The course will study narratives of travel as a mode of discovery: withattention to issues of continuity and challenge, appropriation and transformation in a prestigious genre across cultural and historical frontiers.
Lectures, discussions shaped by students working in collaborative groups.Two short working papers & one longer, final essay.
Week in the Semester One tentative outline, which in fact gave way to beginning directly with Omeros, with options to branch out & back in other literature as the text demands.
1 INTRODUCTION: discovery & adventure, heroism & ideology; motifs of time (chronos), place (topos) & displacement (chronotopology), memory, love, war, origin & return; mapping across cultures.
2 HOMER, [c8 BCE] Odyssey Books 1, 4, 5, 63
3 " " Books 9, 10, 11, 124
4 VIRGIL [70-19 BCE] Aeneid Books 2, 4, 65
5 DANTE [1265-1321] Inferno Cantos I-XV6
6 " " XV-XXXIV
Working essay due: 3 to 6 well-made paragraphs on a topic arising from reading & discussion.
7 WALCOTT [1990] Omeros Book 1 (i-vi)
8 " " Book 1 (vii-xiii)
9 " " Book 2
10 " " Book 3
11 " " Book 4
Working essay due: 4 to 7 well-made paragraphs on a topic arising from further reading & discussion.
12 " " Book 5
13 " " Book 6
14 " " Book 7
ESSAYS: Typed, double-spaced, ample margins, with paragraphs carefully
made:strong topic sentence, supported by carefully selected examples that
unfold theargument, which should be conducted by way of clearly signalled
transitions fromsentence to sentence and from one paragraph to the next.
Papers handed inon time may be revised if you so desire.
TOPICS: comparison among assigned texts strongly suggests itself (cf.intertextuality above), with attention to return & transformation ofstructures & motifs in changed cultural contexts. Always start with analysisof the overall structure & argument of any piece you discuss. Especiallyscrutinize motifs of time, place & displacement: 'when' & 'where' mustbe related to action--'what' each character does or tells of doing in thepresent, future & past.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS: 30 percent preparation & participation in classdiscussion; 40 percent two short essays; 30 percent final essay.
BOOKS ASSIGNED:
Homer, Odyssey [translator, Robert Fitzgerald]Anchor
Virgil, Aeneid [translator, Robert Fitzgerald]Vintage-0-679-72952-6
Dante, Inferno [translator, John Ciardi] Mentor-0-451-62804-7
Derek Walcott, Omeros 1992, Noonday-0-374-52350-9