"O for a Muse of fire": The Land and Literature of England

W. Shakespeare, G. Chaucer, J. Milton, J. Austen and T. S. Eliot

JUNE 14 - JUNE 27, 2013

What made these authors great? Why do their works endure? What do they tell us about their times and what do they tell us about ours? What do they tell us of living well or nobly? These questions and more arise in a broad yet intensive survey of select English authors. Enduring works reveal perennial truths about the human conditions as well as reflect on urgencies particular to their own day. This course will study the ideas and historical influences behind such works, all the while looking at the light great authors shed on the nature of a good or worthy life. Traveling to the scenes and places that filled these authors' imaginations, students will deepen their understanding of great texts through the landscapes, the people, and the architecture that inspired them.

Earn three college credits in English with members of the Hillsdale College faculty and discover some of the greatest minds and works in the English literary tradition. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and others illuminate what it means to be human, caught up in the mystery and sweep  of events and actions, choices and consequences. Despite differences in literary era, genre, style and historical imagination, these authors nevertheless share a fascination in the conduct of a good and noble life—its moral, intellectual and aesthetic qualities—and fashion in their works lively reflections on the elements of such a life. The “little globe” of England—its land and castles, villages and towns, churches and cities, colleges and forests—filled their imaginations and shaped their writings about human greatness and a good life.  Study select works by these great authors and deepen your understanding of them by experiencing much of the England they knew.

Lectures will be presented by:

• Dr. David Whalen, Provost; Professor of English; Ph.D., University of Kansas; teaches Rhetoric and the Great Books, Renaissance literature, the English novel
• Dr. Steve Smith, Associate Professor of English; Ph.D., University of Dallas; teaches Rhetoric and the Great Books, Renaissance literature, 18th-Century literature
• Dr. Bradley Birzer, Professor of History; holds the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies; Ph.D., Indiana University; teaches American Heritage, Jacksonian America, Sectionalism and the American Civil War; author of J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth (2003) and The Inklings and the Bardic Tradition in the Twentieth Century (2009).