Intro to Genres: Evil Incarnate

Some of the most compelling pieces of writing across all genre deal with, and often feature, deeply problematic central adversarial characters without which the poem, story, or essay would have no forward motion, and no cause to exist. From Capote’s In Cold Blood to Milton’s Paradise Lost, from Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita to Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and Sabato’s The Tunnel, literature returns again and again to the question of evil and the concept of opposition. This course is designed to explore this question alongside authors who have devoted their lives to understanding the role of evil in literature, its necessity, its appeal, its frivolity and its betrayal. The course will be divided into three section, each section devoted to a specific genre during which two to three texts will be explored, discussed and analyzed in class, and at the end of which one brief analysis paper will be due. One creative piece, in any of the three major genres, exploring the said topic will be due at the end of the course.

Day/Time: Thursday, 1:00-4:00