Literature and the Visual Arts

Catalog description

This interdisciplinary course will examine the dynamic relationship between literature and the visual arts. Special attention will be paid to literature written in English during the 19th and 20th centuries, a time when writers and cultural critics were increasingly interested in the visual arts in general (painting, sculpture, photography, film, etc.) and the impact of the new mass media in particular. These artists forged a unique and significant relationship between their bodies of work and the visual arts; several of the writers studied worked in the tradition known as "ekphrasis" (e.g., poems "speaking" to a work of art). Writers of focus might include Blake, Poe, the Brownings, the Rossettis, Siddall, Wilde, Wharton, and Larsen.