SHUM 4508 - Fictions for New Worlds

(crosslisted) ENGL 4708

Spring. 4 credits.

Enrollment limited to: 15 students.

R. Kalas.

In The New Science, Vico posits that all nations are “poetic in their beginning.” In this course we will read works of literature that imagine themselves at the beginning of a new nation or polity: such works as Virgil’s Aeneid, Thomas More’s Utopia, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. We will reflect upon each of these works in its specific historical and geopolitical context. But we will also imagine how, collectively, these literatures might tell a different history of civil society than the one we are accustomed to.

For longer description and Fellows’ bios please visit www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/index.html.