Honors 252: Honors Seminar in Literature and Philosophy
Catalog Description: An exploration through readings and discussion of the expression of human values in selected literary and philosophical works of Western civilization from the Romantic period to the present.
Purpose and Course Objectives: HON 252 is an honors humanities course that introduces students to significant themes in Western culture, using readings from world literature and philosophy. It explores two broad questions: "How should people live their lives?" and "How do people live their lives?" Within this framework the course will look at many related themes, especially those concerning the emergence of different epistemological, ethical, and political ideals or responses to life. A corollary purpose is to improve the rhetorical skills, both oral and written, of Honors students.
Content Outline: The course is arranged chronologically, beginning with the Renaissance (not the Romantic period, as the catalog description has it) and moving to the present.
Instructional Activities: Mondays the entire class will meet together for discussion of the assigned reading material and short background lectures by the instructor. On Tuesdays and Thursdays smaller groups will meet in discussion sections. On days when the class is discussing works about which students have paper assignments, those students may pose their topic question to the class and ask for ideas during a fifteen-minute portion of the hour. Specific questions or problems related to the readings will sometimes be discussed in small groups, which will then report to the rest of the class.
Materials Required for the Course:
Humanities 202: Supplementary Text, Fourth Edition (MSU Press)
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (Pocket Books)
Negri, ed., Great Sonnets (Dover)
Voltaire, Candide (Dover).
Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Dover)
Keats, Lyric Poems (Dover)
Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Dover)
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons (Signet)
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Dover)
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (Norton)
Ibsen, Hedda Gabler (Dover)
Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dover)
Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (Dover)
Tan, The Joy Luck Club (Ivy Books)
Written Work: There will be two hourly examinations and a final examination. There will be two original papers, on interpretive, comparative, or analytical topics
dealing with the assigned readings and sometimes asking for additional research or readings. These are to be typed and should be 800-1000 words each. We need to have a brief discussion about your topic before you start work on it; I am always happy to have further discussions with you as you proceed and to read a first draft and provide suggestions for improvement before the paper is due.
Grades: Your grade for the course will be based on the percentage of the total possible number of points you achieve, according to the following scale: %90 100=
A; %80 89= B; %65 79= C; %50 64= D; %0 49= E. Examinations will have 100 possible points each; papers 100 points each; I give frequent quizzes to encourage keeping up with the reading: cumulative quiz score 100 possible points. Class participation will have 100 points possible.
Absences and Punctuality: This is a discussion course that needs your presence. Absences up to three will be tolerated. Each absence beyond three will reduce
your grade one third of a letter grade. No student missing more than nine class meetings will pass the course. Please come to class on time. Quizzes cannot be made up, but you may take one in advance of an anticipated absence, and I will throw out at least two of the lowest quiz grades, so that one or two unanticipated absences will not hurt your grade.
Conferences: Please stop by my office whenever you feel like talking or need help or advice. If my office hours are not convenient, I'll be happy to make appointments for other times. Call me at home if you have a question.
Schedule of Readings: We will go through the material in the following order, with the approximate number of days devoted to each work as indicated and exams where indicated. Read the whole selection unless otherwise noted.
4. Sonnets by Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton in Great Sonnets
5. Bacon (in Supplementary Text)
6. Hobbes " "
7. Locke " "
8. Declaration of Independence " "
9. Hume " "
10. Candide, pp. 1-47
11. Candide, pp.48-94
12. Pride and Prejudice, pp. 1-72
13. " " pp. 73-132
14. " " pp. 132-188
15. " " pp. 188-262
HON 252 Papers
You will write two papers of 800-1000 words each during the semester. The topics will be distributed by lottery. You may exchange topics with each other, but
you must let me know immediately if you have done so. Due dates vary according to topic; papers are due two class meetings after the work is discussed in class, except for the topic on The Joy Luck Club, which is due the last day of class. See the online Directions for Papers for instructions about manuscript form and documentation style.
Topics
1. How much of the plots of Much Ado About Nothing depends on overheard, misheard, or misinterpreted conversations? How does this dependence relate to the themes of the play, specifically to the misunderstandings and other obstacles of love?
2. Compare Don John ("I am not of many words"), Beatrice and Benedick ("Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is thy wit"), and Dogberry and Verges on the use and abuse of words and language. How does the use of language relate to character in these examples? Can you relate the idea of language to the themes of the play, specifically to the misunderstandings and other obstacles of love?
