LIT211: Masterpieces of World Literature II

This course will cover both fictional and non-fiction works from the eleventh century to the present with a focus on European and non-Western traditions. Students will explore the historical, social, and cultural contexts of chosen texts in order to trace the development of modern literary genres

Most Recent Syllabus (Coming Soon)

Typically I teach this course like my freshman literature course in structure: Non-Fiction, poetry, short stories, plays, and novels. In the future I would like to make a few significant changes. The first is to narrow down to just one novel, like I have been doing in other classes, and then build a course of other readings around it. The second is to remove all American literature, which there was not much to begin with, out of the course to further “focus” as per course description. They can easily be moved to other courses!

Novels

  • If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino (Cuba)

  • Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (South Africa)

  • The Brief and Wonderous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Dominican Republic)

  • Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (Ireland)

  • The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector (Argentina)

  • Beloved by Toni Morrison (USA)

Poetry

  • Dream of the Rood (England)

  • We Have Found A New Land by Kofi Awooner (Ghana)

  • The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (Italy)

  • Siren Song by Margaret Atwood (Canada)

  • I Will Slog Over This Road by Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine)

  • Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay (USA)

  • Midterm Break by Seamus Heaney (Ireland)

  • Harlem by Langston Hughes (USA)

  • Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes (USA)

  • Be Not Defeated By The Rain by Kenji Miyazawa (Japan)

  • The Untold Want by Walt Whitman (USA)

  • The Divine Comedy (Part One) by Dante (Italy)

  • Adam, First Man of Men by John Milton (England)

  • Not Waving, But Drowning by Stevie Smith (England)

Non-Fiction

  • The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding by Ian Watt

  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

  • The Short Story by Nadine Gordimer

  • Tragedy and the Common Man by Arthur Miller

  • Black Matters by Toni Morrison

  • Masterpiece Theater: The Politics of Hawthorne's Literary Reputation by Jane Tompkins

Short Fiction

  • The Gospel According To Mark by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)

  • The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)

  • The Miller's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (England)

  • Ghosts by Edwidge Danticat (Haiti)

  • Alma by Junot Diaz (Dominican Republic)

  • Araby by James Joyce (Ireland)

  • The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula Le Guin (USA)

  • The Weight of Memories by Cixin Liu (China)

  • The War Prayer by Mark Twain (USA)

Plays

  • An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen (Norway)

  • Othello by William Shakespeare (England)