Dear students, grades for Paper 3 have been posted, and hopefully you received my comments. I want to thank you a final time for your work and patience during the last four weeks. I appreciate your willingness to adapt to online instruction. Please be sure to say hello to me when we are all back on campus in the fall. Have a wonderful rest of the summer.

Ethan Smilie

Welcome to Readings in Western Civilization--a four-week, online class in which you will read three great works of literature. Check out the Coursework page for all of your assignments, the Handouts page for important documents, and the message below for a brief account of the purpose of this course.

If you ever have any questions, email me: esmilie@cofo.edu.

Have fun!

As you embark on this four-week exploration of literature, I think it's worthwhile for you to know your professor's conception of literature. I follow a number of classical and modern thinkers in conceiving the purpose of literature to be twofold. To use the classical terminology, literature is dulce et utile, or sweet and useful. That is, good literature, including the works we study in this class, is entertaining and educative.

As far as the dulce, the sweet and entertaining aspect of literature, I hope it won't take long for you to see how engaging and engrossing our texts are.

The utile--the useful and educative--aspect of literature I think best to view through the lenses of worldviews. Any good work of literature portrays a certain worldview, which answers important questions like what is a human being, why do we exist, how should be interact with one another in various familial, social, and political relationships, what is our relation to the divine, etc. Obviously, not every work will reflect the same worldview that we hold. I'm most interested and excited about how thoughtful analysis of differing worldviews presented in literature can benefit us (if it indeed can) when we do not hold the same worldview.

This class gives us a chance of reading three diverse texts. They are diverse not only generically--a classical epic, a Shakespearean tragedy, and a modern novel--but they are also diverse as far as the predominate worldview they portray. We start with Homer, whose Odyssey is nearly 3,000 years old. This epic poem displays a pagan/pre-Christian worldview and a hero that exemplifies the attributes admired in such an environment. Then, we move on to William Shakespeare's Hamlet, a drama written a little more than 400 years ago. It presents at least one form of a Christian worldview--and maybe more--but it might not be identical to any you hold or are familiar with. Finally, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a novel written less than 100 years ago but set in the future, in a post-Christian world. What can we learn from these texts and what relevance can they have on refining our own worldview? These are the major questions of the class (and they also show up importantly in a couple of your papers!). Have fun.