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Following is a tentative syllabus for the Spring 2003 LIT 3155: Modern Literature, a Web-dedicated Distance Learning course from USF's Educational Outreach. To view the course Welcome Page, click on "Back" above or click on http//scholar.acomp.usf.edu8930/public/LIT3155_000S03/ If you simply want to learn more about the University of South Florida, click here. To get more information about distance learning,
go to http://www.outreach.usf.edu/usfdl.htm or to http://www.outreach.usf.edu/oucourses/. To learn about the course software--WebCT--go to http://www.webct.com/ or to http://outreach.usf.edu/student/manual/guide.htm. For workshops in the use of many kinds of software, go to http://training.acomp.usf.edu/. |
Click
here to hear the Cyberprof speak. (Your computer must be
able to play sound recordings)
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LIT 3155--Sections 798 & 799--Spring 2003 (Ref # 16783 & 16782) Syllabus for
& Introduction to MODERN
LITERATURE Fulfills Liberal Arts Exit
Course Requirement Under "Literature &
Writing" It's also a Gordon Rule Course. |
Introduction (click here first)
Hello and welcome to the
WebCT version of "LIT 3155: Modern Literature," a Web-dedicated
Distance Learning course offered by the University of South Florida's
Educational Outreach and the English Department.
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"Web-dedicated"
means that there are no classroom meetings because
everything is done on the Web--lectures, discussions, quizzes, exams, term
paper, e-mail. |
This syllabus reviews the
mechanics of the course, how the course is conducted and what you need to do to
fulfill its requirements. After reading through this, you should then
review, under "Contents" off the Home Page, "Grading of
Writing" and "Introduction to the Lectures," which will provide
further important introductory material.
Obviously, a certain knowledge
of the computer is necessary going in, and then one must learn to operate the
WebCT software. You can get help with
this in the Outreach office in SVC 1072 or by contacting Academic Computing at
the numbers listed on the Welcome Page, but the instructor will tutor you as
you go along, and the software provides its own tutorial if you click on the
WebCT links available to you along the way. Mostly, it just takes a
little commonsense and a willingness to experiment.
The word
"modern" in the course title refers to the last hundred years. Pared down to the
essentials, this course requires you to read literary works from the beginning
of the 20th Century to the present and lectures on them, and then to
demonstrate what you've learned by participating in on-line discussions, taking
eight quizzes (minimum) and two essay exams, and turning in a term paper.
Simple enough, and pretty
much the same as in a classroom course, but while most students adapt quickly
enough to doing such assignments in this new learning environment, some
don't. And so, a word of advice: The
way to avoid becoming one of those students who don't adapt is by making
a special, conscious effort from the first day to sense the reality of
"The Cyberprof" (the guy who's writing this) and understand the need
to be just as "real" in response. We're people, not
computers, so let's act like that!
That is, the words you will read in this course were not computer-generated and were not meant to lie inert. "The Cyberprof," as I romantically call myself here, wrote them, with great educational zeal, hoping that you will invite them to jump off the screen into your mind and cause synapeses to fire and neurons to grow. For that to happen, you must first realize that "The Cyberprof" is far more "present," spiritually and potentially, and far more accessible, than a classroom prof, and he expects the same of you. Throughout the course he will be peering at you from inside your monitor, as the ghost in your machine, so to speak, waiting for you to write some words in response to his words. For example, most days he checks and answers email almost hourly, and you need to be almost as vigilant in checking for emails. They key to this course, in fact, is answering emails promptly and doing exactly what they say to do!
--The Ghost
in Your Machine Peering at You—
That is, you must appreciate
that the omnipresent Cyberprof expects you to assert your own cyber-presence.
To do this, you may need to become more actively involved in the educational
process than normally. There can be no shy or non-participating students
in a Web course. Everybody must "talk." A
lot. If you don't, you will just drift off into cyberspace and
become lost. But that's the beauty of the Web course. You're not in
a classroom where you have to contend with the perhaps intimidating presences
of other students. It's just you.
And me. And nobody's looking, except an encouraging Cyberprof
who's eager for your response. So assert
yourself.
To encourage responsiveness,
this course is structured so that you must actively engage with the material on
an almost daily basis and respond to The Cyberprof about it several times a
week and perhaps to other students as well. If you make that response, you will find that you will not
only get as much out of this course as out of the best of the classroom
courses, but you may even get more. This course offers
a lot of learning, but nothing happens unless you reach for what is
offered. That is true of all courses, but it is doubly true of Web
courses.
