This course will introduce the student to Great Books of European literature from the Renaissance to modern times. Some emphasis will be placed on this literature in the context of general historical and artistic periods and movements: Renaissance Humanism, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism. When appropriate, the function and form of literary works (for instance, the lyric, the novel, the short story) will be discussed. Authors studied may include Petrarch, Erasmus, Montaigne, Cervantes, Voltaire, Racine, Goethe, Schiller, Rousseau, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Aleichem, Kafka, Camus, Bernanos, Sartre, Undset, and Solzhenitsyn. The writing requirement for the class will be at least one 5-page paper.
Prerequisite Courses