Literature and Violence

Catalog description

This course will examine and critique themes of violence that have become a pervasive and recurring artistic thread in classic literary texts. Through careful, close textual readings and critical analyses of thematically selected texts that contain multiple artistic representations of violence in varied literary genres, students will explore literary violence as a possible metaphor for understanding dimensions of power, control and dominance. In analytical studies of thematically selected texts, students will gain new insights and critical perspectives on modern American society and the social causes and ills of violence. Students will delve into the root, cause and meaning of violence and they will further grow to understand why and how violence still maintains a pervasive presence in their daily lives and in the very literature they read. This course counts towards the fulfillment of the Disciplinary Perspectives element of the CAS general education curriculum.