An intensive study of Shakespeare's tragic method and selected major tragedies, with some attention to their relation to Shakespeare's career and times.
Beginning with Faust's wager with Satan and ending with Razumov's risk of his soul in service to his own ambition and to the Czar, the course scrutinizes various responses to the social, political, and intellectual turbulence of Europe from Waterloo to 1900. Aside from Goethe and Conrad, the authors include Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Zola.
How Bible stories are told, how characters are developed, how words are charged with meaning in prose and poetry, how the whole is tied together, and how it is put into English in the King James version.
Introduction to leading ideas and literary forms in the ancient and medieval cultural traditions of western society. Major writers from Homer to Dante.
Apart from Shakespeare, no writer in English has had greater impact on the history of literature and the making of the modern mind than John Milton. Paradise Lost explores humankind's relationship to God, Paradise Regained examines the basis for permanent values in life, Areopagitica argues the necessity of freedom of thought and speech, and Samson Agonistes presents the struggle to balance strength and responsibility. Milton was a political as well as a literary figure. This course will consider Milton both as a poet and as a man intimately involved with the issues of his time and of ours.
A study of Victorian thought and spirit through literature. Readings in Bronte, Tennyson, Browning, Wilde, and others.
A study of the two most significant currents in American Literature from the Civil War through the First World War. Each school sought in its own way a response to the economic, social, and scientific realities and theories then current, and together led to the proletarian writers of the 1930's, exemplified in the course by writers like Erskine Caldwell. Other readings can include works by W.D. Howells, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, and Theodore Dreiser.
Intensive readings in several of the American authors (primarily Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, and Snyder) active from the mid and late forties through the present, loosely grouped as the Beat Generation. What has shaped their philosophies? What are their themes? Styles? What have they contributed to American (and world) life and letters? This course will lay foundations from which to address such questions.
A seminar that introduces students to writing news articles. It requires students to submit balanced and accurate news articles based on personal interviews and research. In lieu of a final examination, each student will submit a long feature article which demonstrates a mastery of the journalistic skills and principles taught in this course (newsworthiness, form, interviewing, balance, accuracy, attribution, liveliness, research, and use of multiple and conflicting sources).
A seminar offering advanced practice in essay and research paper writing, with particular emphasis on argumentation. The course emphasizes logic, the use of evidence, grammar and usage, and the development of a mature appropriate style. Assignments may focus on a single theme for the entire term, or students may be encouraged to explore topics of individual interest. A substantial final research project is required in lieu of a final examination.
The chief purpose of this course is to improve the pre-professional candidate's ability to write clear, precise, effective, and grammatically accurate prose in the composition of critical essays, letters, reports, memoranda, opinions, briefs, and/or research documents.
Magic and morals, cuckoldry and comedy, romance and tragedy are all a part of the legend of King Arthur, which this course will trace from its origin in the chronicles of the ninth century to its most recent manifestations on film. The centerpiece will be Sir Thomas Malory; in addition, we will read some of his predecessors--Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chretien de Troyes (all in translation)--and his successors--Tennyson, Twain, White and others.
A look at the many ways of reading and interpreting literature. Each student will have the opportunity to read in depth the work of an author of his choice. The class will examine both the critical tradition and the current debate over valid approaches to literature, and the student will try out several of these approaches on the books of his chosen author. Required of Honors Candidates in the Second Class (Junior) year. Enrollment limited to sixteen.
A study of English poetry, prose, and drama of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Emphasis is on the understanding and appreciation of the works discussed, but some attention is given to each as an expression of the culture of the period.
A general study of Chaucer's early works and The Canterbury Tales, considering Chaucer's sources, his artistry, and his significance as a representative of his time and as a subject of modern critical controversy.
An introduction to the major elements (line, color, texture, etc.), principles of design (symmetry, perspective, etc.), media (oil painting, sculpture, etching, etc.), and criteria of judgment of the visual arts. The aim of the course is to make cadets visually "literate"--to teach them, through analysis and critical evaluation, to see rather than merely to look.
The music of the western world begins with the Gregorian chant of the late Middle Ages and moves through the works of Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and, in our own century, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Copland. This course will look at the works of these composers, and others, concentrating on major forms which this music takes, and relate them to cultural cross currents which make them of value to the contemporary world.
Through a study of the history and aesthetics of the film, films themselves, and their significant critics, the course seeks to establish substantial grounds for understanding and evaluating the film as an art form.
A study of visual artists' responses to some of the major revolutionary events of the last 200 years, including the French Revolution, World War I, the Nazi-Bolshevist struggles in Weimar Germany, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II. Although we will look at examples of popular art--posters propaganda films, and so forth--as documents of the social upheavals that inspired them, we will chiefly concern ourselves with the paintings, drawings, and graphic works of such important "fine" artists as David, Goya, Delacroix, Daumier, Grosz, and Kollwitz.
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