Religion, Meaning, and Knowledge

                                                                   REL 191

 

Weeks

 

1)      Camus, The Stranger

2)     Camus, The Stranger

3)     Norris, The Cloister Walk

4)     Norris, The Cloister Walk

5)     Dickinson, Poems

 

First reflection paper due 1st day of wk 6

 

6)     Melville, Moby Dick

7)     Melville      “         “

8)     Melville       “        “

9)     Melville       “        “

 

Second reflection paper due 1st day of wk 10

 

10)  Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North

11)   Basho,    “                “                    “

12)    Bugbee, The Inward Morning

13)    Bugbee,      “      “                “

 

Sketch of Last paper due 1st day of wk 14

 

14)   Bugbee, The Inward Morning

15)   Bugbee,      “       “                “

 

Last Paper due the day of the final exam

 

Requirements:

 

The two Reflection papers will be 3 pages in length.

 

The Sketch of the Last paper is ungraded but required and a full page in length.

 

The Last paper serves as the final exam; it will be 6 pages in length, incorporate phases of your earlier papers, discussion of aspects of Basho and Bugbee, and culminate in an assessment of a salient theme we’ve traced throughout the semester.   

 

Once a week you will turn in short, half-page questions-reflections on the reading.

 

Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North, Penguin 0-140-44185-9

Bugbee, Inward Morning, Georgia, 0-8203-2071-4

Melville, Moby Dick, Penguin, 0-14-200008-6

Essential Dickinson, selected Joyce Carol Oates, harper Collins, 10-0-06-088791-5 (paper)

Norris, Cloister Walk , Riverside, 1-57322-584-3

Camus, The Stranger, vintage, 0-679-72020-0

 

 

Reflection Papers:

 

In your reading and writing, be alert for moments that strike you in some fashion, and make marginal notes of these moments.  Why do they ring a bell or jump out at you (for good or ill)?  What triggers your imagination -- heart and mind?

            I have a special format for the three page (double spaced) papers.

 

Before your first paragraph begins, set out in bold the sentences from the text that contain the images, descriptions, phrases, actions, or situations that grab you.  That’s the focus. 

 

The paper then becomes an elaboration, exploration, and clarification of that focus. You’ll find yourself drawing on your own memories and experiences in this elaboration, exploration, and clarification.  And you’ll find yourself remembering other passages or moments in the text that work in tandem with whatever you put in focus in your opening sentences. If nothing grabs you, you’ll have nothing to say.  You can, of course, use the first person. Avoid anything that reads like a book report.   I should learn something about how your mind and imagination work as I read your paper.  Let your voice and personality and sensibility speak. The human condition, after all, is your condition, as well as the condition of numberless others from all times and places, some of whose writings will animate these morning hours.

 

Religion provides luminous accounts of the human condition, in all its varieties and complexities, its wondrous nobilities, surpassing tenderness, and deep tragedy, and unspeakable horrors.  In its alliance with art, literature, and philosophy, it offers resources for celebration of life, and hence ways to stave off part of the suffering that afflicts us. The texts we read evoke struggles between defeat and hope that no life can escape.  The quest for wisdom and religious contact is part of humanity’s effort, individually and collectively, to shore up our capacities for confidence and conviction in the face of inevitable encroachments.