EN 207-001/002 World Literature I
INSTRUCTOR: Scott McWaters (mcwaters_scott@hotmail.com)
Office: RJ 13 Hrs. MWF 12:00-1:00 & by appt.
Classroom: Ten Hoor 118 3:00-4:15 & 4:30-5:45
Course Description: Survey of World Literature from the Classical Period to the Renaissance. 3 credit hrs. and Core H, HU, and L Designations; prerequisites: EN 101 and 102, or EN 103.
Literature’s aim is to provide vision where we are blind. This is art’s supreme goal and worth. It’s less concerned with cultural or political warfare (despite the sad state of the humanities in much of the academy today) and much more interested in widening our optics. Therefore, the class is obsessed with vision rather than information. Can you see the world, yourself, those around, in the way the writer sees things? This is what we are after. Literature opens up a world that would otherwise be opaque and unknowable and enables us to explore our own inner reaches. It seems that real experience is abstracted when it comes to us as language, but the opposite may be true: Only via literature do we wake up to the startling reaches of life. Kafka said: “Art is the ax that chops into our frozen sea.”
At the heart of what we will be discussing is the idea that life is a process or journey between two different orders: from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom, from experiencing the world’s appearances to understanding its reality.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Students can produce a literary close reading that addresses both the form and the content of one or more text(s) in the construction of an argument about the text’s meaning.
August 19 W Break Bread
24 M Gilgamesh
26 W The Bible: The Old Testament Genesis
William Blake from Songs of Innocence and Experience (Course Reserve)
31 M The Bible: The Old Testament Psalm 8, 19, 23, 104
September 3 W Homer’s The Iliad
7 M Labor Day No Class
9 W Homer’s The Iliad
14 M Classic of Poetry (Chinese) XXVI. “Boat of
Confucius from Analects
Chuang Chou Chuang Tzu
16
Lao Tsu Tao Te Ching (Course Reserve)
21 M Plato (429-347 B.C.) The Apology of Socrates
23 W Test #1
28 M The Bhagavad-Gita
30 W The Bhagavad-Gita
Barbara Stoller Miller “Why did Henry David Thoreau take the Bhagavad-Gita to
Walden?” (Course Reserve)
The Upanishads (Course Reserve)
October 5 M Wisdom of the Buddha (Course Reserve)
Hamlet’s Soliloquy Act 3 scene 1 (p. 2867-2868) “To be, or not to be”
The Jataka
7 W The Bible: The New Testament Matthew 5-7, 13, 26, 27, 28 & Luke 2, 15
12 M Tang Poetry (Chinese) Li
Wang Wei’s poems
Tu Fu’s poems
Ezra Pound’s “The River Merchant’s Wife” (Course Reserve)
14 W The Golden Age of Japanese Culture: The Man’yoshu
The Kokinshu
Dylan Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” (Course Reserve)
19 M Yoshido Kenko from Essays of Idleness
NO Drama: Zeami Motokiyo’s “Atsumori”
The Ox Herding Pictures (In Class)
21
26 M Test #2
28 W Mid-Term Essay
November 2 M Inferno
4 W From Purgatorio & From Paradiso
9 M Jalaloddin Rumi
11 W One Thousand and One Nights “Prologue” & “The Story of the Merchant and the Demon” p. 1580-1590
16 M Mystical Poetry of
18 W Miguel De Cervantes Don Quixote from Part I
23 M Test #3
25 W Thanksgiving Break
30 M Don Quixote from Part II
December 2 W Review for Final Essays
R 207 Section 002 FINAL Thursday 12/10 from 7:00-9:30 p.m.
F 207 Section 001 FINAL Friday 12/11 from 7:00-9:30 p.m.
Course Breakdown: Test #1 17%, Test #2 17%, Test #3 17%, Quiz Grade 15%, Midterm Essay 17% Final Essays 17%
Tests: The tests will consist of questions that will ask you a.) about the authors’ lives; b.) to identify passages; c.) to identify characters or figurative language; d.) to match a text with a brief statement of its meaning; e) what we discuss in class! Students are expected to attend each test without fail. Make-ups will be given when a student misses a test for a verifiable and valid reason—a medical emergency or family emergency, not travel plans or social events—and also contacts me promptly (preferably ahead of time) with his or her explanations and request for a make-up. If you disappear on me, even briefly, I reserve the right to deny a make-up and assign a 0. All make-up exams will differ in format from the original exam.
