Oh my, but this is actually rather fun. I've been keeping myself from geeking out for ages and now I have a captive audience who talks back on the subject
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I haven't had many classes in any kind of literature. In fact, whenever people say that such and such isn't really Literature I have a very giant fuzzy question mark in my head. However, I'm pretty sure that I've had two classes that could be considered literature of sorts. The first was on on myth/fairy tales/ mythopoeia. We read On Fairy Tales by Tolkien, various essays by Lewis, the Silmarillion, Phantastes, The Golden Key, The Great Divorce, and others (one was about a rampaging lion but I don't remember the title) demonstrating myth/fairy story/mythopoeia
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Prior to university, I wouldn't say I had much in the way of literature... English class in Alberta (high school) always has a novel, a few short stories, and a Shakespeare play, and maybe another play. I remember doing Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo & Juliet. I remember A Night to Remember, The Old Man and the Sea, and um... okay... I think that's all I remember. I wasn't a very diligent high school student; definitely undermotivated. Correspondence was probably not the most motivating way to learn, either.
In junior high/middle school (whatever you wish to term it), I was fully homeschooled, and Mom focused on getting us curriculum that had a strong grammatical focus. As a result, I remember most of the parts of speech, could spell well, write decently, but no literary studies. To be fair, I read copiously on my own, but not much in school.
As a result... I came into University with lots of literary knowledge from working in a library, and precious little from school.
Ok so lets start with high school: Freshmen year was an overview basically. We read Greek Mythology, All Quiet on the Western Front, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Martian Chronicles, Of Mice and Men, and Romeo and Juliet. You know, sort of everything there is. It wasn't bad, it was an overview. Some classes didn't read The Martian Chronicles and instead read A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a good introduction.
Sophmore year was the year of the crazy women. We read Medea, Antigone, Montana 1948, The Odyesses, MacBeth, and The Things They Carried. At least thats what I remember reading and I think that was it. We also read a lot of short stories. Anyway, a lot of the Greeks. But we did read the contemporary The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories about the Vietnam war. Plus we were the only class to read MacBeth, which I like better that Julius Ceaser which is what the other classes read. It was more advanced, and I liked it a lot. It was a wide range of books but they were good. I have no idea how they all
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They were all taught as seeing symbols and discussion. There wasn't any of the "should we be reading this?" no it was "what does this mean? What are the symbols?" It was more interpretation and trying to make you think the way you are supposed to rather than real actual questions about it.
It's interesting that most of the books on the current GCSE Literature syllabus in the UK (compulsory for most 14-16 year olds) are actually American rather than English: Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Heroes (Robert Cormier), Catcher in the Rye. There's hardly an English author on the list, in fact I can't think of one off-hand
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In junior high/middle school (whatever you wish to term it), I was fully homeschooled, and Mom focused on getting us curriculum that had a strong grammatical focus. As a result, I remember most of the parts of speech, could spell well, write decently, but no literary studies. To be fair, I read copiously on my own, but not much in school.
As a result... I came into University with lots of literary knowledge from working in a library, and precious little from school.
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Freshmen year was an overview basically. We read Greek Mythology, All Quiet on the Western Front, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Martian Chronicles, Of Mice and Men, and Romeo and Juliet. You know, sort of everything there is. It wasn't bad, it was an overview. Some classes didn't read The Martian Chronicles and instead read A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a good introduction.
Sophmore year was the year of the crazy women. We read Medea, Antigone, Montana 1948, The Odyesses, MacBeth, and The Things They Carried. At least thats what I remember reading and I think that was it. We also read a lot of short stories. Anyway, a lot of the Greeks. But we did read the contemporary The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories about the Vietnam war. Plus we were the only class to read MacBeth, which I like better that Julius Ceaser which is what the other classes read. It was more advanced, and I liked it a lot. It was a wide range of books but they were good. I have no idea how they all ( ... )
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