Fall 2022
Fall 2022 Courses
PRL 40115
Dante I
TBD
MW 12:30-1:45
Dante I and Dante II are an in-depth study, over two semesters, of the entire Comedy, in its historical, philosophical and literary context, with selected readings from the minor works (e.g., Vita Nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia). Dante I focuses on the Inferno and the minor works; Dante II focuses on the Purgatorio and Paradiso. Lectures and discussion in English; the text will be read in the original with facing-page translation. Students may take one semester or both, in either order.
PRL 40220
Saints & Stories
Catherine Cavadini
TR 2:00-3:15
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has said that the two greatest evangelical tools we have are the Arts and the Saints. This course examines the lives of the saints and the way their stories have been told through the ages. Part of our larger goal, then, will be retrieving this particular art of storytelling. Students will be asked not only to read the lives of the saints, but to write the life of a saint, too. In order to examine these stories most fully, we will spend time thinking about topics such as scriptural exegesis, martyrdom, relics, the communion of saints, medieval legends, art, and modern vitae or novels.
PRL 40823
Religion and Literature
Francesca Murphy
TR 3:30-4:45
This course has as its central context the crisis of discursive authority in the modern period both subsequent and consequent to literature gaining its independence from Christianity and its central focus on the different attitudes literature takes towards Christianity on a spectrum that at one end is unrelentingly critical as anti-humanist and at the other affirming of Christianity rather than literature as the true humanism. The reading list includes Camus, Dante, Joyce, Dostoyevski, and Shelley.