The table of
contents above provides links to the various aspects of the course. You can
either just scroll down through this syllabus or use the table of contents
above (by clicking on "Back to
Contents” after each section and then clicking on the titles
of the sections, in order or as you wish).
English Department, CPR 358B
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On
the left, a portrait of the professor as a genial sort. He must not have been grading papers at the time!! Below is what he looks like when he's grading papers: |
SEEING THE INVISIBLE INSTRUCTOR:
Since many Outreach students
do not live within easy reach of the Tampa USF campus, and some will actually
be taking this course from out of the state and even out of the country, this Distance
Learning course has been designed precisely so that you don't have to meet with
an instructor in person. But that
doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't.
There is actually a real office in a real world where we can meet--Cooper Hall 358B, just east of the USF Library. Call
me at 813-974-4025 or, better yet,
e-mail me at dietrich@chuma.cas.usf.edu to arrange an
appointment. Whether we meet in person
or not, I certainly expect to "hear" from you often through the course's
email and in Chat Room or Bulletin Board discussions. The telephone can
also be used if you’re not afraid to date yourself by using outmoded
technology!
TEXTBOOKS
Back
to Contents
With so many wonderful books
written in the modern era, it was very difficult to limit the course to just
these books and just these authors. But
I think you'll find these books right on the mark in the way they cover the
decades and the major issues. If you can’t find course texts at the USF
Bookstore or other local bookstores, you can look for them in a library or
order them off the Web at www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com
or www.addall.com (where books are usually cheaper and quickly
delivered). All books are on reserve
in the USF library if you do not wish to purchase them. Here's the list:
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#
Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman (1904): Penguin. # A grammar handbook of your choice. (If you already have
a handbook, then you don't need another one, but if you don't have one, the Simon
and Schuster Handbook for Writers, by L.Q. Troyka, is being used in
Freshman English and is therefore readily available in the USF
Bookstore. It comes with interactive CD-ROM and special exercises
available at their website). |
DAILY ASSIGNMENTS CALENDAR
[The link to the "Daily
Assignments Calendar" you will find on the course Home Page.]
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The Daily Assignments Calendar indicates what work or lecture you should be reading when and specifies exact deadlines for turning in exams and the term paper and the taking of quizzes. The Calendar will be supplemented by emails that will announce times for Chat Room and Bulletin Board discussions and other unscheduled events. |
COURSE LECTURES
["Course
Lectures" are accessed from the Home Page under "Contents."]
The lectures provide fairly
detailed analyses of the individual works and their historical context which should
enlighten on some of the most relevant points, but they are by no means
exhaustive and they don't pretend to infallibility. Their purpose
is not only to inform but to demonstrate how a professional reader with many
years of experience and deep knowledge of both literature and the scholarship
on it interrogates a work of literature in order to understand it better.
The hope is that you will learn more about the process of reading from
observing a professional do it.
EMAIL, CHAT ROOM &
BULLETIN BOARD DISCUSSIONS
Back to
Contents
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The Email page is for private discussions, mostly between you and me, and should be checked daily and religiously. Instructions on how to operate the email will appear in an early email. There are two ways you can get involved in public discussions about course material-- through the Chat Room and through the Bulletin Board. |
THE CHAT ROOM
- Unfortunately, experience has taught
that the Chat Room does not work well if there are more than 3 or 4 people
engaged in a discussion at one time, and that, anyway, it's impossible to
schedule a time for a group discussion when more than a few can attend, so
this course does not make as much use of the Chat Room for group
discussions as was originally hoped for.
- Rather, I just invite individuals to
meet me in the Chat Room whenever they can. Check the Home Page and email daily for announcements of
when I am available in the Chat Room for discussions. I
prefer to discuss the works assigned or the lectures on them, but the Chat
Room can be used for questions about course business as well. E-mail
or the telephone can often be used more effectively for the same purposes
and are preferred.
- It's possible that you will be required to meet me in the Chat Room if I think
it advisable that we discuss something, such as serious writing
problems. You will lose up to 5 points from your final numerical
average if you don't show up when we've arranged for such a chat.
