| |
Apr 24, 2024
|
|
|
|
|
2012-2013 HillBook (Class of 2016) [ARCHIVED HILL BOOK]
|
ENG 115 - The Importance of Being Lazy: Idlers, Loafers, and Slackers in LiteratureThree Credits
Fall Semester
The figure of the shiftless lounger who resists the powerful imperative to work hard (or to work at all) has long been a literary mainstay. In this course we will read works from Shakespeare to Melville and beyond to ask questions about the cultural opposition of work and leisure. You will get acquainted with famous slackers from various significant moments in western cultural history, in poems, dramas, novels, and films—from Shakespeare’s history play Henry IV, Part 1, for instance, in which the heir to the English throne prefers to hang around with sketchy characters in taverns rather than toil at the palace; to Herman Hesse’s novel Narcissus and Goldmund, about an overachiever and a gifted bum; to the “Dude,” a bowling slacker from Los Angeles in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski. You will also read widely in social and cultural history on the subject of idleness, and become familiar with key literary terms and concepts.
Fulfills the Cornerstone Literature requirement.
|
|