Backgrounds of Western Lit

ENG 311: Backgrounds of Western Literature

FALL 2024.    TR 10:30-11:45 pm   C203 Sakamaki

Western literature implicitly implies the existence of a less significant non-western world. However, the sources of so-called western culture—classical Greece and the Judeo-Christian world—encompass a geographical area corresponding to the present-day West Asia, North Africa, and Eastern Mediterranean. In this class, we will read select texts from this tradition. We will read them to see their continuum with “non-western” values as well as to understand why the west is regarded as inherently superior. The ideals of democracy, citizenship, and equality enshrined in ancient Athens, and the message of compassion for the weakest members of society in the New Testament run alongside forms of slavery and exemplary violence in several of these texts. What is the role of women in these two very distinct patriarchal cultures? What allowed these two vastly different world-views to be framed into a unified construct of the western world and western literature? How did the sublime and tragic dimensions of these ancient cultures turn into farcical and comical pieces in the medieval epics of Chaucer, Rabelais, and Cervantes?

In this course, we work to define and compare different narrative-types, whether legends, myths, epics or fabular tales. The Bible’s floods, plagues, and fires; the deep and dark psychological motifs of Greek myths and tragedies; the moral lessons implicit in the allegories and farces of the medieval period—these stories not only transport us to a world very different from our own, but also challenge our sense of what is right and wrong.  Premodern narrative literature, when studied on its own terms, seems to make the category “western” close to irrelevant at times, and yet the paradox with which we must reckon is that these premodern civilizations have been put to uses they themselves could have never imagined, which we still live with today. And yet they have so much more to offer when examined closely.

Course requirements include one team-led oral presentation (20), quizzes (30), keyword essay (20), one final essay (25), and one final workshop participation (5)