GREAT WORKS IN DIALOGUE:THE SELF IN RELATIONSHIP

In this class we continue our two-year sequence of seminars, where students come together to read great texts of philosophy, religion, and literature and to discuss the enduring questions these texts examine. We plan to offer you a long-term engagement with some of the monumental works and thinkers of the past and present. We will encourage you to challenge your own and others' ideas in the light of a rich, thought-provoking text.

Each quarter of this two-year sequence will focus on three texts in literature, philosophy, and/or religious thought, chosen both for the intrinsic value of their ideas and for the models they present of intellectual and cultural inquiry. The class format will be organized around short lectures and discussion. Your instructors will begin discussion with short introductory lectures, delivered to the two sections as a group. Afterward, we’ll break into our two smaller sections to discuss the work in greater depth.
By creating a sustained dialogue with these great works, we hope to foster an environment in which you, as individuals and as a group, can develop a clearer understanding of rich and profound pieces of writing. Our goals will be

• to develop your abilities to read complex texts closely, deeply, and comparatively;
• to heighten your sensitivity to the interrelationships among our texts, as well as to their aesthetic and formal qualities;
• to help you understand some aspects of the historical and cultural contexts that produced and celebrated our texts;
• and finally, to deepen your appreciation of the enduring influence and importance of these works.

THE SELF IN RELATIONSHIP: COURSE DESCRIPTION

This quarter of the Great Works sequence will concentrate on the theme of the self in relationship. We begin with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and its colorful assortment of pilgrims as they make their way to Canterbury, conversing, satirizing, and arguing with each other through tales that give us unforgettable insight into their personalities, vices, aspirations, and social positions, along with the unique institutions of 14th-century Europe. Our second text, King Lear, delves into the passions and excesses of human nature as Shakespeare’s characters evolve on stage, and their motivations, their personalities and their stormy relationships emerge in one great act after another until the heart-rending resolution of the play. The final work of the sequence, Frankenstein, also wrestles with the issue of the self in relationship, but Mary Shelley gives her tale a unique combination of the macabre and the mythic, forcing us to question not only our relationship to others, but also our relationship to our “maker.”

REQUIRED TEXTS (available at Stanford Bookstore)

The books listed below have been ordered for this course, but any edition of these texts is acceptable.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: An Interlinear Translation, trans. Hopper (Barron’s)
Shakespeare, King Lear (Oxford)
Shelley, Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)

Instructors

Cheri Ross
Associate Director, Introduction to the Humanities
Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Edward Steidle
Lecturer in English

Richard Cushman
Lecturer in English