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| LIT 357 The Hero in Literature | | The Hero in Literature
This course will explore the idea of the hero from antiquity to the present. The hero is a larger than life character whose actions affect the fate of a large community for good, or if a tragic hero, for ill. The hero’s behavior (see Arjuna for example) is a model for the ordinary individual. One of the great debates is whether the hero can even exit in the modern world. Among the texts and themes we will follow are: The Odyssey: The Classical Hero; Beowulf: The Germanic Hero; Gawain and the Green Knight: The Medieval Hero; Siddhartha: The Spiritual Hero; and The Bean Trees: The Feminine Hero. Prerequisite: STC 108/109 |  |
| LIT 359 The Short Story | | The Short Story
A short story contains all the elements of the novel in micro form and because it is so compact is an ideal arena for studying literature. In this course we will study some of the world’s greatest short story writers beginning with Romantics Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, then moving to later, more realistic writers such Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Henry James. Afterward, we will read works by such modernist writers as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Flannery O’Connor, finishing up with contemporary writers including Alice Munro, John Updike, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Students will write a short analytical essay on one of the writers studied in the course and will write a short story as the final project. Students may include a Maharishi Vedic Science component in their analytical essay or create a Main Points Chart to accompany their final project. Prerequisite: STC 108/109 | |
| LIT 360 Poetry From Speech to Silence | | Poetry From Speech to Silence : Exploring the Subtleties of Language in Form and Content
This course focuses on contemporary poetry with the aim of awakening students’ awareness to the stylistic techniques that express different visions of wholeness. Poets to be read may include Theodore Roethke, Denise Levertov, James Wright, Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, Richard Wilbur, Elizabeth Bishop, A.R. Ammons, Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, and Jory Graham. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109 | |
| LIT 361 The Novel | | The Novel: The Flow of Consciousness in Form and Content — The Interaction of Action and Character, Form, and Content in Novelists from Cervantes to Toni Morrison
The novel in the last two centuries has become the literary form of choice. It reigns supreme in conveying the depth, experience, and great complexity of character. Born in the eighteenth century when long narratives — including epics, fables, romances, and picaresque tales — were losing their vitality, the novel became literature’s torch bearer: the primary literary mode for depicting life. This course examines the history, techniques, and forms of the novel, from social realism to meta-fiction, and may include novels from any given period from the eighteenth century onward. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109 | |
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