English

This course addresses literature's ambivalent relation to image and the visual arts. A reading of seventeenth- to twentieth-century texts, from the European baroque through symbolism to high modernism, focuses on various topics, including ekphrasis (painting pictures with words), the erotics of vision, biblical image prohibition, the Christian incarnation, hieroglyphs, emblems, and calligrammes (visual poetry). (4 credits)

In this course, we read Othello, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, with special attention to theatrical performance, character, language, and the development of Shakespeare's poetic and dramatic technique. (4 credits)

Major poets and poems of the early seventeenth century, one of the greatest eras in English verse, are considered together with the theory, criticism, and practice of lyric. The works of John Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert. Andrew Marvell, Robert Herrick, Richard Crashaw, and others are viewed both in the context of their time and in their centrality for the shaping of modern literary theory and aesthetics. The recorded lectures are from the 2010 Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences course English 132. (4 credits)

This seminar is devoted to a close reading—in some cases a rereading—of classic works of English fiction, such as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and Swift's Gulliver's Travels, as well as representative novels by Austen, Dickens, Hardy, Conrad, and Woolf, supplemented by extensive readings of literary and cultural criticism, to arrive at informed reinterpretations of each of these major works. Prerequisites: courses on the novel and criticism of fiction preferred. (4 credits)

The Victorian middle classes were both titillated and repelled by transgression and abnormality: from Jack the Ripper to the Elephant Man, from venereal disease to self-murder. In an era marked by unprecedented prosperity and widespread poverty, the Victorians aggressively policed—and clandestinely crossed—increasingly porous and unstable boundaries. Across a range of literary genres, we map the nineteenth-century British obsession with crime and horror, with phenomena that rattle one's sense of self. The recorded lectures are from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences course English 156. (4 credits)

This course is an exploration of Joyce's remarkable artistic achievements in "The Dead," A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and especially Ulysses, a close study of which occupies us for most of the semester. Our focus includes classical paradigms, Judeo-Christian ritual, Irish history, literary history, popular culture, Joyce's biography, and our own lives. Prerequisite: courses in close reading of fiction or poetry. Students should read "The Dead" before the first class meeting. Also, a prior familiarity with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man would be helpful. (4 credits)

Emphasizing wit and humor rather than comedy as classically understood, the course considers selected texts and films (for example, Mark Twain, P.G. Wodehouse, Dave Barry, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, Monty Python) in the light of theoretical studies by psychologists, sociologists, and critics who have tried to explain why people laugh, want to laugh, and pay to be made to laugh. (4 credits)

This interdisciplinary course examines the rich tradition of progressive protest literature in the United States from the American Revolution to the rise of hip hop, globalization, and modern-day slavery. Using a broad definition of protest literature, it focuses on the production and consumption of dissent as a site of progressive social critique, using a wide variety of print, visual, and oral forms. We examine the historical links between modes of protest and meanings of literature, and explore how various expressions of dissent function as aesthetic, performative, rhetorical, and ideological texts within specific cultural contexts. Readings range from novels to photographs and music. The recorded lectures are from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences course Culture and Belief 49. (4 credits)

This experimental course offers a case study on the musical Porgy and Bess. Students examine the multiple iterations of Porgy and Bess (novel, play, film), perform archival research, critically engage with the history and culture of the American musical, and ask the question "What would it mean to adapt Porgy and Bess today?". Topics include adaptation theory and practice; performance studies; gender, race, class, and identity; and media studies. The recorded lectures are from the 2011 Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences course English 198. (4 credits)

The vampire is everywhere in popular culture—in novels such as the Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse series, young adult literature like The Twilight Saga, television series such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, True Blood, Ultraviolet, and The Vampire Diaries, as well as short fiction, comic books, graphic novels, and films. Although this mythic creature has existed for thousands of years, at no other time has it been more prevalent or represented in such an intriguing variety of ways. How can we account for the popularity, adaptability, and unique appeal of the vampire figure? With what fears and fantasies in the human psyche does it connect? And in terms of literary genre, how do we classify these increasingly diverse works? In addition to their place in the horror genre, vampire stories have been used as "code" to address a host of provocative topics, including sexuality, death and immortality, gender roles, HIV-AIDS, addiction, immigration, religious doubt, power and economic exploitation. Most surprising, the vampire has morphed from a terrifying figure of pure evil to a handsome, self-hating outsider who longs for community with humans. The course explores the many aspects of this evolution, from its origins in the gothic tradition to its recent incarnation as hip urban fantasy and paranormal romance. We also consider the implications of the vampire myth from anthropological, psychoanalytical, and socio-political perspectives. Readings include the early vampire stories of Coleridge, Byron, Polidori, LeFanu, and Stoker; and the more recent fiction of Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris, Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Rachel Caine, Tom Holland, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Elizabeth Kostova, Stephenie Meyer, and Seth Grahame-Smith. Theoretical works by Freud, Auerbach, and others assist us in our investigation. The recorded lectures are from the 2010 course. (4 credits)