Working description for ENGL 200

I'm slated to teach English 200: Reading Literature next year, in the fall. The course is a kind of overgrown "literature appreciation" class -- not even a survey course, per se. So, I have to figure out something fun to do, that hits a bunch of different things, and that focuses on reading for pleasure and for knowledge about the world. Or some such.

Here's my working course:

English 200: Literatures of the Fantastic

Ursula K. Leguin asks in a now famous speech and essay, “Why are Americans afraid of dragons?” Central to her question and her argument about the reading, enjoyment, understanding, and analysis of literature, particularly fantasy and science fiction, is an engagement with the imagination, with other worlds, with our own world, with recovering the value of these things, and with growing up but not outgrowing our desire for the fantastic. She says, “For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.” This class will take up Leguin’s fascinating and provocative question and explore a long yet often dismissed or narrowly defined tradition of “fantastic” literature (and other media) including in whole or in excerpt Homer, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, Allen Ginsberg, Octavia Butler, William Gibson, Nisi Shawl, and J.K. Rowling.

Required Texts:
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
English 200 Course Packet.