Welcome to the home page for S. Schuman's HC literature classes, HC 101, HC 102, and HC 103. You can read about all three courses below, then click on one.

The Good Life I (HC101, Fall 1999)

How should we live and what should we value? Some of the greatest (and worst) minds in history have attempted to answer this question, none definitively. Yet it must be answered, both by each of us individually and by communities. In this course we will be examining how writers from Ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy created epics, plays, amd dialogues, that confronted the most difficult issues of living together as human beings. We will consider these works from a variety of perspectives: in terms of the ancient forms and ideals they promoted, and in terms of their legacy, both positive and negative. Texts include "The Grand Inquisitor" of Dostoevsky, The Iliad of Homer, the "Apology" and "Crito" of Plato, Antigone, by Sophocles, The Aeneid of Virgil, and The Inferno of Dante. Class time will focus on discussion based on careful reading, with three short papers (2-5 pages), ungraded exercises in class, outside class, and on line, and a final exam.

The Good Life II (HC102, Winter 2000)

Ancient European views of the good life were foundational for some, a source of rebellion for others, and an alternative not available to many. Here we explore the question above as posed by inheritors of ancient Western traditions. How does this question get reshaped and what do we learn today from these efforts? How do the very forms created to express the most significant Medieval, Renaissance, and Neoclassical concers come to buckle under the weight they bear? Readings will include the "Prologue" to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, selected tales, a play by Shakespeare, Aphra Behn's The Rover, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Part IV of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Class time will be spent as described above.

The Good Life III ( , Spring 2000)

At the millenium we are almost too cynical even to ask the question posed above.. Although we crave answers no less than others have over the centuries, we face major obstacles to the asking, let alone the answering, of it. This course will explore some of those obstacles as presented, resisted, or surmounted by some of the finest writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Texts ill include poetry by Keats, Browning, Arnold, Yeats, Hopkins, and Eliot, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Kafka's Metamorphosis, Melville's Benito Cereno, Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor," Morrison's Beloved, and Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions. Class time will be spent as described above, except for one longer paper (8-10 pages), in addition to two shorter ones (2-5 pages).