THIS IS A TWO-SEMESTER COURSE.

Offered exclusively through Royal Fireworks Online Learning is Michael Clay Thompson’s Level 8, which is a full-year, college-style, advanced literature seminar. It will not have weekly email assignments but will involve close reading and discussion of superb literature. There will an MLA research paper about the literature due at the end of each semester. This course is at the highest academic level.

Prerequisites: The literature is sophisticated, both academically and in content. Only students who are ready for both the academics and the powerful ideas, including Elizabethan frankness, should enroll. Students should have completed MCT7 to be eligible for the course, although motivated students can take MCT7 concurrently with MCT8. Students who have never taken an MCT course will be admitted upon the instructor’s approval if their preparation is appropriate.

Class Meetings: Mondays, 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Fall Semester: August 17 – December 14, 2026
Spring Semester: January 11 – May 10, 2027

Student Expectations: Students are expected to attend the live class meetings with their cameras turned on. Students who attend class regularly but who miss a live class meeting will be able to access a recording of the class.

Student Support: Michael is available via email.

Materials: Students will need A.C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedies; the Folger Library editions of Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, and Hamlet; John Milton’s Areopagitica; Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe; Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman.