: Co-editor (with Dr. A. Simon, University of Bristol) of book 'Unbinding Medea: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Classical Myth from Antiquity to the 21st Century' (Oxford: Legenda, 2010).

Resource has discussion questions, extension activities and information about the real Ivan. Some of the extension activities include links to other sites with informatin pertaining to The One and Only Ivan.

Open Source Shakespeare attempts to be the best free Web site containing Shakespeare's complete works. It is intended for scholars, thespians, and Shakespeare lovers of every kind. OSS includes the 1864 Globe Edition of the complete works, which was the definitive single-volume Shakespeare edition for over a half-century.

This site was built with four attributes in mind: Power, Flexibility, Friendliness, and Openness. It won't replace the expensive, subscription-only sites at libraries or research institutions, but you can use the advanced search function, read the plays, and look up words in the concordance.

Works of film examined in relation to thematic issues of philosophical importance that also occur in other arts, particularly literature and opera. Emphasis on film's ability to represent and express feeling as well as cognition.

Studies the nature of love and sex, approached as topics both in philosophy and in literature. Readings from recent philosophy as well as classic myths of love and sex that occur in works of literature and lend themselves to philosophical analysis.

This seminar addresses the inherent challenges of translating poetry from different languages, cultures and eras. Students do some translation of their own, though accommodations are made if a student lacks even a basic knowledge of any foreign language.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the poetry of Maya Angelou. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

In this course, we will investigate popular culture and narrative by focusing on the relationship between literary texts and comics. Several questions shape the syllabus and provide a framework for approaching the course materials: How do familiar aspects of comics trace their origins to literary texts and broader cultural concerns? How have classic comics gone on to influence literary fiction? In what ways do contemporary graphic narratives bring a new kind of seriousness of purpose to comics, blurring what's left of the boundaries between the highbrow and the lowbrow? Readings and materials for the course range from the nineteenth century to the present, and include novels, short stories, essays, older and newer comics, and some older and newer films. Expectations include diligent reading, active participation, occasional discussion leading, and two papers.