Responses range from mild amusement to broad smiles, chuckles, and even painful laughter. Comedy encourages fantasy, provides an outlet for anxiety, and conceives the world in terms that affirm the human condition. Readings may include Aristophanes' Clouds , Plautus' Haunted House , Moliere's Misanthrope or Tartuffe , and works by Chaucer, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Shaw, Wilde, Ionesco, Gogol, or Kundera. Back to top 290. An exploration of the meaning and implications of the literary term picaresque, used generally to describe a narrative relating the episodic adventures of a rogue or adventurer.
Special attention is given to the picaresque hero or heroine.
Works to be read may include Apuleius' The Golden Ass, Lazarillo de Tormes, Defoe's Moll Flanders , Gogol's Dead Souls , Mann's Felix Krull , Grass' The Tin Drum , Kosinski's The Painted Bird . Back to top 310. An introduction to the major works of Greek literature and the Greek contribution to epic and lyric poetry, tragic and comic drama, historiography, and philosophy. Homer, Archilochus,Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato constitute the basic texts. All works are read in English translation.