Literature and Existentialism

3-0-9 units. HASS-H; CI-H · Undergraduate

Studies major literary works associated with the 19th- and 20-century philosophical movement known as existentialism. Through close reading of these works, students explore how existentialist writers grappled with the question of death; the nature of free will; emotions like boredom, disgust, and radical doubt; and the fate of the individual in a modernity marked by war, illogic, and absurdity. Includes novels, short stories, and aphorisms by Sartre, Camus, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Hesse, Chopin, and Nietzsche; plays by Beckett and Stoppard; and films by Bergman, Tarkovsky, and others. Enrollment limited.