English 9228
Allegory and Time
Instructor: Professors Anne Schuurman and Matthew Rowlinson.
Full-Year Course.
A study of allegorical works and of the theory of allegory from the European Middle Ages to the present. Non-English works to be taught in translation; Middle English works to be taught in the original, but no prior knowledge of Middle English will be supposed. The course will have a broad focus but key topics will be the trope of personification and the emergence of allegory from the dialectic of history and theology.
We will cover texts from the whole history of European literature and culture, including the Middle English poem "Pearl," selections from Piers Plowman and Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Milton’s "Comus," Bunyan’s Pligrim’s Progress, selections from Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, and Charles Baudelaire. We expect to conclude with Art Spiegelman’s Maus and a work of contemporary fantasy or speculative fiction. Theorists to be discussed may include St. Augustine, Dante, Coleridge, Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Angus Fletcher, Maureen Quilligan, Gordon Teskey and Fredric Jameson.
