Ashkenas English 252, World Literature Two
Textbooks:
Candide, by Voltaire.
Translated by
Lowell Bair. (Bantam Classic edition)
Madame Bovary,
by
Flaubert. Translated by Lowell Bair.
(Bantam Classic edition.)
Notes from Underground,
by Dostoevsky.
Translated by
Mirra Ginsburg. (Bantam Classic edition.)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich,
by Tolstoy. Translated by Lynn Solotaroff.
(Bantam Classic edition.)
Metamorphosis
and the Trial, by Kafka.
Translated by David Wyllie.
(Borders Classics edition.)
Telling
Tales, edited by Nadine Gordimer. (Picador.)
The
Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami.
(Vintage.)
If substitutions are unnecessary because of
unavailability, I’ll let you know.
Several films, such as a documentary film on the French Revolution and films
of related fictional works like Gulliver’s
Travels, will also be shown as part of the course. We may also see film versions of some of the
works we read, notably Kafka’s
The Trial.
To contact the teacher:
Here’s my office e-mail address: dashkenas@nvcc.edu It’s the best way to reach me.
Web page address, including the link to my syllabus: http://www.nvcc.edu/home/dashkenas/252SYLLABUS.htm
You will need to know how to access links off the 252 Syllabus on my web page. This course is not on Blackboard yet, and there are handouts you'll need to get. You should be able to get to the 252 Syllabus on my web page using the above address. If that doesn't work, you can also get to my web page from the College home page. Just type my name in the "Search" box in the upper right hand corner and scroll down the links that come up until you see "252 Syllabus." If that doesn't work, click on "Faculty and Staff" on the right hand menu, then "Offices and Directories," then "Faculty/Staff Directory," then "Alphabetical Listing," then "A." Scroll down the "A" list till you get to my last name, "Ashkenas." Click on that, click on my web page address, then click on the 252 Syllabus. Then scroll down to the desired link at the end and open it.
Office hours: TBA
The class calendar will be published
separately.
ATTENDANCE IS PART OF THE COURSE. You may be
withdrawn without your knowledge or consent if you miss more than 3 classes.
Even if I don’t do that, expect a failure to attend class to affect your grade
in some way, even if you don’t miss that many classes, or even if you have a
habitual problem with coming late or leaving early.
Course pre-requisites: You should have completed and passed both English 111 and English 112 before enrolling in this course. You need not have passed English 251. You may also take English 251 and English 252 concurrently, but you should not take either literature seminar concurrently with English 112.
While we probably won’t have time to read and
discuss everything I’d like to in the next 16 weeks, I’ve narrowed the
selections down quite a bit. I’m sure I’m leaving out important and worthy
works. But the "short list" I’ve contrived would--were we to study
all of it--do a pretty good job of giving you a picture of the state of modern
man from diverse geo-cultural perspectives. What I think will surprise you is
how similar the different authors' concerns are. That, I hope, will be the great revelation in this course.
A word on grades: They aren’t the most important thing you’ll
get, in this course or any course. The two most important things you’ll get here
are (1) information about what people all over the world see as the problems of
modernity, and (2) feedback about how analytically and imaginatively you
think--in other words, how well you respond to problems posed by others. You
won’t get either of these two things from the course unless you read the
material in its original form and write your own thoughts about it, either on
exams or out-of-class papers. (We may have both types of assignments, though in
general I prefer in-class work.) Study guides and critical texts exist both on
the Internet and in the library for some of these works. If you read these
guides and copy words or ideas from them without documentation, you’re guilty of
plagiarism, a form of academic dishonesty. But more importantly, you'll have
found a short-cut around thinking about these ideas for yourself, which is not
what college is supposed to be about. If you do this and I catch you, I
reserve the right to withdraw you from the course.
OTHER COURSE MATERIALS:
Some of the handouts for this class can be
downloaded directly by clicking on the links below on this syllabus. After
today, most of these
handouts will not be distributed in class. If you can’t download handouts from
the syllabus on the web page, ask me. If
a handout is not available for downloading from the web page, I’ll distribute
copies in class. NOTE: Since I last taught this course several years
ago, some of these handouts probably need to be
Background Links:
Introduction to the world literature sequence.
Review of literary terms from English 112
Quotes from Voltaire (topics for writing)
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, Part One.
Questions on Notes from the Underground, Parts One and Two.
Symbolism (topics for writing).
News stories (topics for writing).