HONORS SEMINAR

Catalog description

This course serves as the Honors version of Rhetoric and Poetics I and is taken by all students in the Honors program. In the tradition of the great authors that we will be reading, this course offers an intensive introduction to the life of language as an artistic expression that both represents and influences human experience individually and within society. Students will learn about the nature and motivations of the human person through the dramas that play out on the page, on the stage, and in real life. Through an engagement with canonical authors from Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages (like Aristophanes and Plato, Virgil and Cicero, and St. Augustine and Dante), and an intensive imitation of their style, students will learn to interpret, critique, and produce works across literary and rhetorical genres in both writing and speech. Such an engagement will naturally develop the students’ skills in grammar and logic, refining their artistic sensibilities while helping them discern the proper relationship between substance and style. Ultimately, students will learn to appreciate the interplay of truth and beauty while they attempt to balance wisdom and eloquence within their own work. Prerequisite: Honors Program.