AS 060.404 - Literature in History

Institution:

Johns Hopkins University

Subject:

Description:

All texts have contexts. In this course we will explore the relationship of literature to history from a variety of perspectives. Part of the course will be devoted to literary texts which require contextual analysis if one is to arrive at anything like a sufficient interpretation—including Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd”, and the poetry of William Blake and T. S. Eliot. We will also look at literary depictions of history—perhaps Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of a Plague Year”, George Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House”, and Bertolt Brecht’s “Galileo”. Along the way we will ask what it means to recover “historical meaning,” consider the representation of history in literature and literature’s impact on history, and think about concepts of “literary history.”The last reading of the semester will be Tom Stoppard’s brilliant historical play “Arcadia”, a lively but forceful commentary on human attempts to reconstruct the past. Students will be free to write their papers either on historicist theory or on plays, poems, or fiction from any period, medieval to contemporary

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.jhu.edu

Phone Number:

(410) 516-8000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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