Sections offered SPRING 2022:
#4170
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RICHARD CECIL |
MW 1:15 PM–2:30 PM
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HU 108
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CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit; COLL Intensive Writing section
Above class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html
“What is honor?” asks Falstaff in Act V of Henry IV, pt. 1, and that’s the question we will ask of each of the nine ancient to early modern masterpieces we read in this course. Beginning with Homer’s aristocratic warrior’s code of honor in The Iliad and The Odyssey, and ending with Madame de Lafayette’s sophisticated courtier’s code of honor in The Princess of Cleves, we will investigate the hidden and open assumptions about human behavior that underlie each of these masterpieces’ unstated codes of honor.
Written work for the course will consist of 5 daily written discussion questions, three critical papers of 3-5 pages, and a final 6-10 page creative paper — an original story in which one of the characters from one of the ten works we read encounters a situation which forces her/him to question the code everyone else lives by. These stories will be photocopied and distributed to all members of the class for discussion.
Course texts: Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, Sophocles’s Antigone, Virgil’s The Aeneid, Seneca’s Trojan Women, Njal’s Saga, Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji, Shakespeare’s Henry IV pt.1, and Madame de Lafayette’s Princess of Cleves.