Study Guide
COURSE OUTLINE
Instructions:
The Topics Units listed
below provide links to materials found both on this CD-ROM and to external
resources, including both Internet and print materials. These are useful in the study of the hero and
follow the outline of our course.
Topic 1: The Study of
Literature
Read
the following units:
“How to Read a Short Story Critically”
“How to Write an Analytical Essay about Short Fiction”
“Some Approaches to Literary Criticism”
Sample
Essay:
“Tragedy and the Ethics of Responsibility”
Textual
Read
“from Three Dirges” (in the e-Course website)
Topic 2: The Hero
Read
the following units (in the e-Course website):
“The Heroic Character in Literature”
“Types
of Literary Heroes”
“How to Analyze Imaginative Literature for Heroic
Character, Patterns, and Symbols”
Topic 3: The Tragic
Hero
Read
the following units:
“Philosophical
Background for the Hellenistic Age”
Textual
Read
“Oedipus The King” (video)
Topic 4: The
Archetypal Hero
Read
the following units:
“The Archetypal Heroic Cycles”
Topic 5: The
Archetypal Hero: Applications in Classic American Literature
Textual
Topic 6: The
Shakespeare Hero
Read
the following units:
“The
Elizabethan Stage”
“The
Seventeenth-Century Concept of the Tragic”
“The
Tragic Heroes of Shakespeare”
Topic 7: The Modern
Hero
Read
the following units:
Two
Commentaries on Tragedy and the Human Spirit
“Tragedy and the Common Man” (An
Essay by Arthur Miller)
Faulkner and the “End of Man”: The Nobel Prize
Acceptance Speech
Topic 8: The “Pop
Culture” Hero
Read
the following units:
The
Making of a “King” (Online website)
Topic 9: The Anti
Hero/Ironic Hero
Read
the following units:
“The Anti/Ironic Hero and the Modern Temper”
Textual
“Bartleby,
The Scrivener” by Herman Melville (online e-text)
“The Swimmer” by John Cheever (available
through a local library)
This page was last modified on February 10, 2006,
and is maintained by Dr. Geoffrey Grimes.
