Spring 2022
PRL 20193
On Beauty and Ugliness
Mitchell Kooh
MW 2:00-3:15
What makes a work of literature “beautiful”? What makes it “ugly”? Is it really in the eye of the beholder or is there an objective dimension to our aesthetic judgements? And what role might theological modes of thinking play in our perception of the beautiful in contemporary society? In this course, we will trace the development of these aesthetic questions, paying particular attention to works that complicate the binary between beauty and ugliness. We will consider various conceptions of beauty, from the classical confluence of form and splendor to the “pleasing terror” of the Romantic sublime, reading authors ranging from John Donne to T.S. Eliot, William Wordsworth to James Joyce on our way to developing a nuanced theological aesthetic vocabulary for appreciating both art that attracts and repels.
PRL 33135
The Bible and English Literature
Susannah Monta
TR 9:30-10:45
In Western cultures, no single volume has inspired as much creative work - and as wide a range of creative responses - as the Bible. The study of the Bible in turn deeply influenced the discipline of literary studies, as ways of reading and interpreting the Bible gave rise to practices of literary interpretation. In this course, you'll have the opportunity to participate in centuries-old traditions of discussing, interpreting, and responding creatively to biblical texts. We will read key narratives from the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament alongside literary adaptations and interpretations by authors including William Shakespeare, Robert Southwell, Mary Sidney, George Herbert, John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A.E. Housman, T.S. Eliot, Martin Luther King, George Oppen, Marilynne Robinson, Dawn Karima Pettigrew, and Lucille Clifton, among others. Written assessments will include responses to our readings and analytical essays. There will also be a creative option for the course's final written project.
PRL 40275
Shakespeare for Life
Jesse Lander
TR 3:30-4:45
This course will cover eight of Shakespeare's plays: All's Well That Ends Well, The Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Othello, and The Winter's Tale. In each case we will focus on the dramatic representation of intractable ethical problems and ask how the play encourages its audience to reflect on moral conflict. In addition to the plays, readings will include material on classical ethical theories as well as modern moral philosophy.
PRL 43701
Poetry and Religion
Romana Huk
TR 3:30-4:45
This course will focus on the last 120 years in literary history, zeroing in on one particular problem – the writing of religious poetry – in order to probe the philosophical convergences and collisions that resulted in what we now call our “post-secular” era of thought. Beginning with Gerard Manley Hopkins at the end of the nineteenth-century, and major modernists who continued to write powerfully after WWII – T.S. Eliot and David Jones – the syllabus will chart a course through the rapidly changing poetic forms of two further generations of poets working devotedly, if differently, out of various religious systems of belief. The many dilemmas of postmodernity include redefining the very notion of “belief” (versus “faith”) after the secular revelations of science and modernity; we will explore the theoretical issues involved in order to better understand what’s at stake for each writer we encounter, among them also Mina Loy, Muriel Rukeyser, Brian Coffey, Wendy Mulford, Fanny Howe, Hank Lazer and Peter O’Leary. We will ask, among other things, why ancient mystical frameworks seemed newly hospitable, for some, in the face of postmodern suspicions about language and institutions, while for others embracing the sciences renewed faith. We will consider the crucial input of Judaism in Christianity’s re-thinkings of language and religious experience, as well as consider how issues of nation and gender inflect changing relationships between poetry and religion. Students will emerge conversant with the major debates in contemporary literary theory as well as with developments in contemporary poetry; no prior expertise in reading poetry is necessary for this course. Each will develop their own particular approach to our issues through the writing of a reading journal and one paper, and each will be responsible for co-leading of class discussion thrice in the course of the term. Students who have taken Professor Huk's University Seminar in their first year should not sign up for this course, which works with too many overlaps in reading.