Mid-Term Essay: The Mid-Term will consist of one short essay (roughly five paragraphs long). The essay will deal with the entire semester up through 10/21. In advance of 10/28, you will be given three options from which to choose. You are required to bring a typed outline to class dealing with the essay you will be answering. At the very least, the outline should include quotations from three works that will provide support to your thesis. The paper must be written during the allotted time, and the outline must be handed in with your completed essay. Answers must use work that we have covered as support. I expect essays to be clearly organized, correctly written, and thoroughly in touch with the class material. Please bring an exam booklet and be prepared to finish writing within an hour and fifteen minutes.
Quiz Grade: There will be six random reading quizzes, consisting of five questions each. The lowest quiz grade will be dropped, and the remaining five will determine your grade. NO MAKE-UP QUIZZES WILL BE GIVEN, SO IF YOU ARE LATE OR ABSENT YOU WILL RECEIVE A ZERO FOR THAT QUIZ. The scale will go as follows: 50 (out of 50)=100, 49=98, 48=96, 47=94, 46=92, 45=90, 44=88 etc. Think about the reading prior to arriving to class.
Final Exam: Section 001 Friday 12/11 from 7:00-9:30 p.m. & Section 002 Thursday 12/10 from 7:00-9:30 p.m. Arranging your schedule to accommodate the Final Exam was your responsibility when registering for the class. Requests to take the exam early will be turned down without exception.
The Final Exam will consist of two short essays (roughly five paragraphs each). The essays will deal with the entire semester, and you will be given six options from which to choose. As with the Mid-term, you will need to use at least three works we’ve read to support your thesis. The second essay must use three different works to support your thesis.
Typed outlines for the essays you are answering are required. The essays must be written during the allotted time, and the outlines must be handed in with your completed exam booklet. Answers must use work that we have covered as support. I expect essays to be clearly organized, correctly written, and thoroughly in touch with the class material. Please bring an exam booklet and be prepared to stay for most, if not all, of the allotted 2.5 hours.
Attendance Policy: highly recommended but not required. You should attend unfailingly if you wish to do well on the tests and quizzes; and if you’re coming at all, come on time. Anyone who gets himself or herself into trouble through absenteeism will get no sympathy from the instructor. Please talk to me well in advance of the end of the term if you have a legitimate excuse for repeated absences.
Cell Phones, Laptops, and Other Electronic Devices: Turn off all electronic devices upon entering this class—and please don’t forget. If, for emergency reasons, you need to leave your cell phone on, please notify the lecturer before class begins. Otherwise, if it has an on/off switch, it must be turned “off” while you are in the class.
Classroom Behavior: Students are expected to observe the usual courtesies: arriving on time, staying seated once class begins, and not talking once a lecture starts except to answer questions posed by the lecturer. Staying quiet is very important: even whispering to a friend can be distracting for the lecturer, especially if half the room is whispering!
Bring Your Book: You should bring your Norton Anthology and Course Reserves to class each and every meeting. It’s crucial that you have the poem or story we are covering in front of you while we are discussing the work. If you don’t have your book with you, I’ll consider you absent.
Note Taking: Taking effective notes in this class, as in college classes traditionally, is the responsibility of the student. It’s critical that you pay attention during the lectures. Listen for both repetition and variation as the narrative of the class builds. Much of what we discuss can not be found on Spark Notes or any similar website. Students who feel that they need to improve their note-taking skills should consult the Center for Teaching and Learning in 101 Osband.
Extra Credit: There are no options for extra credit. If you are attending class, reading, taking notes, but still not making the grade you’d like, please come meet with me well before the end of the semester.
All students in attendance at the University of Alabama are expected to be honorable and to observe standards of conduct appropriate to a community of scholars. The University expects from its students a higher standard of conduct than the minimum required to avoid discipline. Academic misconduct includes all acts of dishonesty in any academically related matter and any knowing or intentional help or attempt to help, or conspiracy to help, another student.
The Academic Misconduct Disciplinary Policy will be followed in the event of academic misconduct.
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