Literature with Emphasis in Writing (B.A.)
Courses: Literature
Click on any of the course titles below to see the course’s description:
- LIT 205 Elements of Fiction
- LIT 206 Elements of Literature
- LIT 207 The Bhagavad-Gita
- LIT 302 The Epic
- LIT 305 Native American Literature
- LIT 325 Classics of Greece and Rome
- LIT 328 The Bible as Literature
- LIT 330 Medieval Literature
- LIT 335 Shakespeare’s Festival of Comedy
- LIT 339 Renaissance Literature
- LIT 341 Eighteenth-Century Literature
- LIT 342 The Eighteenth-Century Novel
- LIT 344 Romantic Literature
- LIT 347 Victorian Literature
- LIT 348 Twentieth-Century European Literature
- LIT 350 American Transcendentalism
- LIT 351 Modern American Literature
- LIT 355 Asian Literature
- LIT 356 Contemporary Fiction
- LIT 357 The Hero in Literature
- LIT 359 The Short Story
- LIT 360 Poetry From Speech to Silence
- LIT 361 The Novel
Elements of Fiction: Silence and Dynamism as the Primary Forces of Narrative Literature
In this course students study the structure of the narrative by examining a number of short stories and a novel. Students learn literary terminology, the fundamental elements of fiction, and the art of critical analysis. This course is essential for helping students develop the literary essay, the backbone of writing in the major. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Elements of Literature: Exploring the Full Range of Outer and Inner Life in Poetry, Drama, and the Literary Essay
This course focuses on the various genres of literature and the role of consciousness in interpreting literature. Students build on their knowledge of literary analysis from LIT 205 and add explication to their writing skills. The Elements of Literature course presents the department’s specialty: the unification of various literary approaches and trends. Students read about contemporary insights into the study of literature that support this direction. (4 credits) Prerequisite: LIT 205
The Bhagavad-Gita: The Essence of Veda — Studied as the “Complete Guide to Practical Life,” from Ignorance to Enlightenment
This course will look at the Bhagavad-Gita not only for its insight and inspiration but also for the beauty of its form and language. The primary text of this course will be Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary Chapters 1-6. We will also read the Gita’s last 12 chapters in another translation, a condensed Mahabharata, and The Legend of Bagger Vance, a novel based on the Bhagavad-Gita. We will also look briefly at works by other writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, and T.S. Eliot who have been inspired by the Gita. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
The Epic: Valmiki’s Ramayana as the Ultimate Epic Narrative — The Hero Conquering Ignorance and Realizing the Self
An epic is a long narrative in elevated style about characters of high position who perform extraordinary actions. From the great world epics, students study principles of Maharishi Vedic Science to illuminate the subtleties of language and thought. The primary text of this course is the Ramayana. Other selections may include parts of the Bible and other scriptures, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Goethe’s Faust. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Native American Literature
Modern Native Americans have rediscovered their spiritual heritage through a reclaiming of ancient tribal customs. In this course we will track their spiritual transformation in such works as Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, about the healing and new meaning that comes to the hero’s life. In Frank Waters’s The Man Who Killed the Deer, Martiniano has at a young age lost his spiritual bearings but regains them through a series of profound insights. Black Elk Speaks is a Native American spiritual–autobiography; at its center is Black Elk’s cosmic vision of America’s destiny. These and other works, chronicle what is both profound and tragic in the life of America’s indigenous peoples. Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Classics of Greece and Rome: The Ancient and Eternal Texts of Southern Europe, the Spiritual and Philosophical Sources of the Western Literary Tradition
The literature of ancient Greece and Rome is the source of the Western literary tradition. The Greeks in particular recognized the value of literature as an expression of society’s shared ideals and as a means of developing social unity and harmony. Works studied may include Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid, Greek lyric poetry, plus selections from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus, and Heraclitus. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
The Bible as Literature: The Divine as the Source, Course, and Goal of All Existence
The Bible as Literature is a two-week course meant to introduce students to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, as well as examine it as not only a religious text but also as a literary text. Moreover, we will consider the influence of the Bible on literature and culture. Cultural Literacy as it relates to the Bible is a primary aim of the course. We will look closely at Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, Luke, John, and Revelations among the Bible offerings. We will read an assortment of Biblical-influenced literary texts including: D.H. Lawrence’s The Horse Dealer’ Daughter, Eliot’s Journey of the Magi, Yeats’ Second Coming and The Magi, Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale, Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill, and many others. We will also watch a couple of films inspired by the Bible such as Amadeus and the 7th Seal. (2–4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Medieval Literature: From Beowulf to Malory: The Unceasing Pursuit of Self-Knowledge
