Dear Students of HUX 542:

Before beginning the assignments, you should carefully read and digest the material in the "Irrational, Visionary and Religious Perspectives - Prologue" and "The Para-Rational Perspective: the Non-Rational, Visionary and Religious-Mystical Perspectives" sections in your course guide. The more you assimilate these two sections, the more successfully will you be able to cope with the assigned readings, and the more easily will you write your response papers.

When submitting your written assignments, please include along with your duplicate HUX copy, a stamped, self-addressed envelope with sufficient return postage. The return envelope should be the same size as the one in which your submitted your assignment.

I will try to return your assignments as soon as possible. Submit the assignments on time and in order. To insure that our learning experience will be mutual, incremental, and cumulative, do not wait until the Week 14 to submit all four assignments.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

The purposes of this course are the following:

• Postulate differences between two ways of experiencing, describing, and evaluating human experience: the rational and the para-rational.
• Define three aspects of the para-rational: the non-rational or irrational, the visionary and the mystical.
• Describe significant elements of the para-rational such as luminosity, a transcendent sense of unity, surprise and chance, paradox, and the relationship between form and content, and non-traditional modes of causality and logic.
• Perceive interrelated para-rational elements in the humanities.

BOOKS REQUIRED

• Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories
• Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground
• Butler, Early Modernism 1900-1916, Oxford Press
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Harcourt press
• Harris, End of Faith, Norton press
• Music: See "Assignments" section for explanation.
• Joseph Gibaldi and Walter Achtert, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: Modern Language Association, 1988. ISBN: 0-87352-379-2. Note: This book is required for all HUX Courses.

COURSE ORGANIZATION

ASSIGNMENT I: LITERATURE – O’CONNOR
Due: During WEEKS 1-3

ASSIGNMENT II: LITERATURE - PHILOSOPHY – DOSTOEVSKY
Due: During WEEKS 4-7

ASSIGNMENT III: ART, MUSIC AND LITERATURE IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA
Due: During Weeks 8-12

ASSIGNMENT IV. THE PARA-RATIONAL IN THE POST-MODERN WORLD.
Due: During Weeks 12-15

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