Course Description
Formal, philosophical, and thematic relationships between literature and one or more of the visual arts in a given period. Special emphasis will be placed on the relevance of the texts under discussion to contemporary global society.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Additional reading, writing, and research assignments.
Athena Title
Literature and the Visual Arts
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
- to introduce students to the major issues surrounding the relationship between literature and the visual arts, with special emphasis on the relevance of texts under discussion to the contemporary world; - to examine these issues in the context of specific works of literature and visual art; - to develop students' critical abilities in the analysis of visual and literary artworks; - to improve students' communication skills through oral presentations and expository writing assignments. Students' performances will be assessed through presentations, tests, papers, and a final examination.
Topical Outline
The topics vary with the individual instructor, with the emphasis typically falling on a specific period, problem, or theme. Special emphasis will be placed on the relevance of the texts under discussion to the contemporary world. Examples include: Renaissance painting and poetry; representations of nature in Eastern and Western literature and painting; representation, reproduction, and simulation in modern and postmodern visual and verbal artworks; gender and the representation of the body in 18th-century painting and prose. The following is a sample syllabus of readings for a single semester: Horace's Ars Poetica and the Classical Tradition of Mimetic Art Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience and the Romantic Tradition of Expressive Art Balzac's "Unknown Masterpiece" and the Conventions of Realism Pirandello's The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio and the Recording Arts Robbe-Grillet and Magritte's La Belle Captive and surrealism Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 and Magic Realism Spiegelman's Maus and the Graphic Novel DeLillo's Mao II and Postmodernism
Syllabus
Public CV