- You're welcome to use the Chat
Room for personal conversations with other students, which it is up to you
to arrange. You can use the course email system to invite others to
join in, say, discussing a particular topic. Chances are that no
more than 3 or 4 will show up, even though you invite the entire class.
THE BULLETIN BOARD
- The course also offers a sort of delayed "chat" in the Bulletin Board, which the whole class can participate in. Such discussions are not "live," but they offer the convenience of fitting your schedule.
- Here you post your comments and questions whenever you like, under whatever topic or forum you like, and hopefully somebody in the class will later respond. Don't be discouraged, however, if you don't get a response every time. Of course you don't have to be the initiator of a discussion; you can jump in at any time on a discussion somebody else started. In fact, it's just as crucial that you respond to others as that they respond to you.
- You will find a message waiting for you (click on "Forum" and "Main") on the Bulletin Board that will explain how to operate in this environment. It's much like the email page, except that here you have to be in the right "forum" rather than the right "folder."
WRITING REQUIREMENTS
Back to Contents
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A
GRADE OFF FOR EACH DAY LATE ON ALL WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
Everyone who
graduates from a university should be capable of writing literate prose that is
mostly free of basic errors, but too often that does not turn out to be the
case. Never mind who is to blame for
this sad state of affairs, let's just see what we can do about it in this
course. The fact that this exit course
is also a Gordon Rule course gives you an opportunity to make one last attempt
to fix whatever is wrong with your writing, so let's just concentrate on
that. If your writing on the first exam
signals impending disaster, I will warn you (sort of like a virus detector!!)
and require you to take corrective steps, most likely by reading a particular
section of a grammar handbook and perhaps also by doing exercises on prescribed
web sites or by taking a remedial quiz.
Points will be deducted from
your numerical total if you don't do the remedial work assigned.
GRADES
Back to Contents
To please the
WebCT Grade Calculator, grades are calculated numerically through most of the
course as a percentage of 100%, but at the end of the course, when converting
number grades to letter grades, I grade on a curve and
a generous one at that. This means that the numbers you receive on
quizzes and writing assignments may suggest a lower grade than you will
actually receive. The last curve I gave in this course came out like
this: 80 to 100=A, 70 to 79=B, 60 to 69=C, 50 to 59=D. But
the curve for this semester could be different.
Final Grades are letter grades
and will include pluses and minuses.
You
can add points to your final numerical
total by demonstrating an active and intelligent engagement with the
course. At the end of the course I will check the logs for the number and
quality of the responses you've made in email, Chat Room, and Bulletin Board
responses, and if I think you've made a contribution that is both substantial
and significant I will add points to your final average.
You can lose points from your final numerical total
1. by turning in
work late.
2. by not showing up for a required
chat.
3. by not responding to email.
4. by not doing assigned remedial work or by
not doing it satisfactorily.
QUIZZES
Back to Contents
·
Content Quizzes over the works and the lectures. Content
quizzes are required.
·
Remedial Quizzes over certain aspects of grammar, punctuation, and
other aspects of writing. Remedial
Quizzes, either in WebCT or at prescribed websites, will be assigned to you
only if your writing demonstrates a need for remedial work. If assigned, then
they are required.
Content
Quizzes must be taken after each work has been studied at times specified on
the "Daily Assignments Calendar"
(often beginning on a Friday morning at 7:00 AM and ending at midnight on
Monday, but check calendar for variations).
The weekly quizzes provide an "objective" check of your reading and
comprehension of the works and the lectures on them, but mainly they serve as a learning device.
Access the quizzes
by clicking on "Online Quizzes & Surveys" on the Home Page, which
will get you to a page where the times of access will also be posted.
Once you "open" the quiz, you will have a specified time to finish
it, usually a half an hour. After
checking your score on the first try and going over the feedback on each question, you should then take
the quiz a second time. Your
official score will be the average of the two tries. Because you get to take the quizzes a second time,
after reading feedback, I expect everyone to have high scores. It's a
gift, so don't look a gift horse in the mouth! Learn from your mistakes.
Quiz grades will be cumulative and comparative, and a few days (normally) after each quiz you should click on "Check Your Progress" on the Home Page to see how you're scoring. At the end of the course, the total quiz scores of all students will be entered as a percentage of 100%. This final quiz grade will then count as 1/4 of the final course grade.
