HIGH SCHOOL 2011–2012
Renaissance Literature
In this course students will be exposed to selected works of early modern English literature in a variety of genres: prose, verse, and dramatic. Students will gain a sense not only of generic difference and expectation but also of the themes, concerns, and preoccupations of the era that produced these pieces of literature. We shall begin with a prose work by Sir Thomas More, his History of King Richard III, which will familiarize students with the cadences of early modern English; likewise, it narrates the House of Tudor’s party line about the wickedness and depravity of King Richard III—a theme to which subsequent Tudor-period writers, most notably Shakespeare, would return. Following this we shall move on to examples of early modern English drama, probably Christopher Marlowe’s Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and Ben Johnson’s The Alchemist. As well, we shall read an example of a highly popular literary form, that of the city comedy, a type of lighthearted play (such as Philip Massenger’s City Madam) staged for profit in the first decades of the seventeenth century. We shall also read samples of the period’s highest literary form, Shakespeare’s sonnets, at the end of the year.
The Art of Non-Fiction
This class is devoted to examining the range of possibilities for what is termed ‘non-fiction’. The students will read a variety of articles, essays, speeches, and criticism by writers and thinkers like Virginia Woolf, Jack London, Stephen Crane, Michel de Montaigne, Abraham Lincoln, Henry David Thoreau, Joan Didion, Martin Luther King, Tom Wolfe, Roger Angell, E.B. White, and James Baldwin. We will also look at long-form journalism and memoir, reading works like John McPhee’s Oranges and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. The students will even explore the edges of what we might consider non-fiction when reading lyrical essays and poetry collections by writers like Lydia Davis, Gertrude Stein, and Thom Gunn. Throughout the year students will read a handful of short novels so that they can continue to hone their analytical writing skills.
Literature of Revenge
“Revenge is mine,” says the god of the Old Testament, but the full range of literature shows us myriad men and women who have their hearts set on vengeance. From Homer to Shakespeare to Hardy, writers have examined the human struggle with the desire for revenge. Probable authors include: Euripides, William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry James, and Jean Genet.
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Science, Magic, and Madness (2010–2011)
Throughout the history of literature, writers have relied on stories that transgress the boundaries of reality as we know it. The best works do this not to escape the world we know but to reflect back something true about human nature. This course is a broad survey of works that employ the magical, the supernatural, or the futuristic to hold a mirror up to our own world and make us question truths that we hold self-evident. How much control does man have over his own nature? How well do we really understand the human condition? These are questions that the best of this literature raises. Reading may include: Euripides’ The Bacchae, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Huxley’s Brave New World, Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and Sartre’s No Exit.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton (2010–2011)
This course examines major English authors of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Students will become familiar with the development of medieval and early modern English poetic conventions and examine how successive generations of English poets built upon the works of their predecessors. We shall also be attentive to such matters as genre, historical context, and the linguistic development of the English language. All readings will be done in the original, from Chaucer's Middle English through Elizabethan and seventeenth-century English.
Writing and Transformation (2010–2011)
"In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora"
--Ovid Metamorphoses, Book I
Ovid saw the idea of bodies that change as an underlying junction where all stories meet: the world fluctuates and art tries to capture those changes. This course is devoted to texts that deal with changing bodies, developing minds, and shifting beliefs. How does a person transform into an artist, and how does literature deal with states of flux? What is it like to capture the moment of becoming, whether it is a man becoming a writer, a woman becoming her own brother, or a text becoming itself? Works may include Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, as well as poems and essays by a range of 20th century authors such as: Graham Greene, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Walter Benjamin, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and John Ashbery. This class will ask students to create a wide range of written work, especially creative work that examines how art and identity are formed or created.
American Literature (2009 – 2010)
“The fondest dream of
every American boy
is to go to work and use
his father’s typewriter”
Frank O’Hara
This is a literature course designed for students who are currently taking the American History course. The work of this class will introduce the students to many seminal works in the literature of the United States, exploring a wide-range of ideas about American identity and character. What kinds of stories do Americans tell? What is American diction and how has it changed over time? How has the history of this country shaped its literature, and how, in return, has literature changed the face of this nation? In addition, this course is structured to help students become stronger independent prose readers and to familiarize them with the canon of American poetry. Probable authors include: Hawthorne, De Tocqueville, Whitman, Dickinson, Wharton, Crane, Cather, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, O’Neill, Hughes, Larsen, Williams, Moore, Lowell, Bishop, Baldwin, Capote, O’Connor, Faulkner, and others.
Chaucer (2009 – 2010)
The Chaucer course is intended to acquaint students with Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as well as Chaucer’s “Middle” English, the direct forerunner and ancestor of our own language. Extensive, collaborative analysis of primary texts will be the norm; enjoyment and understanding are our twin goals. Accordingly, students and teacher alike will read through the bulk of the Canterbury Tales with attention to poetic form and genre as well as to the contours of Chaucer’s English. The course begins with the “General Prologue” and proceeds from Chaucer’s shorter and more accessible tales to his lengthier works.
The Gothic Novel (2008 – 2009)
This course explores the rise of the English novel through a study of Gothic Romantic texts. Students will become familiar with the major ideas that took hold during the Romantic era and will examine how those ideas influenced later British fiction. They will explore novels that deal with universal themes: spirituality, love, passion, obsession, hatred, jealousy, good versus evil, and the nature of mankind. In addition to creative writing, the students are expected to work on expository assignments that respond to what they are reading. Possible works include: Lewis’ The Monk, Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Collins’ The Woman in White, and Stoker’s Dracula.
Poetry and the Novel (2008 – 2009)
This course examines the elemental relationship between poetry and prose in English and American literature while focusing on understanding themes of alienation from modern society. Prose selections for this course include: Tess of the D’Urbervilles , The Great Gatsby and Frankenstein. Verse texts include: Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Mont Blanc”, Books I-III of Paradise Lost, selections of Hardy’s later poetry, Eliot’s The Waste Land and Four Quartets and Hamlet. Student writing for this course includes analyses of Hardy’s characters; expositions of conflict between Nature and the pursuit of scientific knowledge; and philosophical investigations into Eliot’s poetry. In addition, students memorize poetry, keep journals on their reading, and write creative sketches and poetry.
Russian Literature (2007 – 2008)
When Alexander Pushkin wrote Evgeny Onegin, his novel in verse, he ushered in one of the richest literary traditions of the western world: the Russian novel. This course introduces students to two centuries of Russian literature, giving them a foundation in the many social, political, and cultural ideas that arose during this time. Much of Russian literature captivates readers because of its blend of deep philosophical thinking and an abiding folklore. From Gogol’s bizarre Saint Petersburg tales to Dostoevsky’s examination of evil to Chekhov’s contributions to modern drama, the power of Russian literature is undeniable. Possible authors include: Pushkin, Gogol, Lermentov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Turgenev, Chekhov, Bulgakov, and Solzhenitsyn.
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