RELI 235: Religion and Literature

RELI 235-001: Religion and Literature
(Spring 2017)

12:00 PM to 01:15 PM MW

Section Information for Spring 2017

RELI 235 - 001: Religion and Literature

This section of RELI 235 will focus primarily on the religious literature written by Highland Maya of Guatemala beginning in the sixteenth century. Specifically, the first half of this course will involve a close, comparative reading of the Popol Wuj (the Maya cosmogonic story). The second half of this course will then consist of reading comparatively other related sixteenth-century writings by Highland Maya (including one of the earliest dramas, the Lord of Rab'inal) and an early indigenous Mesoamerican land deed (which includes material from both the Popol Wuj and the Bible). Final readings will consist of modern memoirs of indigenous people but edited by non-native interviewers: I, Rigoberta Menchú (by the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate) and Black Elk Speaks (by a Lakota elder, visionary, medicine man, and Catholic catechist). These two final readings will bring many of the aspects initially found in the Popol Wuj into the twentieth century and from Central America into the upper U.S. and Canada.

Note: Each section of RELI 235 has a very different focus and does not read the same materials. This and RELI 235-003 are the only two sections with readings of Native American (Maya) religious literature.

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Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

Explores the relationship between religion and literature in different times and cultures, the influence of religion on literary works, and how literature expresses major religious themes such as death and immortality, divine will and justice, suffering and human destiny, and religion and state. Limited to three attempts.
Mason Core: Literature
Schedule Type: Lecture
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

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