Loyola University Chicago

University Core

Core Knowledge Area: Literary Knowledge & Experience

Learning Outcome: Demonstrate knowledge of, or experience in, literary traditions and expressions.

Throughout time, individuals have demonstrated the desire to know more about one's self, one's environment, and others, and to express this through literature. Literary knowledge and experience examine ways that literary expression is manifested in different types of texts. The study of literary traditions and expressions could focus on what is commonly considered traditional literary texts, as well as on classical rhetoric and textual analysis. The term "text" also includes film, television, magazines, newspapers, essays, and more. Students will have the opportunity to explore literary expression through formal study and creative processes, and to explore literary expression from a variety of perspectives and multiple cultures, including non-Western or non-dominant cultures.

Competencies: By way of example, Loyola graduates should be able to:

  • Study, create, or participate in the creation of some forms of literary production as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process.
  • Acquire the critical and technical vocabulary enabling them to describe and analyze, and formulate an argument about, literary productions.
  • Assess how formal qualities of literary productions determine the nature of the experience offered and affect the response of the audience.
  • Examine multiple interpretive possibilities of any literary work, and know that such interpretations both reflect the culture that produce[d] them and change over time.
  • Assess the relationships of works of literature to the cultural-historical nexus that produce[d] and use[d] them.  


Core Literary Knowledge and Experience Courses (2 courses required)

CLST 271: Classical Mythology
This course explores the fundamental myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans through study of literature involving myth in its historical, social, and cultural context.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the fundamental myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans, their language and possible meanings.
CLST 272: Heroes and Classical Epics
This course examines the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil's Aeneid and endeavors to place these epic poems into their historical, social, and cultural contexts.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the epic as a literary genre and how this genre was presented and evolved to reflect audiences and times.
CLST 273: Classical Tragedy
This course introduces students to ancient Greek and Roman tragedy, the authors of those tragedies, their social, historical, and cultural contexts, and to the performance-circumstances of extant Greek drama.

Outcome: Students will be able to relate the mythical story presented on the stage to moral, social and political issues, as well as to assess the formal and aesthetic properties of the very different plays from Aeschylus' "Agamemnon" to Seneca's "Thyestes."
CLST 279: Classical Rhetoric
This course explores how ancient Greeks and Romans practiced and interrogated the 'craft of speech' (rhetorike techne), specifically persuasive speech, especially as it would be delivered in public settings.

Outcome: Students will learn to assess the relationship of Classical rhetorical literature to the world that produced and used it.
CLST 280: Romance Novel in the Ancient World
This course explores the psychology of love, human sexuality, the relation of lovers to family and society as well as philosophical thought on human erotics in Ancient Greek and Roman literature.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of human experience, namely, love, sexuality, psychology as well as cultural institutions like marriage, the relation of the genders, and the relation of the individual to society.
CLST 283: Classical Comedy and Satire
This course explores the great literary works of the ancient world that combine social criticism with humor.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of various modes of political and social criticism and how humor has worked in the past and how it works for us now.
ENGL 271: Exploring Poetry
This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of poetry; extensive readings and several critical analyses are required.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of poetry's ability to express the deepest and most complex feeling of human beings, how a poem comes to be and be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding poetry.
ENGL 272: Exploring Drama
This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of drama; extensive readings and several critical analyses are required.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of drama's ability to express the deepest and most complex feelings and concerns of human beings as individuals, as family members, and as members of society: the individual's place in the universe, in relation to others, and in relation to the socio-political system that he or she inhabits. Students will also be able to demonstrate understanding of how plays are constructed in different ways to serve different purposes.
ENGL 273: Exploring Fiction
This course focuses on the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of prose fiction.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of fiction as a means of exploring human experience and understanding the creative process, and be able to use the technical vocabulary necessary for understanding fiction.
ENGL 274: Exploring Shakespeare
This course focuses on the works of Shakespeare as literature and as theatre, covering at least three of the four genres (comedy, history, tragedy, romance).

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the thetrical and poetic works of Shakespeare, such elements of drama as plot, character, theme, imagery, and verse forms, as well as the personal, political and theatrical world in which Shakespeare lived and worked.
ENGL 282: African American Literature (D)
This course focuses on the study of texts written by and/or about African Americans; authors may include Douglass, Wright, Baldwin, Hughes, Hurston, Morrison, and Walker.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the particular significance of literacy and writing to African Americans, a group for whom textual production served a variety of purposes.
ENGL 283: Women in Literature
This course focuses on the representation of women in literature, as discuseed in a variety of literary works.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the representations of women in various periods of literary history and diverse cultural contexts.
ENGL 287: Religion and Literature
This course introduces the study of literature and religion as a contemporary academic field of inquiry. It aims to explain and illustrate the nature and theoretical strategies of a literary-religious interpretive approach to texts, and to encourage an appreciation of it as a valuable and productive way of reading.
ENGL 288: Nature in Literature
This course focuses on the relationship of human beings and the environment in which they function, as represented in a variety of literary works.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the representations of "nature" in various periods of literary history and diverse cultural contexts.
ENGL 290: Human Values in Literature
This variable topics course focuses on a perennial psychological or philosophical problem facing the individual as exemplified in literary works, e.g., the passage from innocence to experience, the problem of death, and the idea of liberty.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the ability of literature to express the deepest and most abiding concerns of human beings, and how literary works come to be.
ENGL 292: South Asian Literatures and Civilizations (D)
An introduction to South Asian literatures and civilizations, from ancient to contemporary times, with attention to social institutions, religious practices, artistic achievements, literature, and modern challenges.

Outcome:  Outcome: Students will gain an understanding of the cultures and civilizations of South Asia.
LITR 200: European Masterpieces
Major European literary texts will be examined in a historical and cultural context and in their transhistorical, universal aspects that make them masterpieces.

Outcome: 
Students will understand how literary masterpieces help us develop critical consciousness of our experience.
LITR 202: European Novel
This course will focus on major European novels of the 19th Century in order to give students an overview of the literary production of representative European novelists.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of literary technique and structure, while maintaining an acute awareness of its function and its effects in a particular cultural and historical setting.
LITR 238: Arabic Literature in Translation (D)
 This course is a survey of Arabic literature in translation with a focus on continuity and change, influence, and major trends, themes, and genres.

Outcome: Students will gain a foundational knowledge of literature in the Arabic language.
LITR 245: Asian  Masterpieces (D)
 This course will study major  works from an Asian literary tradition in order to promote understanding of the particular cultural identity of a major Asian country (such as Japan, China, India).

Outcome: 
Students will gain a significant understanding of the literary and , cultural history of Asia.
LITR 280: World Masterpieces in Translation (D)
This course focuses on major literary works of Europe, from medieval romance through the modern novel and short story.

Outcome: Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of how literary masterpieces interpret human interaction and social organization.
LITR 283: Major Authors in Translation
This course will study the works of selected authors, in translation, of a selected culture or nation.

Outcome: Students will gain an appreciation of the writings of authors of another culture or nation.
UCLR 100: Interpreting Literature
The foundational course of literary studies will require students to read closely and analyze carefully a representative variety of prose, poetry, and drama, master key literary and critical term, and explore a variety of core critical approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literature.

Outcome: 
Students will develop the skills of analysis and interpretation needed to approach literature in a sophisticated manner.

 +Course titles followed by (D) have been approved for the Values Area of Diversity.