RSNST-279 Bad Romance: Doomed Love in 19th Century Literature
What does it mean to be in love? How is this most personal of states determined the structures and of the social world? And why does it so often end up badly when the two come into conflict? We’ll be examining the role that romance, of the star-crossed, doomed variety, plays in the genesis of the European literature of the nineteenth century. We’ll look at how authors used various kinds of “bad romances”—from the cross-class love affair to the novel of adultery—to shed light on questions of class, gender, sex, freedom, and the porousness of our inner and outer lives. We’ll also investigate the way that the romance is inexplicably tied up with problems of literary style. Authors surveyed include Balzac, Keller, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, and Henry James.
Standard Course (40)
Credits
1
Cross Listed Courses
GERMN-279