OLLI@DU / 2023 FALL / COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Kafka and Camus Consider the Absurdity of Life

LWRL 1003

Wednesday

Dates: 9/20 to 11/8 (8 weeks)

Time: 1–3 PM

Facilitator: Ann Cohen, Diamond Facilitator

Location: Online

Class Limit: 20 Participants

Sponsoring Site: Central

This will be a discussion course in which we will read two novels: The Trial by Franz Kafka and The Stranger by Albert Camus. We will compare how the two authors use the device of the trial to tell their stories, and what possible meaning we can glean from these readings.

The Mechanics of Poetry

LWRL 1006

Wednesday

Dates: 9/20 to 11/8 (8 weeks)

Time: 1–3 PM

Facilitator: Carol Anthony, Diamond Facilitator

Location: Jefferson Unitarian Church

Class Limit: 25 Participants

Sponsoring Site: West

What is poetry? There are a hundred definitions, few of them remotely the same. Poetry is like art: I know it when I see it. However, all poetry has one key similarity: an intense effort to condense meaning into a smaller space than prose by use of devices: rhythm, metaphor, simile and an extensive host of others, some familiar and common, some unusual and rare. To quote our textbook: “Poetry is multidimensional language... [it] achieves its extra dimensions—its greater pressure per word and its greater tension per poem—by drawing more fully and more consistently than does ordinary language on a number of language resources, none of which is peculiar to poetry.” Come along with me on a voyage to explore how these devices give richness and meaning to poems. We will define and discuss the devices and how they work by reading and analyzing a wide variety of poems.

Mysterious Places: Sea, Sand, Sun and Sky

LWRL 1011

Thursday

Dates: 9/21 to 11/9 (8 weeks)

Time: 9:30–11:30 AM

Facilitator: Linda Lange, Master Facilitator

Location: Online

Class Limit: Unlimited

Sponsoring Site: On Campus

Place is sometimes described as an additional character in novels, especially when an author develops a collection of characters in a specific location throughout a continuing series. “Mysterious Places” encourages some armchair travel while exploring various mystery series set—in this case—in island or coastal places. We’ll explore the liminal space where water meets land or sky and where life ends—or not—with authors including Pat Conroy, PD James, John D McDonald, Ann Cleeves, and others.

Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy

LWRL 1008

Thursday

Dates: 9/21 to 11/9 (8 weeks)

Time: 9:30–11:30 AM

Facilitator: Maryanne O’Brien

Location: 1st Universalist

Class Limit: 25 Participants

Sponsoring Site: Central

Thomas Hardy was born into a workingclass family in 1840 in the southwest of England five months after his parents’ marriage. Eighty-eight years later, the Prime Minister, the Heads of Oxford and Cambridge, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw were pallbearers at his funeral in Westminster Abbey. What happened in these 88 years to make

Thomas Hardy one of the greatest novelists and poets of the late Victorian Age? We will read The Return of the Native, a novel about lost hopes and dreams in a small hamlet on the Wessex Heath. Hardy considered himself first and foremost a poet, so we will also dip into his beautiful and passionate verse.