Epic Form and the Inhuman

3.0 credits · Undergraduate

What symbolic forms might be adequate to phenomena of such inhuman scale as the sixth extinction or the catastrophic climate change of the Anthropocene? Revisiting important literary theoretical discourses on the epic and the realist novel through the lens of Amitav Ghosh’s argument that the realist novel actively occludes the realities of its time and that its form forecloses the non-human, this course will investigate the affordances of epic form, myth and fable for modes of apprehending and representating the inhuman. Materials will range from ancient and medieval epic to contemporary novels, films and anime with special attention to the challenging work of Guyanese writer Wilson Harris. Authors may include Homer, Dante, Han Kang, Flaubert, Miyazaki, Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Benh Zeitlin and Wilson Harris.