World Literatures 100 - Introduction to Comparative Literature: The Pleasures of Reading: Dreams, Magic and the Sublime in European Literature

Topics course. May be repeated once with a different topic: 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. (E)