Ambition, Desire, and the Novel

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will explore plots of ambition of all kinds – social, economic, romantic, creative. The chief focus will be on European novels from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but we will also consider texts from other places and historical moments, as well as some films. Texts may include some of the following: Balzac Lost Illusions, Dickens Great Expectations, Brontë Wuthering Heights, Flaubert Madame Bovary, Highsmith The Talented Mr Ripley, Nabokov Pale Fire.