Faculty Course Description
ENG337: Western Literary Traditions
Dr. Zeynep Tenger
Professor
Office: Evans 206 D
Office phone: 233-4074
e-mail: ztenger@berry.edu
The course is intended to introduce students to masterpieces of Western literary tradition. It is meant to make students aware of the historical (including the political, cultural, religious and moral) forces that affect literary production and reception. The goal is to enable students to develop as informed and critical readers of literary texts and to help them express their reactions to them with precision and clarity. A combination of class lectures, discussions, group projects and research papers will be employed to make certain that students:
a) possess an understanding of an extensive range of literature
b) assess the relationship of works of theory and criticism to works of
literature
c) identify the differences of composition processes in oral and literate
cultures
d) employ critical reading skills to respond to literary texts and
e) understand how historical and cultural circumstances influence literary
production and reception.
TEXTS:
Homer, The Odyssey; Virgil, Aeneid; Dante, Inferno; Cervantes, Don Quixote (Part II); Thomas Mann, Death in Venice; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Erich Auerbach, Mimesis