Words and Pictures: Literature and Photography in the 20th Century.

Catalog description

The course examines literary responses to the medium of photography from the early 20th to the early 21st century. It explores how the ''realism'' of photographic images challenged, inspired, and transformed the character of literary narration. It asks about the ways in which literary texts used and incorporated photographs for their own fictional and documentary purposes. And it relates these aesthetic purposes to the particular socio-political contexts--ranging from the rise of modernity around 1900 to post-modern debates around 2000--in which the respective works were produced. Authors include Kafka, Rilke, Benjamin, Kluge, Barthes, Sontag, and Sebald. Taught in English.