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ENG 145 Nobel Literature

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ENG 145 Nobel Literature ENG 145 Nobel Literature Online, Asynchronous May 22-July 1 2017 4 credits Course Web Info: <blackboard.gordon.edu>; see also <nobelprize.org> for helpful resources Instructor: Chad Stutz Office Phone: (978) 867-4754 Cell Phone: (617) 694-9722 Email: [email protected] Virtual Office Hours: M–F, 9-10:15 a.m. EST; by appointment Description There can be no greater recognition in the literary world than the Nobel Prize for Literature. Awarded by the Swedish Academy, the prize is given for excellence in literature as a representation or illustration of culture. The award is given for an author’s entire oeuvre—often after the publication of a seminal work. In the study of Nobel Prize-winning authors, we are studying those individuals who, according to the directive of Alfred Nobel, “have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind,” and, in the field of literature, “have produced the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency.” Our focus will be on selected works of fiction, poetry, and drama by Nobel laureates as we discover more about our world and what it means to be human through the literature of its disparate peoples. We will also, inevitably and deliberately, interpret what we read through the lens of our faith as we meet writers and characters who do not share a Christian worldview. Finally, we will work on developing reading, writing, and critical thinking skills through online discussions, reading quizzes, and an essay. This course fulfills the Core Global Understanding Theme (Old Core) and the Core Literature Requirement (New Core), helping students to foster “an understanding of and engagement with global cultures in all their diversity” (Core Objective #4). Upon completion of this course, students should be able to: Demonstrate familiarity with the lives, cultures, and works of nine Nobel laureates. Formulate charitable and critical responses to the questions these authors pose within their works. Propose plausible, coherent interpretations of complex literary texts in written form. Show how different approaches to a text yield varied interpretations. Utilize a basic critical vocabulary when analyzing and discussing novels, poems, and plays. Identify how distinct cultural contexts shape individual perceptions of the world and explain how these contexts present both difficulties and opportunities for human interaction and flourishing. Determine what (good) literature can and/or cannot contribute to living a faithful Christian life in a modern global context. Required Texts Nadine Gordimer, The Pick Up (Penguin). ISBN: 9780142001424. Czesław Miłosz, Second Space: New Poems (Ecco). ISBN: 9780060755249. Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums (Picador). ISBN: 9780312429942. Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions (Copper Canyon). ISBN: 9781556591600. Kenzaburo Oe, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (Grove). ISBN: 9780802134639. Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh (Yale). ISBN: 9780300117431. Harold Pinter, The Essential Pinter (Grove). 9780802142696. Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (Norton). ISBN: 9780393977615. Wisława Szymborska, Poems New and Collected (Mariner). ISBN: 9780156011464. Our Class Although the Nobel Prize in Literature is considered the highest honor an author can receive, we must keep in mind that it did not even exist until the twentieth century (the inaugural prize was awarded in 1901). Consequently, a course focusing on the works of Nobel laureates is inevitably a course in modern literature. This limitation carries with it both problems and possibilities. One potential problem is the temptation to equate “great” with “modern.” While there is certainly much modern literature that is great, we must take care to resist what C.S. Lewis termed “chronological snobbery,” or the idea that what is newest is necessarily best. A vast corpus of literature composed before 1901 speaks just as insightfully to the human condition— perhaps more insightfully at times—as the literature of Nobel recipients. To forget this fact is to risk losing an important vantage-point from which to criticize modernity (and there is indeed a great deal to criticize). A potential problem of a different sort has to do with the interpretive demands that modern literature often places on us as students. If the literature of the past seems strange to us by virtue of its chronological distance, modern literature—for a variety of reasons worth discussing—often sets out intentionally to make the familiar strange. The result is that some students have even more difficulty wrestling with contemporary literature than they do with, say, the literature of the Victorian period. This formal difficulty is further complicated by the fact that a course in Nobel Literature is also necessarily a course in world literature. Although we will be reading one American writer, the majority of our readings derive from cultures outside of North America, some of them non-English speaking. Appreciating this