World Literature Resources (Beginnings to 1650)

Subject Lectures and Handouts
Introduction to Course

Ways to Improve Your Reading Process

Why Study World Literature

Issues Surrounding the Interpretation of Literature

Asking Questions of Texts (Heuristic Device)

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh and the Quest Myth

Two Topics in Gilgamesh

Orality and Literacy in the Epic of Gilgamesh

Akhenaten Cosmic Order and the Shape of the World – Competing Views
Homer

Basic Theories of Mythology

Characteristics of an Epic

Virtue in the Heroic Society

Conventions of the Homeric Hospitality Scene

Structure in Books 9-12 of Odyssey

Odysseus' False Identities

"Odysseus' Scar"/ The Homeric Style

Externalization and Foregrounding

Attic Tragedy Ancient Greek Tragedy Terms and Models

Ancient Greek Theatre Maps Map1 Map 2

The Attic Tragic Vision is Not Christian

Terms and Definitions for Greek Tragedy

Conflict in Aeschylus
Virgil Three Visits to the Underworld
Sei Shonagon Elements of the Personal Essay
Augustine

Additional selections

The Genre of Augustine's Confessions

Augustine's Spiritual Journey

Augustine's Aeneid

Rumi Introduction to Sufism and Rumi
Dante

The Great Structure of the Divine Comedy

Levels of Interpretation in Dante

Dante's Politics and the Prophecies in Hell

Dante's Allegory of Eden

Dante's Six Invocations to the Muse

Two Stories in Paradiso

Medieval Lyrics The Cult of Love and the Code of Chivalry
Cervantes

Characteristics of Satire

Don Quixote as Anti-Romance

Victim and Victor: Christ as the Archetype of Comedy

Don Quixote and the Artificial Nature of Fiction

Petrarch The Petrarchan Sonnet
Shakespeare

Pictures and Drawings of The Globe Theatre

The Elizabethan Theatre Playhouse

The Tempest: Overlapping Plots & Themes

Erasmus

Erasmus and Christian Laughter

The Nature of Folly