Envisioning Otherworlds: Literature in/and London

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The fascination with imaginary worlds and the figures that inhabit them has remained vibrant throughout centuries of English literature and extends all the way back to its origins. London is an ideal city for pondering our proximity to the past with relics like the Tower of London inviting us to visualize England in another time and as another place. This course strives to bridge the distance between the modern era and those that have preceded it through the study of literary works from the British Isles within their Medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian contexts. What does the invocation of the otherworldly reveal about the anxieties and desires of a particular time period? How do we envision the historical periods before ours as otherworlds that are distanced by time and distinct from the world we know? In what ways does the past remain entangled with the present?