What to Expect from a World Literature Course

As the name suggests, a world literature course is meant to encompass not only the well-known English authors, but also those from all over the world.

The Need for Dedication

Not surprisingly, a world literature course can be a bit demanding. Especially if you decide to take such a course during a 5 week summer term, you can expect heavy reading assignments. To be able to quickly organize the characters of world literature and the motives they bring to the story so that you can be prepared for the next day's class discussion is a challenge.

Tools and Terminology

A world literature course involves much more than just reading for pleasure as you would in a book club. World literature makes use of certain tools and terminology that will help you analyze the purpose of the reading material as the author intended it to be understood.

World literature can be seen in connection with the other academic tenets of culture and philosophy as these add new meaning to the basic flow of the story.

The story of the white whale and the sea captain who ruthlessly pursued him is an exciting story. And yet, a world literature course will teach you the difference between this theme and its allegorical connection.

Did Captain Ahab simply try and fail to capture Moby Dick? Or, does the whale take on some allegorical meaning, representing the powerful influences of nature that human beings are never supposed to know?

In this, you can see that a world literature course exists on at least two different levels. The tools and terminology of world literature offer the chance to compare similar works by the same author as well as those of different authors.

Literary themes can come off the page as interesting representations of human existence.

The Motives of Authors

As well as being a look into the other academic proposals of culture and philosophy, world literature can show you the motives of those authors who were trapped in the particular confines of historical context.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment (1866), for example, as an expression of bitterness in a time where intellectuals were actively persecuted. The paranoia of the time became his paranoia, projected from an otherwise unblemished idealism that could still only thrive underground.

in sum, you can expect to work hard in a world literature course. You can also expect to gain the ability to compare and contrast between the great variety of literary works and learn to understand them in the way the author intended.