Literature of Exploration

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course will introduce students to the literature of travel and exploration. Reading poetry and fiction, we will pay close attention to certain recurrent themes in the genre of the exploration narrative, such as the fascination with the unknown; the threat of monsters, savages, or barbarians; the voyage into the self; the attraction of the “other”; and the mingling of beauty and violence at the scene of discovery. What is the purpose of exploration? How is exploration both a personal and a national project? Who benefits in the end? What is gained and what is destroyed? We will read a wide range of fiction and poetry, beginning with Homer’s _Odyssey_, concentrating mainly on texts from the nineteenth and twentieth century, including Mary Shelley’s _Frankenstein_, Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” Henry Stanley’s African travel narratives, Joseph Conrad’s _Heart of Darkness_, Jean Rhys’s _Wide Sargasso Sea_, and Michael Ondaatje’s _The English Patient_. In discussing and writing about these works, we will place a great deal of emphasis on the use of textual evidence. Students will acquire a basic vocabulary and understanding of literary devices, and will be asked to incorporate this new knowledge into their shorter and longer analytical essays.