Nostalgia,Seduction&TheExotic

Catalog description

Nostalgia, Seduction, and the Exotic: Portrayals of Gypsies in Literature and Art: Spread over five continents, Gypsies conjure the seduction of a nomadic life and the nostalgia for a past one never had. Mysterious, often misunderstood, and always marginalized, gypsies survived through secrecy and disguise and the life and language of these travelers remain almost impenetrable to the outsiders. Starting with a close examination of Melville's enigmatic and ambiguous character from this year's common reading, "Bartleby the Scrivener," this interdisciplinary seminar will consider literary works by Cervantes, Hugo, Emily Bronte, Merimee, Arnold, D.H. Lawrence, and Pushkin, musical and film adaptations of literary works such as Bizet's opera Carmen and Jean-Luc Godard, Prenom Carmen, operas, visual arts (Taras Shevchenko's famous "The Fortune Teller, representations of Cervantes' La Gitanilla in Dutch art, etc.), films (Chocolat, Train of Life) and traditional gypsy music, especially Russian music.