What Makes Great Literature Great?

Course Description

What makes great literature great?  Is there something in the literature itself, some quality, that makes it great?  Is it great because a conspiracy of rich white men in a smoke-filled room somewhere says it’s great?  In this course, we read a number of theorists who have wrestled with what makes great literature great (e.g., Wolfgang Iser, Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, Hans Robert Jauss, Harold Bloom, Pierre Bourdieu, Stanley Fish, and John Guillory).  Then we read three authors from ancient Greece and Rome, two of whom (Homer and Virgil) have “stood the test of time” as great authors (although Virgil’s reputation has slipped in the last 50 years) and the third of whom (Statius) seems to have failed to last in the same way.  We apply the theories from earlier in the semester to the three authors in order to try to understand and explain how or why their works are great (or not).