English
266: World Literature to 1700
Spring 2007
TTh 12:00-1:15
Charles Ross, Professor
of English
Office hours: W 2-5:00 or by appointment
Heavilon Hall 304A
tel. 4-3740
email: cross@purdue.edu
web page: Boiardo.com
Required Text
q The Norton
Anthology of Western Literature, vol.
1, 8th edition, available at University Bookstore or Follett’s.
Related Web Site
q First Lines:
A Project in Global Diversity http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rosscs/First%20lines/First%20Lines.htm
(or via Boiardo.com)
Course Description:
This
is a course in the close reading and appreciation of some of the most famous
literary texts in the world, all of which were written when writing was the
dominant medium (as opposed to speech or film, for example). This course serves
as half of the introduction to the Comparative Literature major. It also
applies to the English major and to certain Education majors.
Course Goals:
After
finishing this course, you should know something about the major authors and
forms of Western and world literature (drama, poetry, narrative, and
non-fiction) from the beginnings until about 1667. You should know something of
the history of ancient
Course
Methods:
To
read old texts is to enter different worlds, to escape the limits of our own
time and place, to learn something about somewhere else. Were the people for
whom these works written different from us? If so, can they possibly have
anything to teach us today? How can we possibly understand them? To help us
compare our own culture to the past, this course will try to develop three
fields of inquiry: Translation, Customs, and Intentions. Focusing on
translation helps us develop a sense of what it means to bring another language
into English. To do this we will sometimes look at comparative translations and
also at the original languages. Samples of the works in the original languages
will be found at web project First Lines (which you can access via
BOIARDO.COM). Customs are useful things to think about because they help us
realize not only what others take for granted, but that are own behaviors do
not necessarily follow universal standards of right and wrong. The issue of
intentionality helps us understand what literary characters do. In general they
either suffer and endure or take action. As modern people we believe in
controlling our own destiny and therefore favor those works of art that show us
the results of intentional acts (tragedy, for example), but literature often
surprises us by representing forces beyond the control of humans. The nature of
these forces, like the customs of diverse societies and the special magic of
different languages, help us understand the developments that made us who we
are today.
Assignments:
1.
Two midterms and a final exam. The exams are not cumulative.
2.
A 3 to 5-page paper due March 1.
There will be a handout describing the paper, for which you may choose to
compare either two characters or two similar situations or discuss various
translations, key ideas such as customs or values, or significant actions in
relation to literary scenes.
3.
A 5 to 10-page paper due April 26. I
will read your paper and give you comments, without a grade, if you hand in the
paper by April 17. You can then revise.
4.
Revised project. To be assigned, but the idea is to get 2-10 friends to watch
and comment on 2-10 videos (a total of 20 comments) of either the First Lines
videos or the YouTube versions (if I can get produce them) by the end of the
semester.
Syllabus
Jan.
9: Gilgamesh; Genesis 1-3, pp.
1-43. PowerPoint
Jan.
11: Genesis 4, 6-9, 11, 7-19, 25, 27, pp. 44-53
Jan.
16: Genesis 37, 39-46 (Joseph), Exodus 19-20, Job, Psalms, Song of Songs.
pp, 54-99.
Jan.
18: Homer, Iliad 1, 6, 8, 9, 16,
18 (cf. Aeneid 8, pp. 1014-1018), 22,
24, pp. 100-206
Jan. 23a, b: Homer, Odyssey 1-6, 9, 21, pp. 206-279,
301-315, 452-462. [ Song
of Deborah and Iliad review (6
minutes); Odyssey (last 20 minutes)]
Jan.
25: Aeschylus, Agamemnon, pp.
502-550.
Jan.
30: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, pp.
607-652
Feb.
1: Sophocles, Antigone, p.
653-668
Feb. 6: Hesiod, Herodotus,
Thucydides, pp. 784-816.
Feb. 8: Meeting in
STEW214ABC for Prof. Henry Weinfield’s reading from his translation of Hesiod.
Feb. 13: Plato, from The Republic, pp. 817-824; Aristotle’s Poetics 779-784; Midterm Review
Feb. 15: 1st Midterm (pre-Roman
literature)
Feb. 20: Virgil, Aeneid 4, pp. 975-995; Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1 pp. 1023-33
Feb. 22: The
New Testament, pp. 1082-1097 [Paul’s Epistles and Acts]
Feb: 27: Petronius, pp.
1064-1082, Augustine, Confessions,
pp. 1114-1141
Mar. 1:
The Koran, pp. 1143-1173
Mar. 6: T’ang Dynasty
Poetry: see First
Lines: Chrétien de Troyes, pp. 1325-1374
Mar. 8:
Beowulf, p. 1180-1197
Mar. 13: Spring Break
Mar. 15: Spring Break
Mar. 20:
Dante’s Inferno 1-5
Mar. 22: Purgatorio, 1, 2, 21, 22, 30; Paradiso 33
Mar. 27: no class
Mar. 29: 2nd Midterm
Apr. 3: The Thousand and One Nights, pp. 1769-1783; Boccaccio, The Decameron, pp. 1598-1634; Chaucer, General Prologue, pp. 1701-1705 (lines
1-202)
Apr. 5: Decameron: Day 4,
Story 9
Apr. 10: Decameron: Day 9, Story 6; The
Renaissance (p. 1883); The Song of Roland
(p. 1274, line 1015); Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (p. 1967); Petrarch (Ascent of Mount Ventoux, p. 1901)
Apr. 12:
Shakespeare, Hamlet (Fortune images,
p. 2439, 2444); Sonnets: Edmund Spenser (1916), Sir Philip Sidney (1917),
Shakespeare and Giambattista Marino (1918).
Apr. 17: 47; Montaigne,
from Essays, pp. 2178-2221; Machiavelli
(1959); Erasmus (1943); Donne (2048).
Apr. 19. No class.
Apr. 24: 20.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 1-8, pp.
2217-2253; Part 2, chpts. 73-74, pp. 2342-23
Apr. 26:
Final
Exam: Monday April 30, 1:00 PM to 3:00 HEAV 128
Grading:
Υοu
must get an A on at least two exams (including the final) and on one paper and no
less than a B on the other assignments to get an A in the course.
Study Hints:
1)
Read the assigned pages before class.
2)
For each day, try to find a different translation for at least one sentence in
the assigned reading and compare it to the text chosen by the editors of the
Norton Anthology.
3)
Think about the social world these works describe and the standards that
determine right and wrong.
4)
Each day find one person who you think performs the most important action, by
which I mean, find a character who faces a significant choice in the scene as
presented and acts on it (that is, not someone who has made his decision
earlier).
3)
Bring your text to class and take notes.
4)
I will try to tape classes but the technology is not great. You will find the
tapes on the course syllabus, which you can read from my home page by first
going to Boiardo.com.
5)
If you are trying to figure out what I like, you might look at my translation
of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato or
Statius’s Thebaid. By the end of this
course you will know who Boiardo and Statius are.
Purdue requires the
following notice: “In the event of a major campus emergency, course
requirements, deadlines and grading percentages are subject to changes that may
be necessitated by a revised semester calendar or other circumstances. Here are
ways to get information about changes in this course.” To get information about
changes, you can go to my web page BOIARDO.COM or email me at cross@purdue.edu. I will be in contact by
email based on the SIS generated class list.