ENGL 392(S) Wonder (Same as Literary Studies 392)

We tend to imagine "wonder" as a non-historical, pre-rational category, as what inspires and perhaps lingers beyond the cold act of critical analysis. In this team-taught discussion course, we will consider wonder as an eminently analyzable concept, a concept which raises provocative questions about the historical nature and limits of our own distinctly modern forms of critical engagement. Most broadly, the course will look to the "naive" category of wonder to reflect in a sophisticated way on the vexed relation between theory and history. The course examines three historical incarnations of "wonder," each involving complex relations among the aesthetic, philosophical, and political domains: the Renaissance tradition on wonder and the marvelous; the eighteenth-century analysis of the sublime; and the mid-twentieth-century critique of Enlightenment thought posed by the Frankfurt School. We will consider writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, Collins, and Nabokov (all wonderful), painters such as Vermeer and Courbet, and critical or philosophical writers, with a particular emphasis on Kant and Benjamin.
Requirements: two 8-10 page papers.
Prerequisite: English 101. Enrollment limited to 25. (Criticism).

Hour: PYE and SOKOLSKY