WHAT IT COVERS

Discover some of the greatest achievements of the human imagination with a degree in literature

“To read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of imagination, insight, and judgment.” –Virginia Woolf

Our lives are shaped by the stories we tell. This makes the study of literature an urgent undertaking, as well as a richly rewarding one. Students who complete a degree in literature at the Millis Institute get to explore the big questions about what life means and why human beings are so powerfully drawn to the arts of storytelling.

Our Great Books program in the degree in literature includes small-group discussion of some of the world’s most exciting literary texts; you can find a list of the books under the Key Texts tab.

Liberal Arts degree in literature students complete a 4 unit minor in Literature and may complete a major by taking 8 or more units in literature.

Students undertaking the Oxford Summer Program degree in literature will complete 2 units as intensives and can chose from the following literature seminars:

  • C.S. Lewis and the Classics
  • Intellect and Imagination: the rational religion and theological stories of C.S. Lewis
  • Jane Austen in Context
  • Prohibition and Transgression: the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Gothic Novel
  • Creative Writing
  • Psychology and Literature: from Margery Kemp to Sylvia Plath

LITERATURE UNITS:

LIT101 Great Books of the Western World I
LIT102 Great Books of the Western World II
LIT190 Creative Writing
LIT200 Classical Literature and Drama: Greece and Rome
LIT220 Religion and the Literary Imagination, 1300-1700
LIT235 Modern Literature
LIT226 Australian Literature
LIT216 The Works of Shakespeare
LIT266 Children’s and Adolescent Literature
LIT346 Bible as Literature
LIT397 Research Project in Literature
LAN201 Latin
LA350 Liberal Arts internship

Homer, The Odyssey

Virgil, The Aeneid

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Dante, Divine Comedy

Shakespeare, tragedies and romances

George Herbert, The Temple

John Milton, Paradise Lost

John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

William Blake’s poetry and prose

Coleridge’s poetry and prose

Jane Austen, Persuasion

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Chekhov, selected short stories

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

DOWNLOAD SCHEDULE
Unit Code Unit Name Sample
LIT101 Great Books of the Western World I Download
LIT102 Great Books of the Western World II Download
LIT190 Creative Writing Download
LIT200 Classical Literature and Drama: Greece and Rome Download
LIT201 Medieval and Renaissance Literature Download
LIT235 Modern Literature Download
LIT226 Australian Literature Download
LIT216 The Works of Shakespeare Download
LIT266 Children’s and Adolescent Literature Download
LIT346 Bible as Literature Download
LIT397 Research Project in Literature Download
LAN201 Latin Download
LA350 Liberal Arts internship Download