Class 1: the Anglo-Saxons. Genealogy of the Germanic kings. Poetry and kennings.
Class 2: Beowulf. Description of the Germans. Ancient funeral rites.
Class 3: Beowulf. Bravery and boastfulness: Beowulf as compared to the compadritos.
Class 4: The Finnsburh fragment. The Vikings. Anecdotes from Borges's trip to York. :The Battle of Brunanburh" Tennyson's translation.
Class 5: "The Battle of Maldon." Christian poetry. "Caedmon's hymn." The runic alphabet. Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon elegies.
Class 6: The origins of poetry in England. The Anglo-Saxon elegies. Christian poetry: "The dream of the Rood."
Class 7: The two books written by God. The Anglo-Saxon bestiary. Riddles. "The grave." The Battle of Hastings.
Class 8: A brief history until the eighteenth century. The life of Samuel Johnson.
Class 9: Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, by Samuel Johnson. The legend of the Buddha. Optimism and pessimism. Leibniz and Voltaire.
Class 10: Samuel Johnson as seen by Boswell. The art of biography. Boswell and his critics.
Class 11: The romantic movement. The life of James Macpherson. The invention of Ossian. Opinions about Ossian. Polemic with Johnson. Reappraisal of Macpherson.
Class 12: Life of William Wordsworth. The prelude and other poems.
Class 13: The life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A story by Henry James. Coleridge and Macedonio Fernandez, compared. Coleridge and Shakespeare. In cold blood, by Truman Capote.
Class 14: Coleridge's final years. Coleridge compared to Dante Alighieri. Coleridge's poems. "Kubla Khan." Coleridge's dream.
Class 15: The life of William Blake. The poem "The Tyger." Blake and Swedenborg's philosophy, compared. A poem by Rupert Brooke. Blake's poems.
Class 16: Life of Thomas Carlyle. Sartor Resartus by Carlyle. Carlyle, precursor of Nazism. Bolivar's soldiers, according to Carlyle.
Class 17: The Victorian era. The life of Charles Dickens. The novels of Charles Dickens. William Wilkie Collins. The mystery of Edwin Drood, by Dickens.
Class 18: The life of Robert Browning. The obscurity of his work. His poems.
Class 19: Robert Browning's poems. A chat with Alfonso Reyes. The ring and the book.
Class 20: The life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Evaluation of Rossetti as a poet and a painter. The theme of the double (fetch). A book of exhumed poems. Rossetti's poems. History cyclically repeated.
Class 21: Rossetti's poem. Rossetti as seen by Max Nordau. "The Blessed Damozel," "Eden Bower," and "Troy Town."
Class 22: The life of William Morris. The three subjects worthy of poetry. King Arthur and the myth of the return of the hero. Morris's interests. Morris and Chaucer. "The defence of Guenevere."
Class 23: "The tune of the seven towers," "The sailing of the sword," and The earthly paradise, by William Morris. The Icelandic sagas. The story of Gunnar.
Class 24: The story of Sigurd the Volsung, by William Morris. The life of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Class 25: The works of Robert Louis Stevenson: New Arabian Nights, "Markheim," The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jekyll and Hyde in the movies. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. "Requiem," by Stevenson.
