Comparative Literature 305 - THE PHILOSOPHICAL NOVEL

Topics course.: This course charts the evolution of the theme of reason and its limits in the European novel of the modern era. Beginning with an examination of humanist assumptions about the value of reason in Rabelais, the course focuses on the Central European novel of the 20th century, the age of “terminal paradoxes.” Texts include Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, Kafka’s The Trial, Musil’s Man Without Qualities and Kundera’s The Joke, The Farewell Party and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Topic: The Philosphical Novel.