3. Give modern day examples of two of Bacon's idols, explaining carefully in your own words what the idols are and how your examples illustrate them.
4. Compare and contrast Hobbes and Locke on political power.
5. Candide's advice, repeated twice at the end of the story, is "we must cultivate our garden." We haven't had quite such an aphoristic reduction of things since the Greeks' "Nothing too much" and "Know thyself." What does Candide mean by his injunction to "cultivate our garden"? And how do you know?
6. List some of the targets of the satire in Candide. Which ones come in for the most frequent mocking? Does Voltaire’s distrust of systems (religious, philosophical) echo anything in Bacon?
7. What is the El Dorado episode doing in Candide? What seems to be the point about the relation between happiness and getting what you think you want? What do Cacambo and Candide learn from their visit?
8. Why does Hume assert that belief in Christianity is itself a miracle and how does Christian belief relate to the things he has been talking about reason, testimony, and evidence--in Hume's view of things?
9. In the third chapter of Pride and Prejudice, we meet Darcy for the first time at the Meryton ball. Austen makes a satiric point in this chapter about how the locals' impressions of Darcy, even of his appearance, change, depending on how much money they think he has and whether or not he is willing to dance with anyone. In some ways the whole book is about how impressions are formed and modified. Look at this issue in relation to Elizabeth's impressions of Wickham and Darcy. For comparison, how are Jane's impressions of Bingley formed?
10. Discuss the plot in Pride and Prejudice. Consider what Aristotle has to say about plot in the Poetics and decide how much of his discussion might be applicable to a novel plot like this one (he’s talking about tragedy, and P&P isn’t a tragedy). Pay attention to the relation of character to plot and consider symmetry in the plot, the role of coincidence, and Aristotle's requirement of necessary causal connection in the plot.
11. One of the things that leads Elizabeth to turn down Darcy's proposal is her anger at his interference in his friend Bingley's romance with Elizabeth's sister Jane. In order for our and Elizabeth's antipathy to Darcy to change, we have to get past the idea of Darcy as an interfering busybody and Bingley as a wishy-washy wuss. How does Austen do that? Clues: start looking early in the book, check out what we learn about Bingley's character when Elizabeth is nursing Jane at Netherfield, and don't neglect that conversation between Charlotte Lucas and Elizabeth about how much you need to know about a man before you marry him.
12. At one point in Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth says to Jane, "There are few people whom I really love and even fewer of whom I think well." Consider this remark, what Elizabeth means by it, how it relates to the way she goes about choosing a marriage partner, and what it says about the tone of the book. Discuss this remark in the context of the whole book, in other words.
13. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Communist Manifesto were published within three years of each other, both with the purpose of helping to free oppressed classes. Compare them rhetorically; that is, consider the choices the writers have made in terms of what they included and excluded, how they arranged their materials, and what these choices have to do with their intended audiences and intended effects on these audiences.
14. What is the "transvaluation of values" that Nietzsche presents? How do "master morality" and "slave morality" differ from each other and why? What is their relationship to conventional morality?
15. Why does Nietzsche think Christianity and its moral code a great disaster for civilization? Reread the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, Chs. 5-7) and consider Nietzsche's critique not just of the Christian virtues of meekness, turning the other cheek, etc., but also what he has to say about the reasons society does not forbid the attitude of mind that gives rise to actions law does forbid--the attitude of mind that Jesus does forbid.
16. Consider the four readings by Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and Turgenev; how might they help illuminate each other?. Does Marx give any insights into the characters in Turgenev’s novel, or is Turgenev a subtler reader of class conflict and distinctions than Marx? Does reading Freud help make more sense of any of the struggles between love and idealism in Turgenev? Does Bazarov imagine himself a Nietzschean master-type?
17. Fathers and Sons ends with two marriages like Pride and Prejudice and, as in that book, the narrator takes us forward in time to see what happens to the principals. Are there any other similarities between the two books? What are the most significant differences?
18. Compare the comic use of alter egos or doppelgängers in The Importane of Being Earnest with the more serious treatment in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
19. Stevenson can’t have read Freud before writing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But can Freud help in our reading of it?
20. Why does Wilde call his play The Importance of Being Earnest?
21. Argue, discussing at least two mother/daughter relationships in The Joy Luck Club, that the mothers are more interesting than the daughters, or vice versa.
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Other Syllabi
Curriculum Vitae
Instructions for Class Papers
Send comments to michael.cohen@murraystate.edu