Cultural Crossings: Studies in Literary Influence
Centered on a range of provocative narratives conceived at different historical moments and in different cultural situations, this course will explore some of the persistent imaginative preoccupations and far-reaching literary ambitions that serve to link authors working in a wide variety of genres and traditions. Authors to be considered this semester will include Petronius, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Carlyle, Herman Melville, Gustave Flaubert, Willa Cather, Ivan Turgenev, Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Pynchon. In addition to reading works by these authors in relation to one another, students will be encouraged to undertake independent comparisons between works on our reading list and works by authors who are not represented. 3 hr. lect.