This course opens with the heroic ideals of the Anglo-Saxons, runs through the birth and popularization of courtly love, and ends at the doorstep of the European Renaissance. Intrinsically involved with the quest motif, this course charts the pilgrimages in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the adventures of Beowulf, Sir Gawain, and the Arthurian knights (especially those concerned with the quest for the Holy Grail), and Dante’s emergence from the inferno into paradise in the Divine Comedy. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Shakespeare’s Festival of Comedy: The Twin Themes of Shakespeare’s Comic Vision — The Healing Power of Love and the World Upheld by a Divine Order
Comedy is a discovery of perfection, of harmony, of one’s Self, of an underlying spiritual existence. It is the triumph over adversity, fear, and suffering. It is the celebration of life eternal. In this course we will examine the nature of comedy and many of Shakespeare’s favorite themes such as love, order, immortality, and right action. Among the plays we will read are Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Renaissance Literature: Literature’s Rebirth of Knowledge — Beginning in Italy with Petrarch and Completing Its Journey in England with John Milton
The Renaissance was the re-emergence of dynamic social and intellectual activity in the Western world. It marked one of the most vibrant literary, dramatic, and poetic periods in history. Its writers searched for fundamental principles and orderly poetic structures in accord with Natural Law to assist in the full development of human life. Beginning with Petrarch, this course examines some of the greatest Renaissance writers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Wyatt, Spenser, Sidney, Donne, Traherne, Herbert, Vaughn, Marvell, and Milton. Also included are readings from some of the major Renaissance philosophers, courtiers, and scientists. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Eighteenth-Century Literature: The Augustan Age of Pope, Swift, and Dryden — Aspiring to a Life in Perfect Harmony and Balance
This course covers the literature of the Augustan Age, the Restoration, and the Age of Johnson, and considers the period’s emphasis on feelings and rational thought seen in the novel and in the intellectual tenor of the time. Writers include Dryden, Pope, Swift, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Burney, Samuel Johnson, and Jane Austen. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
The Eighteenth-Century Novel: Narrative Fiction, the Dominant Literary Form for Two Centuries — From Defoe to Austen
Like the Renaissance writers before them, eighteenth-century sages saw the spiritual power of nature residing in an orderly universe. They sought to tap that power through their attempts to write about it. The novel, the ultimate fictional statement about universal order, emerged from the diverse social, economic, and political forces of the eighteenth century. This course examines the rise of the novel through three different activities: (1) reading novels from Defoe to Austen, (2) studying the cultural milieu of the eighteenth century, and (3) formulating a theory of the novel and its applications. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Romantic Literature: The Transcendental Scope of Vedic India Finding Its Path to Europe — The Visionary Poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats
This course examines the nineteenth-century Romantic Movement and its escape from the limitations of eighteenth-century rationalism through an emphasis on the divine creative power of the imagination, an exalted perception of poetry and the poet, a sympathy for social renewal, a distrust of industrialization and urbanization, and a rediscovery of the transcendent. Writers include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Percy and Mary Shelley, and Byron. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Victorian Literature: The Attempt to Purify Social Consciousness, Beginning with Romantic Idealism — Tennyson, Eliot, and Thackeray
Victorian literary style reflects a period of transition from the Romantic to the Modern through a blending of profound subjective experience with an awakened consciousness of rapid social change. We will read works by Charlotte Bronte, Carlyle, Tennyson, Arnold, Dickens, George Eliot, the Brownings, Hopkins, and others. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Twentieth-Century European Literature: Turning Away from the Realists’ Superficial Materialism, Finding Solace in the Far East’s Transcendent Wholeness — Yeats, Joyce, Woolf, and Lawrence
Exploring the previously uncharted dimensions of inner life, modern European writers in all genres developed new literary techniques to express the deeper realities of consciousness at the basis of thought and human behavior. Combating the forces of urbanization, isolation, industrialization, and the decline of religion, such modern novelists as Forster, Woolf, Lawrence, and Joyce, and such poets as the French Symbolists, Yeats, Eliot, Thomas, and Auden, took refuge in a transcendental vision of life. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
American Transcendentalism: Self-Determinism and Self-Actualization — The Self as the Primary Theme in Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Dickinson
