GERST 4280 - [Genius and Madness in Literature]

(crosslisted)
(also COML 4255) (LA-AS)

4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015. Taught in English.

A. Schwarz.

What is the connection between genius and madness? How can we explain the close association between creativity and insanity found in cultures from antiquity to the present? What features do genius and madness have that push them beyond the pale of normalcy, and conversely, how is “normal” defined? For millennia philosophers have contemplated the close kinship between madness and genius, engaging in lively discussions about whether creativity is ingenuity, divine possession, fanatic enthusiasm, inspiration, or insanity. Special focus on social and artistic transgression; genius and gender; passions and pathological disorders. In this class you’ll learn advanced methods of critical, close reading and literary analysis as we read texts ranging from novels to medical treatises, poetry to philosophy, novellas to historical accounts. Readings will include canonical texts from renowned authors such as Aristotle, Plato, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Kant, Michel Foucault, Honore de Balzac, Roland Barthes, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Sigmund Freud, Georg Buchner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Emerson, Diderot, Doyle, Kleist, Paul Auster, film screenings.