Wrld Lit w/Religious Dimension

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In this course we’ll read and discuss works written in the period from World War II onward in which religious belief figures into both the material and its presentation; and we’ll consider the ways in which religion supports, complicates, or defies familiar categories of literary and social interpretation. The novelist Flannery O'Connor spoke of her literary technique as a “realism of distances,” in which she sought the long view in a manner akin to prophecy. The texts here are vivid expressions of the different ways authors who deal with religious material aspire to a “realism of distances,” and they open up the questions that emerge in the process. Is religion a distinctive expression of a particular society, or is it a “contrast structure” set against a society’s sense of itself? Is religion nationalism or tribalism writ global, or is it a truly transnational phenomenon? How do a particular writer's convictions and stance toward religious belief shape his or her texts, and how do our own convictions shape our encounters with them as readers? How might a grasp of matters of belief help us to understand our own and other societies, and how might it stand in the way of such understanding? These questions --- questions practical, political, literary, or religious, depending on one’s point of entry --- will animate our discussion of a dozen strong literary texts. Students will sharpen their insights in a succinct essay about a single text, and a broader essay taking in two or more texts.