Back to Contents
The two exams will test your comprehension of the works
assigned and the lectures on the works. Usually the night before the
dates listed on the "Daily Assignments Calendar" for the exam, the exact exam topics you are to write on will be provided on the course web
site as an attachment to an email. Treat the exam as a "take-home" exam and write a
minimum of 1,500 words total. Once
you "open" the exam, you will have a specified time to finish (see
the "Calendar"). You should download the exam attachment into
MS WORD (the preferred word processor for this course) or whatever your word
processor is (or copy and paste the questions into an email if you can't get
the attachment function to work and you're short on time), write your essays in
Times New Roman 14 pt., then upload the finished exam
and send it back to me as an attachment to an e-mail. I will then
download the exam, grade it in my word processor, and send it back to you as an
attachment to an email.
Each of the exams will come
in two parts, the first part consisting of a few short-answer "Reading Checks" that will ask you to cite
the works and the lectures specifically, and the second part consisting of
topics for essay answers that will ask you to use the lectures to explore
beyond the lectures.
EXAM REVIEWS
are available for each of
the exams (click on "Contents"
on the Home Page). Read the appropriate
review before you take an exam. These reviews are lectures that reinforce
or expand on some of the more important points, and you are responsible on the exam for any new material therein.
TERM PAPER
Back to Contents
Write a 2,000 word (minimum) term paper in your word processor
and upload it on this web site as an attachment to an email by the date
indicated on the Assignments Calendar.
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The term paper is to be a coherent, well-organized essay on the vision of history provided by Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. Your paper should explain how Quinn's character, Ishmael, sees the world's history, why he sees it that way, and what the relevance of this is to today's world. |
The term paper is to
be a research paper, but your research is to consist mostly of
reading relevant material on the Web (especially at www.ishmael.com) and other works of Daniel
Quinn, such as Providence and The Story of B, which can be
ordered from www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com (sites which also provide important research
material on Ishmael in their customer reviews and comments sections and
which you are expected to cite in your paper).
For more specific information about the term paper topic and such formal matters as citing references and providing a bibliography, read the lecture on Ishmael under "Contents" on the Home Page. The lecture will get you ready for the writing of the term paper by calling your attention to questions that need to be answered before you begin writing. Don't hesitate to e-mail me if you have questions. And don't wait until the end of the course to read Ishmael or to start your research. Get started now!!!
A grade off for each
day late.
Occasionally there are problems with software and browser compatibility or with system crashes that may require you to try every maneuver you and your wizard friends can think of in order to get through an assignment. For examples:
1. "Macs" are
sometimes prone to compatibility problems. If you encounter such
problems, you will either have to borrow a friend's PC to turn in and receive
assignments or you can go to a USF lab where you can use a
PC.
2. "AOL," "Compuserve," and other highly proprietary browser/email systems are sometimes prone to compatibility problems, especially if you have older versions. There are several things to try. One, you can borrow somebody else's PC to turn in and receive assignments. OR, you could get a USF email account on your computer (from Academic Computing) and use that instead of AOL or whatever. OR, since AOL and Compuserve users are not required to use AOL or Compuserve as their browser, you could always exit AOL or Compuserve and just use NETSCAPE or INTERNET EXPLORER as your browser--either one would probably work better. If you don't have an independent IE or NETSCAPE on your computer, you should download at least one of them anyway.
3. I will send exam attachments to you in two formats, WORD 2000 and HTML, and you should return the first exam in both formats so that I can choose which one looks better. For the first exam, do your writing in your word processor and then send that and an HTML version back. If your computer cannot convert your word processed document into HTML, you should try to find a computer that can.
4. Your worst nightmare may occur when the USF server goes down in the middle of your taking a quiz or trying to beat a deadline. There’s nothing you can do about that if you're taking a quiz but wait for it to come back. I will make allowances if this occurs in the process of taking a quiz, providing that you let me know immediately by email. You can avoid this potential nightmare by not waiting until the last minute to take a quiz.
5. If the server goes down as
you're attempting to hand work in, you can in this emergency attach documents to your outside email and send it to my
outside email address: dietrich@chuma.cas.usf.edu. In fact, I will establish a back-up email
system for the class outside of WebCT for just such emergencies, but use the course email system whenever you can.
