DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND LETTERS

UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

COURSE NUMBER               ENGLISH 12

COURSE TITLE                     World Literatures

COURSE DESCRIPTION      A study of representative/landmark texts from the literatures of the world.

CREDIT                                  3.0 units

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• To read and study a number of the world’s most influential literary texts.

·        To develop critical reading and writing skills with the analysis or interpretation of significant literary texts, which leads to better integration of knowledge and skills.

• To broaden the intellectual and cultural horizons of students through an awareness, understanding, and critical appreciation of the cultures in the representative texts.
• To enhance understanding of the various cultures in the representative texts side by side with Philippine culture and realities.

PRIMARY READING LIST

Choice of 8 from the following:

1.         Homer’s Iliad or Homer’s Odyssey or Vergil’s Aeneid

2.         one Ancient Greek tragedy (by Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides)

3.         Dante’s Divina Comedia (the Inferno, Purgatorio or Paradiso)

4.         from the Bible: The Book of Job or Songs of Solomon

5.         Cervantes Don Quixote

6.         Goethe’s Faust

7.         a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky

8.         a novel by Franz Kafka or Albert Camus

9.         Bhagavad-Gita or Ramayana

10.       Caoxue Qin’s Dream of the Red Chamber

11.       Kalidasa’s Sakoontala/ Shakuntala

12.       Murasaki’s Tale of the Genji

13.       Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of Mankind

14.       Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude

15.       Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

16.       a play or a novel by Wole Soyinka

17.       a novel by Salman Rushdie

Requirements

·        two exams

·        one paper

·        assignments and group projects