In this course, we will focus on methods of reading closely and interpreting “texts” from a variety of genres and media (drama, poetry, novels, and films) as well as from several different literary periods (classical tragedy to twentieth-century novels and films). All of the texts that we will consider engage a common theme: the relationship between human freedom, on the one hand, and the forces of fate and destiny, on the other. We will begin with two Greek dramas—Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Antigone—as means for thinking about divine and political constraints on human freedom, respectively. We will then consider several Romantic-era poems—including P.B. Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” and “Ode to the West Wind”—in order to consider the place of freedom, and the relationship of freedom to literature, in the wake of “Enlightenment” conceptions of a mechanical, clock-work universe. Finally, we’ll turn to more recent novels (Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian) and a film (Andrew Nichols’s Gattaca) as means for thinking about more contemporary conceptions of constraint, including military-industrial determinism and “genetic destiny.” In addition to the primary texts listed above, we will read selections from other primary texts—for example, short selections from Aristotle’s Poetics—as well as several short secondary texts that focus our attention on social, political, and cultural developments and which can help us to interpret elements of the primary texts.
Course assignments include preparation for, and participation in, all class discussions; (ii) four short (2-3 page) response papers; and two medium-length (5-8 page) essays.
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