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Part of the
bonus education you may receive in taking a web course is in learning how to
attach documents to email, how to upload and download, how to convert
documents to HTML, how to hyperlink, and how to surmount compatibility or
server problems. |
INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE
CONTENT
The literary works of the course are rich in meaning and can be approached in many different ways, but, to satisfy USF's Liberal Arts Exit Course requirements, we'll focus on how these works give expression to great issues of the modern era, from the concerns expressed in the British Literature of the first part of the era to the concerns of the American Literature of the second part of the era.
In the first part of the
modern era, Great Britain, as it was known then, still had the greatest empire
the world has ever known, and its responsibility and ambition were global. With
the collapse of that and other European empires after World War II, much of
that responsibility, and some of that ambition, passed to the United States,
when it attempted to substitute a certain “Western cultural colonialism” for
the literal colonialism of the European powers. You may be amazed to see that many of the global
problems and issues America has faced in the second half of the century
are very similar to or the consequences of ones faced by the British in the
first half. We are the inheritors of a
tradition of world leadership, whether we like or not, and our literature
reflects the international perspectives of a nation at the center of things. As we attempt to impose Western business and
political and artistic values (music and movies, mainly) upon the rest of the
world, we’re having to deal with the same resentments and backlash that the
imperial European powers, especially the British, did in a previous time.
These problems and issues
often turn on questions of identity--of
personal, social, ethnic, national, political, racial, and sexual identity--and
on how all our personal and cultural differences have been exacerbated by large
overarching debates in the realm of ideas, such
as between science and religion, democracy and authoritarianism, nationalism
and internationalism, individualism and communitarianism, patriarchal values
and matriarchal values, nature and civilization, and so on. The modern era has
been an incredibly exciting time to live in, partly because of this lively
debate, but also it has been one of the most dangerous of times because so much
of the debate has been acted out in bloody, violent conflict. The great
literature of the age has done a wonderful job of capturing all this in forms
that are compelling, enlightening, and entertaining. And in studying the
literature that embodies the great issues of the modern era, you should learn
something too about literature's special way of expressing and communicating,
something that's relevant to understanding and appreciating the literature of
all ages. As with every literature course, this course aims to help you better
appreciate how important literature can be in getting to know yourself and your
world.
RELATIVISM IN THE MODERN WORLD
One significant way of
understanding the modern era is as the site of a struggle not unique to it but
one that has probably had more serious consequences than in any other
century. I refer to the struggle between absolutist and relativistic views of
life, or, to see it another way, between
views inherited (which tend to be passed down as
"absolutes") and views invented
(the very process of which tends to make us question the absolutes as human
inventions and see all values as relative to the age and the person).
Encouraging invention,
modern science has made us more keenly aware than ever before of how life is ever in process, constantly changing and
evolving, the very atoms that make us up being constantly in motion (our body cells
are completely replaced by a different set every seven years, it seems). Furthermore, the very planet we reside on is
hurtling through space at incredible speeds and, geologically volatile,
changing its character minute by minute; the very universe is constantly under
construction, as stars die and new stars are born, and the whole rushes into
deeper and deeper space, so that we never inhabit the same space for two
consecutive seconds.
And all this
physical motion seems to be increasingly mimicked in our culture. It seems that with
life always being open to something new, with the universe itself always under
construction, that that open-endedness and unceasing creativity at the heart of
things encourages us to question things as they are and be eager to make
changes. Many of us have even become addicted
to change, partly as a producer of exhilaration but also as an
instrument of hope (because things can be made better!). This
addiction is more characteristic of the modern era than of any other time.
Since Homo sapiens came on the scene, the earth has never seen such
change wrought by its creatures as it has seen in the past hundred years, so
much change that our mere cultural changes affect the very earth itself!
For many, however, and
perhaps for everyone at one time or another, even those addicted to change,
this flux at the heart of life is confusing as well, sometimes disquieting and
dizzying, and sometimes it makes us wish that, behind all the flux, there were
something permanent, something we could consider eternally and universally
true, other than blindly-operating physical laws that seem indifferent to human
values and human happiness. Or is all truth, at least as human beings can
perceive it and discuss it, relative to the time and the place and the
person? Which, as said, are constantly changing.
This central question then
finds its way into all dimensions of life. In the realms of values and
ethics, race, ethnic, and gender identity, international relations, and
questions about the well-being of the earth itself, there appears to be a
constant shifting of boundaries, as though there were a plate tectonics at
work, so to speak, in our social and political and all other phases of our
lives. Nothing is nailed down, it seems.
