Transgressions

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This interdisciplinary course will examine the theme of transgression in literature, visual and plastic arts, and cinema, and will focus on works from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. By way of encounters with the libertine, the seducer, the dandy, the aesthete, the prostitute, and the criminal in these works, we will evaluate the role and potential merit of transgression as a force for political, societal, or artistic change. By analyzing the notion of transgression through the lens of the breaking (or exalting) of taboos, unstable or shifting alliances, and duplicitous behaviors, students will be encouraged to examine transgression in terms of legal, ethical, and moral systems, and to formulate questions about sexuality and identity. Authors and texts to be studied include Laclos (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), Baudelaire (Le Spleen de Paris), Huysmans (A Rebours), Gide (Les Caves du Vatican), Genet (Les Bonnes), and by Marcel Duchamp (selected works). Cross-listed with Comparative Literature. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.