Welcome to English 102

I chose this background for my blog because the image of an antique map conveys an intriguing visual metaphor about the experience of literature.  Reading great literature is akin to travel.  When we read a work that captures our imagination, we journey across distance and time; we experience life in a different place and a different time period through the act of reading. John Keats, a romantic poet from nineteenth century England, proposes the transportive powers of literature in his poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," when he compares reading the epic poetry of Homer to the experience of traveling to the islands of Greece.  In this course we will venture back in time to Elizabethan England to experience a play by William Shakespeare as well as examine more contemporary works.  It is my hope that each selection we study will provide us with insights about the particular place and time period and the social and cultural forces that shaped that work;  it is also my goal that we attempt to recognize the elements in these works that transcend a particular time and place, which make these works universal and timeless.