Conclusions

I. Conclusions: The Past and the Future of Literature

A. Romanticism

B. The Later Nineteenth Century

C. The Modern World

D. Literary Knowledge

E. The Value of Literature

II. Review: The Big Issues

A. Power: Monarchy, Nobility, and the Bourgeoisie

B. Duty and Desire

C. Society and Identity

D. Secular and Religious Authority

E. Appearance, Knowledge, and Existence

F. The Rational Mind

III. The Authors and Works: Before the Midterm

A.  Boccaccio’s Decameron

1. Fourteenth century

2. Collection of stories, ten days

3. Secular, bourgeois perspective

4. Surviving the plague

5. Desire and life

B. Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron

1. Early sixteenth century

2. Similar to Decameron, but different in tone and outlook

3. A Queen tells us how to behave

4. Wars of the Reformation

5. Duty, honor, and desire

C. Lope de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna

1. Late sixteenth-early seventeenth century

2. Play, historical drama

3. From feudalism to monarchy

4. Honor and justice

5. The obligations of subject and sovereign

D. Shakespeare’s Sonnets

1. Late sixteenth-early seventeenth century

2. Lyric poetry—sonnet form

3. Consciousness, interior life

4. Beauty and personal matters

E. Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy

1. Early seventeenth century

2. Philosophical essay

3. Geometry and a priori truth

4. Existence of God and the soul

5. Knowledge from authority or from methodical proof

IV. Authors and Works: After the Midterm

A. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

1. Early eighteenth century

2. Satire

3. Power and politics

4. Colonialism and exploitation

5. Slavery

B. Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro

1. Late eighteenth century

2. Opera buffa (comic opera)

3. Music and mastery

4. Pretense and role playing

5. The consent of the governed

6. The rights of the individual

IV. The Value of Literature

A. Liberal Education: The Education of a Free Mind

B. Transferable Skills: Thought and Adaptation

C. Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book XIII

Though men return to servitude as fast

As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame

By Nations sink together, we shall still

Find solace in the knowledge which we have,

Blessed with true happiness if we may be

United helpers forward of a day

Of firmer trust, joint-labourers in the work

(Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe)

Of their redemption, surely yet to come.

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak

A lasting inspiration, sanctified

By reason and by truth; what we have loved

Others will love; and we may teach them how;

Instruct them how the mind of man becomes

A thousand times more beautiful than the earth

On which he dwells, above this Frame of things

(Which, ‘mid all revolutions in the hopes

And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged)

In beauty exalted, as it is itself

Of substance and of fabric more divine.