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Course name
How to Read Great Literature with Joseph Pearce
Recorded course taught by Joseph Pearce for High School Survey Literature
Summary

Register for the course and Professor Pearce will outline & explain the basic rules for reading literature. He will also bring understanding of the deepest level of meaning in the great works of civilization, including Homer, Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Eliot, Lewis, and Tolkien.

Instructor Access (Optional grading support) is available for this course. Please note: this is ONLY recommended if you wish to write the optional paper. All quizzes are internally graded in this course. Optional papers will be completed via this page (click here) for an Instructor Access fee of $75.

Instructor: Joseph Pearce

Course Description: The course is designed to help students to read literature literarily, which involves learning to see the allegorical dimension and the allegorical techniques employed by different writers. Those taking the course will be given priceless tools to enable them to read all sorts of literature on a deeper level.

Special notes

**Please note that this course is a macrocosmic panoramic overview of three millennia of literature. Professor Pearce discusses principles and techniques employed by the greatest writers. Although knowledge of the works and the writers listed in the Course Outline will be helpful to the student, it is not necessary. There is no weekly reading list because the texts are discussed in this panoramic way, focusing on the works as a whole and not on specific passages within them, though specific examples from the text might be given to illustrate the general point.

Total classes

6

Duration

55 minutes per class

Prerequisites

A desire to learn how to read literarily, not merely literally, and a desire to engage more deeply with the allegorical dimension of the great works of literature.

Suggested grade level

9th to 12th grade

Suggested credit

½ semester of Literary Analysis

Outline

Course Outline:

Week 1: Reading with the Saints: Augustine and Thomas Aquinas

Week 2: Reading with the Greeks: Homer and Sophocles

Week 3: Reading with the Mind of the Church: Boethius, Beowulf, Dante, and Chaucer

Week 4: Reading with the Martyrs: Shakespeare

Week 5: Reading with Wonder: Tolkien and Lewis

Week 6: Reading with Eyes Wide Open: Conclusion

Materials

  • As this is a survey, individual books will not be necessary. Mr. Pearce will provide the course material on the course page.

Homework

Assigned reading for each week from the course material provided. Mr. Pearce will specify the week’s assigned reading at the conclusion of each class session. There is no assigned reading before the first class meeting. Students will also need to consult their notes and possibly watch the recording in order to review for the weekly quiz. Students should endeavour to take each online quiz prior to the following class, while the class discussion is fresh in their minds.

Course name
How to Read Great Literature with Joseph Pearce
Instructor
Joseph Pearce
Semester
Recorded
Category
Literature ➤ Survey Literature
Grade levels
High School
Start time
November 24th, 2022 at 12:00 AM ET
Course type
Recorded, free with subscription
Relative due dates
Relative due dates are disabled for this course.
Enhanced quiz security
Enhanced assignment security

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Joseph Pearce
jpearce.co@outlook.com

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About Joseph Pearce

A native of England, Joseph Pearce is the internationally acclaimed author of many books, which include bestsellers such as The Quest for Shakespeare, Tolkien: Man and Myth, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis and The Catholic Church, Literary Converts, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile and Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc.

His books have been published and translated into Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Croatian and Polish. He has hosted two 13-part television series about Shakespeare on EWTN, and has also written and presented documentaries on EWTN on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. His verse drama, Death Comes for the War Poets, was performed off-Broadway to critical acclaim. He has participated and lectured at a wide variety of international and literary events at major colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Europe, Africa and South America.

He is Visiting Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University and a Visiting Fellow of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (Merrimack, New Hampshire). He is editor of the St. Austin Review (https://staustinreview.org/), series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions (www.ignatiuscriticaleditions.com), senior instructor with Homeschool Connections, and senior contributor at the Imaginative Conservative and Crisis Magazine.

His personal website is http://www.jpearce.co.  

Testimonies from students:

“I appreciated and enjoyed the class, I understood the teacher even with his accent.”

“I LOVE Mr. Pearce's British accent! I also greatly appreciated the email response that was given when I asked a question.”

See Courses & Videos

Click here for more info about Joseph Pearce!

© 2022 Homeschool Connections; Joseph Pearce. All Rights Reserved.

  • This material is only to be used for its intended purpose by active subscribers of Homeschool Connections or purchasers of the course. Any other use without explicit permission is in violation of the seventh commandment, and in violation of US and International copyright laws.
  • You may print or download to your own storage extracts for your personal homeschool and non-commercial use only. Use for homeschool co-ops is permitted after contacting customer support and receiving written permission from Homeschool Connections.
  • Upon completion of the course, you must delete all copies of course materials from any storage on which you saved permissible extracts.

Violation of the above copyright policies may result in expulsion without any refund and/or legal action.