Chronological Courses

The Norton Anthology of World Literature in six volumes invites and can support a multitude of different versions of the grand survey course in world or Western literature. The outlines proposed here demonstrate some of the many intersections that occur between texts in different parts and sweeps. Models I and II are two-semester courses. Model I interweaves Western and non-Western materials and assumes that the courses will be taken sequentially. Model II devotes the first semester to a version of a Western core, the second to a non-Western core. Designed chronologically, each semester moves from ancient to contemporary. According to the requirements of your institution, students may enroll in either semester without the other being required; points that link readings from one semester to the next nevertheless are suggested. Model III presents another selection of Western and non-Western texts appropriate for a year-long world literature course with three divisions, the familiar Ancient/Middle/Modern sequence that those on a trimester system find especially congenial to observe. Model IV proposes four heterogeneous quarters that may be taken in sequence as a year’s worth of world literature or as single courses. These outline an assortment of readings without regard for formal generic, periodic, or cultural divisions; the audience envisaged for these shorter sequences includes community college students whose curricula mandate at least one class in world literature.

The object of all these broad surveys is to inculcate in students some understanding of how traditions grow within and across cultures; to inquire why certain kinds of questions have been addressed in certain eras and not in others; to examine the various means by which literature, broadly defined, may express what otherwise is inexpressible. What do genres tell us about the societies and cultures in which they thrive? Why do certain circumstances give rise to forms that lose their currency when circumstances change? Why do other forms never seem to lose their popularity? The answers to such questions are never satisfactory; the effort to address them, however, draws us into fruitful contact with human minds in disparate places.

The first two lists assume fourteen-week semesters, with classes meeting two or three times a week. Rather than specify a precise number of class sessions per assignment, instead they recommend numbers of weeks or portions thereof for each of the term’s readings, divided into easily digestible segments that correspond to the topics that might be emphasized in each session, taking into account students’ abilities to assimilate their work and teachers’ needs to focus each day’s discussion. Whether your class meets in three fifty-minute sessions or two seventy-five-minute sessions or any other arrangement on a weekly basis, the basic proportions of the models proposed should be easy to adapt to your own special circumstances. Running notes for all models show how common concerns emerge, branch out, and recur, allowing for continuing thematic comparisons of cultural attitudes and developing traditions even as the courses simultaneously consider links between chronology and genre.

The models reflect one teacher’s view of how topics might unfold, without implying that only the points noted are worthy of discussion. Similarly, the concluding comments suggest plausible moments for midterm examinations, which, like final exams, ideally provide occasions for students to articulate the ways in which their individual assignments relate to each other. World literature surveys in particular are fruitful ground for comparative and speculative writing, even on the part of first- or second-year college students; short-answer questions to test students’ grasp of details may balance a choice of essay topics, but merely asking students to mark whether statements are true or false degrades the work we are trying to do here and should be avoided.