Weekly World Literature: Stories Across Time & Culture for Teens & Tweens

Discover how literature changes, shaped history, and continues to influence our world today. This ongoing course will deepen your understanding of literature and history connects. Longer texts will be read outside of class and discussed in class. Shorter texts will be read during class and discussed.

This class is perfect for readers that want to expand their scope, history lovers, or anyone just curious about world history and literary culture. Texts such as these are also commonly encountered on the SAT/PSAT/ACT. 

Note that students should be reading at a 9th grade reading level (minimum) in order to join. Text are appropriate for ages 10+

Comprehension questions and critical thinking writing responses are available with optional feedback each week.

Schedule in Class:
1. Warmup Discussion Question/Critical Thinking
2. Close Read/Analyze with Literary Elements

Unit 1: Literature of the Ancient World (Mesopotamian, Egyptian & Hebrew Literature, Literature of India)

Week of 1/17: Mesopotamian Text: Epic of Gilgamesh Excerpt (READ OUT OF CLASS)

Week of 1/24: Egyptian Literature: from the Book of the Dead, Adoration of the Disk, and "The Translator at Work: Decoding Hieroglyphics"

Week of 1/31: Hebrew Literature: from Genesis:
Creation and the Fall and Noah and the Flood, Psalms 23, 104, The Parable of the Prodigal Son

Week of 2/7: Mayan Literature: Popol Vuh

Week of 2/14: Indian Literature: from the Mahabharata Arjuna, the Mighty Archer, 

Week of 2/21 from the Ramayana Rama and Ravana in Battle

Unit 2: Literature of Ancient Greece and Rome

Week of 2/28: From the Iliad by Homer (READ OUT OF CLASS)
from Book 1: The Rage of Achilles
from Book 6: Hector Returns to Troy
from Book 22: The Death of Hector
from Book 24: Achilles and Priam

Date TBA--By Sappho "to an army wife, in Sardis"
"He Is More Than a Hero," "To Aphrodite of the Flowers, at Knossos"

Date TBA--Plato: from the Apology

Date TBA--Sophocles "Oedipus the King" (READ OUT OF CLASS) 

Date TBA--Virgil from the Aenid "The Fall of Troy," Helen of Troy, to Helen

Date TBA--Ovid from "Metamorphoses"

Unit 3: Literature of Ancient China and Japan

Date TBA--Confucius from the Analects

Date TBA--Lao-tzu from Tao Te Ching

Date TBA--Chuang Tzu: The Fish Rejoice

Date TBA--Chinese Poetry Part 1
Anonymous: from the book of Odes, Mulberry on the Lowland, We Pick Ferns

Date TBA--Chinese Poetry Part 2: Li Po's The River-Merchant's Wife, Gazing at the Lu Mountain Waterfall

Date TBA--Tu Fu: Dreaming of Li Po, Jade Flower Palace

Date TBA--Ozymandias

Date TBA--Japan: Zen Parables, from The Pillow Book
 
Unit 4: Persian and Arabic Literature
Date TBA--From The Thousand and One Nights
Date TBA--The Second Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor

Date TBA--Rumi: Birdsong from Inside the Egg, The Grasses

Date TBA--Sadi: From the Gulistan

Unit 5: West African Oral Literature

Date TBA--Fulani "How the World was Created from a Drop of Milk"

Date TBA--The First Bard Among the Soninke

Date TBA--Mandinka: Childhood and The Lion's Awakening

Date TBA--Trickster Tales: Ashanti, Lakota

Date TBA--West African Proverbs

Unit 5: West African Oral Literature

Unit 6: Literature of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance & Enlightenment

From Dante's Inferno (Cantos 1, 3, 5, 34)

Sir Thomas More: from Utopia

Shakespeare Excerpts and Sonnets

Unit 7: The Age of Romanticism and the Emergence of Realism

Unit 8: Responses to War and Conflict