literature, therefore, will require us to be sensitive to cultural differences and to the ways in which these differences inform an author’s vision of God, humanity, and the world. At the same time, however, a course that focuses narrowly on (modern) Nobel Literature also presents certain possibilities. Above all, perhaps, this course provides us with an opportunity to engage with great literature that speaks to us in a voice that is, in one important sense, our own—a voice that emerges from the depths of our own contemporary anxieties, questions, sufferings, and triumphs. Whatever the personal, geographical, political, cultural, and religious differences between us and the Nobel laureates we read this semester, by the Providence of God our lives have unfolded at roughly the same point in human history. If nothing else, we are neighbors in time, and this alone may be enough to ensure that, after much hard work, the literature we read throughout this course will resonate with us in a distinctive way. Whether these authors’ answers are, or ought to be, our answers remains to be seen, but either way we can move forward with full confidence, knowing that, at the very least, their questions are certainly our questions. We will also spend some time thinking about why we as Christians should, or should not, read imaginative literature at all. What, if anything, can literature contribute to our ongoing quest to “Love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength” (Mark 12:30)? Can literature help us to become more responsible observers and participants in an increasingly diversified Church and an increasingly globalized world? If so, how? Our class will proceed primarily by way of online discussion. As a pedagogical tool, discussion is useful in that it invites original thinking, enables immediate feedback and refinement of ideas, develops critical thinking, and encourages active interpretation. In contrast to traditional lecture-style courses, discussion-based courses are distinguished by their intimacy and their emphasis on exploratory dialogue. Thoughtful discussions, however, often require some basic knowledge. To this end, I will make available a handful of mini-lectures on each of the authors we will be reading that are designed to provide you with some important background information. Still, the bulk of our class will be spent conversing with one another on Blackboard. For this sort of course to function effectively, all members of the class must be prepared on a regular basis to contribute questions and ideas and to engage actively in dialogue. (Remember that discussions, whether online or in a traditional classroom setting, are only as strong as the weakest participant.) Imagine our virtual classroom as a space of mutual exploration in which students and the instructor work together to identify problems and solve them. A Word about 100-Level Courses There is often a good deal of confusion among students about the expectations associated with 100-level courses. Some students wrongly believe that 100-level = EASY, 100-level = LOW WORKLOAD, or 100-level = NOT VERY IMPORTANT. In fact, these are false assumptions that do nothing more than imperil your learning. 100- level has little to do with effort or workload; on the contrary, 100-level core courses like this one are intended to offer some basic exposure to a given topic or field of study and, in the process, to facilitate your growth into a well-rounded, well-educated human being. For this reason, the 100-level designation refers primarily to the anticipated depth of coverage relative to the collective knowledge and expertise within a given discipline. In ENG 145, for example, although we will read one scholarly essay to get a taste of what academic writing in literary studies is like, we will spend comparatively little time discussing the details of various theoretical paradigms and methodologies, the nuanced hermeneutical debates surrounding individual texts carried on by professional scholars, or a particular author’s place within broader literary historical movements—issues that interest specialists in the field and that you would likely encounter in upper-level English courses. This is certainly not to suggest that our conversations about the authors we read will lack depth and rigor of another kind, but they will most often avoid the language of the specialist. Put simply, 100-level = INTRODUCTORY. Introductory, however, does not mean that you will not have to work hard, perhaps especially if you are a non- English major or have had very little experience with contemporary literature. This is especially true in an online summer course, in which the shortened time frame necessitates moving through the material at a relatively rapid pace. I expect you to put forth your best effort consistently and to marshal all of your gifts and talents in the service of your learning in this course. I do not say this to scare you—indeed, one of the main purposes of this class is to help you cultivate an appreciation for all that literature can contribute to your development as a person created in the image of God—but rather to calibrate your expectations.
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