This course examines the three great forms of literary expression—drama, poetry, and narrative—in a chronological introduction to the major texts of Western culture, from antiquity onward.
It emphasizes the uniqueness of literary language, the formal and generic conventions of writing, the position that literature occupies as a site for historical and ideological conflicts, and the continuing human significance of the great works of the past and present.
The lectures are designed to exhibit not only the themes and techniques of great literature but also to expose the power and limitations of different analytic tools—feminism, Marxism, Freudianism, deconstruction, “close reading,” and others—in assisting our understanding of these monuments of the human spirit.