2025-2026 Catalog 
    
    Aug 03, 2025  
2025-2026 Catalog

ENG 255 The Devil, the Hero, and God




“Den Göttern gleich ich nicht! Zu tief ist es gefühlt” –  Faust
(“Not like the gods am I – profoundly it is rued!”)


In this course, students heroically pursue excellence in thought and written expression by reading, discussing, and writing about The Iliad, Dante’s Inferno, Goethe’s Faust, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.  Autonomy, integrity, perseverance, rationality, empathy, humility, courage, and probity—essential traits of literary heroes and hero students—are topics of daily discussion and debate. This course is equally concerned with the tradition of thought behind hero stories. Readings from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Gregory the Great’s Moralia of Iob, Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, Capellanus’s On Love, and Vladimir Solovyov’s Lectures on Divine Humanity provide essential context for the literary texts read in this course.

OWU Units: 1.00. Crosslisting(s): None. Prerequisite(s): None. Corequisite(s): None. Antirequisite(s): None. Fee: None. Core Competency: Write and Speak Effectively. Offered: TBD.