First-Year Seminars 110UN - Underworlds (and Otherworlds)

Associated with darkness, disorder, and death, the underworld can seem like a realm of punishment. But beneath its darkness, literary underworlds are sites for a character's evolution. This term, we'll see how narratives variously adapt the underworld topos. Underworlds and otherworlds connote supernatural encounters and obstacles, but they also represent realms of heightened rationalism or optimistic possibility. We'll ask what happens in a hero's passage through an underworld or otherworld that cannot happen anywhere else? How do underworlds expose challenging historical, social, psychological, and philosophical problems? And what happens when the underworld is not an exterior locus but an interior condition? Our principal method of analysis will be the close reading of texts and film.

Mount Holyoke first-year students only, by placement.