8/25/2000
Romanticism in World Literature
To fit into the Registrar's computer, the title of this course is
misleadingly printed in the Fredonia Course Offering Bulletin as Romantic
World Lit. Students who participate in the course will find that our
topic is more precisely Romanticism in a variety of forms as it appears
in significant works of literature from several different nations and
cultures. To explore Romanticism we will read and discuss
print and cinematic texts that are Romantic expressions, anti-Romantic
expressions, or partially Romantic expressions. The specific texts we
read change from semester to semester, but some likely to endure are
selctions from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther,
selected poems of William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley,
and John Keats, all of which are Romantic because, in part, of their
historical position of having been written in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries in Europe. Other works not from this
historical period have elements that make them worth studying in our
efforts to understand the concept (or concepts) of Romanticism. Among
these have been Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest;
the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness;
Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane; the Indian epic The Ramayana;
and the writings of
Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Frederick Douglass.
Anyone enrolling in this course should expect to be active in
discussions. To that end, everyone in the class will be assigned at
least one problem to which he or she must respond orally. Each
student will also write two papers (3 to 5 pages each) in response to
specified problems and will write a few shorter, less formal essays
or exercises.
For Fredonia students not majoring in English, this course may be used
to fulfill part of the III B requirement of the General College Program.
The basic textbook will be the Norton Masterpieces of World Literature,
expanded edition, vol. 2. A few other texts will be assigned as well.
I also offer a course in British Romantic Literature.
My office is Fenton Hall 264. Phone: 716 673 3588.
You can reach me by e-mail at:
James.shokoff@fredonia.edu
Other courses I teach regularly are:
