TOLD AND RETOLD: REVISITING LITERARY CLASSICS (FYS 136)

Our course explores Western classics which have been adapted and retold in our own century in literature and film. We read both original and contemporary versions as we explore various historical, societal, and literary issues central to these works and attempt to discern what these retellings of enduring literary works convey to us about our own era.

Reading List:

• Beowulf (c. 450-1100) E. Talbot Donaldson, tr.
• John Gardner, Grendel (1971
• Film: Wolfen (1981)

• Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzifal (13th c.)
• Bernard Malamud, The Natural (1952)
• Film: The Fisher King (1991)

• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1601)
• Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967)
• Film: Hamlet [Mel Gibson] (1990)
• Film: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

• Homer, The Odyssey (8th c. BCE) [Audiotape, Fagles, tr.] (1996)
• Derek Walcott, Omeros (1990)
• Ulysses (Based on novel by James Joyce) (1967)

Note:The texts are not arranged chronologically because Walcott's Omeros is a very difficult work and will function as the culmination of the course.

History Reports

1. Anglo SaxonComitatus
2. Ship Burial at Sutton Hoo
3. The Alienated Society of the 1950's
4. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's
5. Medieval Chivalry: The Tournament and the Challenge
6. Courtly Love
7. The Historical King Arthur
8. The Baseball Player as Hero
9. The Renaissance Man
10. Varieties of Tragedy
11. Existentialism
12. The Trojan War
13. Societal Values in Ancient Greece
14. Goddesses and Women in Ancient Greece
15. Jamaica: A Socioeconomic Picture
16. Derek Walcott and the Postcolonial Critic

Student Associate: Sally Vater

Janet M. Powers
Adj. Associate Professor
Gettysburg College
Gettysburg, PA 17325
E-mail: jpowers@gettysburg.edu
FAX: 717-337-6172 PHONE: 717-337-6159