GREAT WORKS IN DIALOGUE: TRANSFORMATIONS (GWD04)—Fall 2003-2004
Section 1
Cheri Ross
(clross@stanford.edu)
Section 2
Edward Steidle
(steidle@stanford.edu)
Course website: http://www.stanford.edu/group/areaone/clross/
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
In this class we continue a two-year sequence of seminars, where students will come together to read great
texts of philosophy, religion, and literature and to discuss the enduring questions these texts examine. We
plan to offer you a long-term engagement with some of the monumental works and thinkers of the past
and present. We will encourage you to challenge your own and others' ideas in the light of a rich, thoughtprovoking text.
Each quarter of this two-year sequence will focus on three texts in literature, philosophy, and/or religious
thought, chosen both for the intrinsic value of their ideas and for the models they present of intellectual
and cultural inquiry. The class format will be organized around short lectures and discussion. Your
instructors will begin discussion with short introductory lectures, delivered to the two sections as a group.
Afterward, we’ll break into our two smaller sections to discuss the work in greater depth.
By creating a sustained dialogue with these great works, we hope to foster an environment in which you,
as individuals and as a group, can develop a clearer understanding of rich and profound pieces of writing.
Our goals will be
 to develop your abilities to read complex texts closely, deeply, and comparatively;
 to heighten your sensitivity to the interrelationships among our texts, as well as to their aesthetic
and formal qualities;
 to help you understand some aspects of the historical and cultural contexts that produced and
celebrated our texts;
 and finally, to deepen your appreciation of the enduring influence and importance of these works.
THE SELF IN RELATIONSHIP: COURSE DESCRIPTION
This quarter of the Great Works sequence will concentrate on the theme of the self in relationship. We
begin with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and its colorful assortment of pilgrims as they make their way to
Canterbury, conversing, satirizing, and arguing with each other through tales that give us unforgettable
insight into their personalities, vices, aspirations, and social positions, along with the unique institutions
of 14th-century Europe. Our second text, King Lear, delves into the passions and excesses of human nature
as Shakespeare’s characters evolve on stage, and their motivations, their personalities and their stormy
relationships emerge in one great act after another until the heart-rending resolution of the play. The final
work of the sequence, Frankenstein, also wrestles with the issue of the self in relationship, but Mary
Shelley gives her tale a unique combination of the macabre and the mythic, forcing us to question not only
our relationship to others, but also our relationship to our “maker.”
REQUIRED TEXTS (available at Stanford Bookstore)
The books listed below have been ordered for this course, but any edition of these texts is acceptable.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: An Interlinear Translation, trans. Hopper (Barron’s)
Shakespeare, King Lear (Oxford)
Shelley, Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)
COURSE SYLLABUS
Date
Topics and Readings for Class
Study Questions
10/13
Lectures: Introduction to course (Cheri)
Chaucer questions
Chaucer: His World, His Life, His Art (Edward)
Reading: Canterbury Tales: General Prologue
10/20
Lecture: Chaucer’s Art of Juxtaposition (Edward)
Reading: Canterbury Tales: Knight’s Tale, Miller’s
Tale, Reeve’s Tale
10/27
No lecture tonight; go direct to discussion
Reading: Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath’s Tale,
Pardoner’s Tale
11/3
Lecture: More Sinned Against than Sinning? (Cheri)
King Lear questions
Reading: King Lear, Act 1
11/10
Lecture: Lear in the Storm (Cheri)
Reading: Lear, Acts 2-3
11/17
No lecture tonight; go direct to discussion
Reading: Lear, Acts 4-5
11/24
Lecture: Shelley: Romantic Novelist (Edward)
Reading: Frankenstein, pp. 5-86 (Vol. 1, including
Author’s Introduction)
12/1
Lecture: Shelley: Fantasies of the Male Mother (Cheri)
Reading: Frankenstein, pp.87-144 (Vol. 2)
12/8
No lecture tonight; go direct to discussion
Reading: Frankenstein, pp. 145-215
Evaluation; reception
Frankenstein questions