Heeding the call of Ralph Waldo Emerson to create a truly American literature, American writers explored literary and cultural themes that have originated since Columbus first set foot on this continent: the American Eden, the ideal society, the perfectibility of humanity, Self-reliance, and the individual search for Self. Writers we will consider include Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Dickinson. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Modern American Literature: Transporting Eastern Transcendentalism to the Contemporary World — Eliot, Stevens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner
Reacting to the prosaic objectivism of the realist movement, the decline of Western spirituality, and the moral excess of the industrial revolution and European imperialism, a new movement in the arts called Modernism attempted to take the individual back to the spiritual source of the Transcendentalists and its Oriental transcendental roots. Leaders in this movement included Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Cather (in fiction), and Frost, Eliot, Williams, Stevens, Moore, and Hughes (in poetry). (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Asian Literature: The Spiritual Literature of the Far East, from the Tao of Lao Tsu Forward
In this course, students widen their understanding of the streams of creative expression beyond what has been produced in Western cultures. Emphasis will be on those writers and those texts that possess a good understanding of the work of spirituality. Works to be explored may include Lao Tsu’s Tao de Ching, the writings of Chuang Tze, the Confucian Odes, T’ang poetry, the poetry of Kabir and Tagore, Rumi, and Hafiz, and the fiction of Mishima, Kawabata, and Narayan. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Contemporary Fiction
Contemporary fiction writers are the classics of tomorrow. In these days of multimedia, “fiction” could include films, videos, graphic novels, collages, and other visual media containing a fictional story line. In this course we will read two contemporary novels by authors such as Barbara Kingsolver, Leslie Marmon Silko, R.K. Narayan, Nick Hornby, and Kate Atkinson. We will also read a number of short stories by writers like T.C. Boyle, Alice Munro, and George Saunders and watch recent films of literary quality. Students will write one essay on any author or filmmaker studied in this class, prepare an oral report, including a visual such as a poster or PowerPoint presentation, and submit a creative work. This could be a short story or something visual with a fictional narrative such as a video, a short animation, graphic short story, etc. Students may include a Maharishi Vedic Science component in their analytical essay or create a Main Points Chart to accompany their oral presentation or final project. Prerequisite: STC 108/109
The Hero in Literature
This course will explore the idea of the hero from antiquity to the present. The hero is a larger than life character whose actions affect the fate of a large community for good, or if a tragic hero, for ill. The hero’s behavior (see Arjuna for example) is a model for the ordinary individual. One of the great debates is whether the hero can even exit in the modern world. Among the texts and themes we will follow are: The Odyssey: The Classical Hero; Beowulf: The Germanic Hero; Gawain and the Green Knight: The Medieval Hero; Siddhartha: The Spiritual Hero; and The Bean Trees: The Feminine Hero. Prerequisite: STC 108/109
The Short Story
A short story contains all the elements of the novel in micro form and because it is so compact is an ideal arena for studying literature. In this course we will study some of the world’s greatest short story writers beginning with Romantics Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, then moving to later, more realistic writers such Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Henry James. Afterward, we will read works by such modernist writers as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Flannery O’Connor, finishing up with contemporary writers including Alice Munro, John Updike, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Students will write a short analytical essay on one of the writers studied in the course and will write a short story as the final project. Students may include a Maharishi Vedic Science component in their analytical essay or create a Main Points Chart to accompany their final project. Prerequisite: STC 108/109
Poetry From Speech to Silence : Exploring the Subtleties of Language in Form and Content
This course focuses on contemporary poetry with the aim of awakening students’ awareness to the stylistic techniques that express different visions of wholeness. Poets to be read may include Theodore Roethke, Denise Levertov, James Wright, Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, Richard Wilbur, Elizabeth Bishop, A.R. Ammons, Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, and Jory Graham. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
The Novel: The Flow of Consciousness in Form and Content — The Interaction of Action and Character, Form, and Content in Novelists from Cervantes to Toni Morrison
The novel in the last two centuries has become the literary form of choice. It reigns supreme in conveying the depth, experience, and great complexity of character. Born in the eighteenth century when long narratives — including epics, fables, romances, and picaresque tales — were losing their vitality, the novel became literature’s torch bearer: the primary literary mode for depicting life. This course examines the history, techniques, and forms of the novel, from social realism to meta-fiction, and may include novels from any given period from the eighteenth century onward. (4 credits) Prerequisite: STC 108/109
The content of this page was reviewed in January 2010.
back to top