3.0

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In this semester-long discussion seminar we will use the same close reading techniques employed in the freshman seminar version of Great Books (AS.360.133), but in this upper-level seminar we will enlarge the scope of our discussion, exploring, in turn, each work’s historical context, scope, and genre or mix of genres, along with authorial approaches to thematic development, characterization, and narrative scope. Course reading will include Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; the semester will conclude with a retrospective look at the Western tradition through the eyes of Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own. This course assumes familiarity with The Odyssey.