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I agree that $120 for a course on how to read great literature isn't a rip-off, it's actually quite a fair price, contingent on 2 main points:
1) they actually cover the important issues such as how to recognize main characters and secondary characters and such, as well as how to follow plot threads and recognize plots within plots, etc., the sorts of things which repay repeated readings as the reader can find more and more depth and richness.
2) they come up with some sort of criteria as to what makes great literature. is everything Dickens wrote great literature? No. Is it worth reading? For some of us it is. Is great literature being written today? Sure it is. How can a person recognize it? That's a much harder question to answer, and I certainly hope the teacher doesn't simply hand out a list of "authors who only write great literature" but rather helps the students to find a way to determine what they will find to be great literature. Is great literature really great literature for all readers? No.
And one more point -- I hope the teacher doesn't try to downplay the reading of "not so great literature" -- I'd hate to be trashed for reading the Thorndyke books by Freeman, which I've just begun, or the Haggard She or Allen Quartermain books.
heck, most of the PG books wouldn't be considered great literature, not by academic standards, but man-oh-man am I having a blast reading them!
I was a double major in college (music and English) and the only professors I hated were the ones with closed minds about anything outside their narrow definition of great literature.
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