Comp. Lit. 72000
GC: M, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 4 cr.
Prof. Oppenheimer

The Nature of Artistic Revolution: Catullus, Horace, Dante, Marlowe, Rubens, Cervantes, Dickinson, Holderlin, Rilke, Eliot
What constitutes artistic or aesthetic revolution? What sense, if any, can be ascribed to this commonly, even wantonly, misapplied expression? How may those genuine artistic revolutionists who leave an art fundamentally altered, and with consequent profound alterations in the history of ideas, be distinguished from other supremely important artists, such as Shakespeare and Yeats, who do no such thing, and who exhibit little interest in dramatic artistic and aesthetic innovation? What about seeming revolutionists, such as Walt Whitman, who on examination may turn out to be rather traditional? This course will explore questions such as these in terms of the achievements of Catullus, Horace, Dante, Marlowe, Peter Paul Rubens (about whom the director of the course has published a biography), Cervantes, Emily Dickinson, Baudelaire, Hölderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S. Eliot: in other words, by crisscrossing literary, artistic and cultural boundaries and by raising as many unruly aesthetic questions as we can imagine. One brief in-class presentation of your research topic. One research essay.