Encounters With Literature

Every writer hopes for good readers, those who trust that engaged reading will be repaid. We will read works - stories, poems, and plays - that have earned that trust by rendering enduring human concerns in fresh and compelling ways. We will read closely, thinking about the relations between subject and technique, poetry and prose, and the design of the book and its contents. Assignments will require mastery and imaginative questioning of the literature and of critical matters. Come prepared to enjoy ancient and modern literature, those written in English and those translated into it, and to expand your sense of what it is to be human.