The Ethics of the Creative Imagination

Catalog description

Seminar focused on the ethical questions raised by the literary imagination. Is it moral for a memoirist to spill family secrets, for a fiction writer to use the biographical facts of a real person for a character, or for a poet to appropriate language from another poem? Do the moral standards for writers differ over time and place? Students read a range of excerpts, essays, articles, and books by authors ranging from Plato to Gioia. They conduct biographical, historical, or sociological research on a specific ethical dilemma and present it to the class for debate. Required for the major.