Comparative Literature 208 - DREAMS/MAGIC/MOD EUR LIT

Pending CAP approval. Starting in the late eighteenth century, avant-garde artists began to explore the claim that logic and rationality cannot account for all of human experience; they were fascinated by madness, dreams, the irrational, and the sublime. We will be investigating this phenomenon from a literary, artistic, and philosophical point of view, from the time of the Enlightenment philosophers to the twentieth century. We will be reading stories by Nerval, Tolstoy, and Kafka; Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights; poems by Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Rilke, as well as philosophical essays. The class will incorporate artworks from the Romantic and Symbolist eras and Surrealist films. To be offered once only.