This restless, shifting
quality of life, this endless, inevitable questioning and attacking of the
established and the fixed, is wonderfully evoked in the works that you will
read in this course. These writers will make you feel that you have lived
through some of the most crucial experiences of this century, experienced the
major tensions and cultural upheavals of the age for yourself, and thus
hopefully bring you to a wiser historical perspective.
Our works themselves give
different perspectives on each historical issue, coming as they do from
different times and places and persons, but this just reveals the richness and
diversity and growth of ideas in the modern era. Now it's true that every literary work is historically situated,
that its author is conditioned by the cultural and intellectual forces of a
certain time and place, but at the same time the great writers strive for a
degree of universality to make it possible to speak to the future, to us. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at
how works as old as your grandparents and great-grandparents still have much to
say to us, if we would only listen to them. And in listening to the past, we
not only gain a valuable historical perspective on it but we also get better
connected to it, and that connection in itself serves as a kind of anchor
against the winds that blow. Which is what one of our works, The Song of
Solomon, is centrally concerned with: how to get anchored through an
understanding of our connections to the past.
Okay, good luck with the
course. You have some very exciting and fascinating works to read, and I
envy you the reading of them for the first time. My hope is that in
reading them and the lectures on them, you'll come to realize more and more the
following great truth:
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Reading for pleasure and reading for understanding are
really the same thing. |
Your First Assignment
is to read " The Revolutionist's Handbook," which
appears after George Bernard Shaw's 1903 play, Man and Superman, and
which at the beginning of the century nicely captures
the mood of revolt that so characterizes the entire modern era, in which
people no longer believe that they must accept their lot. We have come to
believe that "Progress is our most important product," as the old GE
TV commercial used to put it. But what progress? Shaw's play
suggests that there's more than one kind of progress, and that it is moral and
spiritual progress that matters more than scientific, technological or business
or any other kind of merely external progress. And he asks, must we have
revolution to accomplish this progress? If so, is there more than one
kind of revolution? "The Revolutionist's Handbook" attempts to
answer such questions.
Shaw actually wrote "The
Revolutionist's Handbook," but he's pretending that the hero of his play,
John Tanner, wrote it. Of course insofar as Shaw wrote this as his character,
Tanner, would have written it, you could say that, figuratively
speaking, Tanner is the author. It's part of the overall fiction that he is
the author. But, remember, that's a fiction. Meaning that it's true
to the fiction but not literally true outside the fiction.
When you read the play, Man
and Superman, you'll discover in the opening pages why it helps to have
read "The Revolutionist's Handbook." You'll be one-up on Roebuck
Ramsden, an older character who hasn't read it but who doesn't hesitate
to condemn it anyway. Ramsden throws it
into the trash, unread. And so the
drama of the modern era begins with an older man refusing to listen to the
ideas of a younger man, which is symbolic of the generational
conflicts that have characterized this era throughout and which you'll
find reflected in many of our works.
Man and Superman, by the way, also has a
long, very informative preface, called an "Epistle Dedicatory," which
it would profit you to read, but it's not required. You are required to read the "Maxims
for Revolutionists" that appear at the end of "The
Revolutionist's Handbook." They
contain such provocative statements as "The Golden
Rule is that there are no Golden Rules (p.
251)," which profoundly summarizes,
at the start of the century, what the whole century is going to be about--the
breakdown of absolutes. The only absolute left, in the minds of many, is that
there are no absolutes. At least as far as mere
mortals can perceive.
Many of these maxims are
also a lot of fun to contemplate--as, for example, one maxim goes: "He who
can does, he who cannot teaches." Harrumph! That's one that you may enjoy. Well, it's probably the
case that I wouldn't be teaching literature if I could make piles of money
publishing the novels and plays I write. But Shaw, who was actually a
great teacher, also realized that writers need good readers, and that teachers
are needed to train and inspire readers. That's what we're here for. My hope is that as you read my thoughts
about and questionings of these masterworks of the modern era, you'll learn
better how to engage a work in the sort of dialogue that leads to greater
understanding and appreciation of it, and ultimately to intellectual and
spiritual growth and a richer existence for yourself.
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I trust you
understand that my readings of these works are not meant as final or
absolute, but just as the readings of an experienced professional who loves
what he’s read and learned from it and who wants you to love it and learn
from it too. |
END OF "SYLLABUS & INTRODUCTION"