Romantic Quests, Imperial Conquests

Catalog description

The course will propose a parallel reading of some of the most famous texts of romantic literature with texts less known in order to develop and challenge both the canon of literary history but also to extend the field of romantic studies beyond purely literary concerns and geographies. Taking as a starting point Harold Bloom's famous definition of Romanticism as the internalization of romance, particularly of the quest we propose to scrutinize some of these canonical works. Texts to be read could include Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir, Germaine de Stael's Corinne ou l'Italie, Chateaubriand's Atala, Flora Tristan PeIregrinations d'une noir, George Sand's Indiana, Suzanne Voilquin, Memoires d une fille du peuple en Egypte, Louise Michel's L'ere nouvelle.