Modern European Literature.

Catalog description

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, this course examines the efforts of major European writers to grapple with the complex and shifting social, psychological, and religious condition that is modernity. The syllabus will mix established (even "titanic") figures such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Proust, Brecht, and Camus, lesser-known greats such as Halldór Laxness, and recent European writers such as Elena Ferrante and Judith Schalansky. Wide-ranging in both geography and genre, the course will touch on writers from the fringes of Europe and its center and examine the modern condition through novels, essays, poems, and plays.