Reading Art in Literature

This course will explore the role of art objects in poetry and prose from East Asia and the west. How are objects represented in literature, and how does the language of art inform texts? Authors from antiquity to today have described works of art in their texts to reveal essential aspects of their cultures: heroic destiny, fatal struggles between life and art, and glimpses of the sublime. Readings include ekphrasis from antiquity, poetry from East Asia and the west, and fiction by Wilde, Balzac, Hawthorne, selections from The Tale of Genji and The Dream of the Red Chamber, and others.