COMP 271 Religion and the Modern Literary Imagination (Same as English 271 and Religion 271) (Not offered 2008-2009; to be offered 2009-2010) (W)

REL 271 Religion and the Modern Literary Imagination (Same as Comparative Literature 271 and English 271) (Not offered 2008-2009; to be offered 2009-2010) (W)
In this course we will examine themes of religious life such as ritual, sin, redemption, evil, magic, heresy, prophecy, faith and devotion as they appear as sources of conflict and reflection in novels, poems and short stories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our task will be to consider first, how literary form can be used as a tool to conceptualize religious experience, but second the ways in which literature, in its expressions of wonder and despair, converges or conflicts with the aims of worship and religious performance, producing either modern sacrament or idol. Of the novels, stories and poems that we will read, some will arise directly out of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions, while others will have more explicitly tangential, or even heretical relations with these traditions. We will consider a range of novelists from Dostoevsky to Cynthia Ozick and Orhan Pamuk and a range of poets from Gerard Manley Hopkins to Wallace Stevens and Paul Celan. Assignments will be both critical and creative. You will be asked to think like a writer and a critic and thus to try your hand at writing a sestina as well as a personal essay.
Format: seminar. Assignments will include bi-weekly response papers of 1-2 pages, a short essay of 5-7 pages and a final writing assignment of 8-10 pages.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference given to first-year students and Religion majors.
HAMMERSCHLAG